[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 6110-6117]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and the 
honor to be recognized here on the floor of the United States Congress 
this evening and the chance to pick up where some of my colleagues left 
off here. But I pretty much had my say about Walter Reed, and I support 
and endorse the remarks that were made over the last 60 minutes, and I 
intend to move on to another subject matter here.
  I do just simply want to restate that the care that they are provided 
is good and it is solid. And as I talked to patients at Walter Reed, 
Bethesda, Landstuhl, continually, they are very, very grateful for the 
quality of the care. We have some of the best experts in the world 
treating some of these kinds of injuries; and to look them in the eye 
and see the level of their commitment, you just know that they are 
giving it everything that they have.
  I am not hearing patient complaints about the care, but about 
sometimes the timeliness of the recordkeeping and the timeliness of the 
treatment that is there.

                              {time}  2030

  There will be always be things that fall through the bureaucratic 
cracks, and it is our job to try to seal those cracks up and do the 
best job that we can. I think we are going to get that done. Certainly, 
though, I want to make sure that America, Madam Speaker, understands 
the commitment that is made on the part of the medical care providers 
for our military men and women, and that is what we must do in order to 
support their effort and support their sacrifice.
  Madam Speaker, I came to the floor tonight to talk about an issue 
that I have been here before to raise, and hopefully I will be back 
again to raise, and that is this broad, overall immigration issue that 
has captured the debate field in the United States for the last 3 years 
or more. And what brings me to the floor tonight is a sense that there 
is a growing effort on the part of the White House, on the part of the 
Senate and on the part of some here in the House, to build a kind of a 
critical mass coalition that would bring what they would call a 
comprehensive immigration reform bill through the Senate and then 
quickly over here to the House, which I would consider to be a 
steamrolled or a stampeded bill, something that we don't know what is 
going on behind the scenes, or there has been hardly anything leaked. 
And I believe it is their effort to try to get enough Members, a 
majority, and that would be something or a filibuster proof majority in 
the Senate and a significant majority here in the House to buy on to a 
policy that they have never seen, one that is not in print yet, or at 
least not filed, not dropped, in the fundamental sense, but only get 
people, people, and I mean Members and Senators, to sign off 
conceptually, and say I conceptually endorse a comprehensive 
immigration reform bill.
  Well, first, Madam Speaker, the American people need to understand 
that when the word ``comprehensive immigration reform,'' when that 
phrase is used, that means we don't like to admit amnesty. But 
comprehensive is a substitution for the word ``amnesty.'' It has been 
that way for 3 years. It will be that way until this debate is maybe 
over for this cycle.
  But I recall when the President gave his first immigration reform 
speech was January 6 of 2004, 3 years and a couple of months ago. There 
he brought out a lot of the same things that he is standing for now. 
And the President says that he is opposed to amnesty. But I will say 
that Ronald Reagan signed a bill that Ronald Reagan called amnesty that 
is very much the kind of policy that is being advocated by the White 
House.

[[Page 6111]]

  I am greatly concerned about this moving so quickly with so little 
information that the American people would not have an opportunity to 
weigh in, would not have an opportunity to call and write and e-mail 
and fax their Senators and their House Members to be able to try to 
move the center, I guess, of the Republican and Democrat House of 
Representatives and the Senate.
  And so it is important that I call upon Members, don't sign off on 
something till you read the fine print. The devil is in the details. 
The devils were in the details last year when the Senate moved their 
immigration reform bill and the details turned out to be tens of 
millions of people. Just a small detail, Madam Speaker, of tens of 
millions of people that would be legalized and granted amnesty in about 
a couple of decades period of time. That is the backdrop. That is the 
foundation of this.
  I have a lot to say about this, but I also recognize the gentleman 
from Texas who has been on this floor for a while has some things he 
would like to say about it, and I would be very happy to yield to Judge 
Carter as much time as he may consume.
  Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) for yielding 
to me. And I appreciate him joining me in the previous hour in our 
discussion of Walter Reed and the health care for our soldiers and our 
veterans and how important that issue is.
  But I guess, at least in the State of Texas, if what I hear in my 
town hall meetings is anything to be compared, I think the issue of 
what is happening on our borders and what we are going to do to resolve 
the issue of immigration is a topic that has never failed to come up, 
now, in the past 3 years at literally, every occasion at which I have 
held a town hall meeting; and I generally hold between 17 and 25 a year 
with the addition of the new tool of the telephone town hall. I held 
one of those less than 3 weeks ago for an hour and a half.
  And once again, the people of Texas are concerned about the issue of 
the illegal aliens that have invaded our country. And they are 
concerned about who is coming, and what are they going to do, and what 
are we going to do to resolve this problem?
  I have a Hispanic Council. The gentleman from Iowa knows that Texas 
is a State that you would put down as a Hispanic State. In fact, I 
believe we have now, over 50 percent of the people in Texas are 
Hispanic. The difference between Texas and some other parts of the 
world is we have lived with Hispanic neighbors all of our history. I 
mean, our culture is a kind of a combination of West and Mexican 
culture. It is the Southwest culture. It has a lot of the influence of 
Mexico in the Southwest culture. If you don't believe that, come on 
down to Austin; let me feed you the best Mexican food on Earth.
  This is what is going on in Texas. We have lived with our neighbors 
like this all of our lives. When this issue cropped up I decided I 
wanted to form a Hispanic Council in my district. And we talk about 
issues, of course, immigration, the border, these are issues that are 
primary we discuss. But we made ourselves a promise that we were going 
to look at the world, all the world of litigation, legislation, and 
international relations, not just the immigration issue. But we always 
discuss the immigration issue. And at least my council, which has a 
membership of folks that are, some of them first generation American 
citizens, most of them second or third or fourth generation American 
citizens. All of Hispanic descent, most of whom are from Mexico, 
although there are some from other places. And we have a let your hair 
down, no holds barred discussion. And overall, my Hispanic community, 
recognizes there is a problem and realizes we have to come up with a 
solution, and they are supportive of a solution that is within the law.
  And I think that is important because, quite frankly, the reason we 
have a crisis, I would tell my colleague from Iowa, is because we 
haven't been enforcing the laws we have got and we haven't been 
enforcing them since 1986 when we cranked out the amnesty program under 
Ronald Reagan. The key to the Reagan amnesty program being a success 
was enforce the law. And administrations, Republican and Democrat, have 
not done it. I mean, those are the facts.
  You know, one thing about history, it is history. You can try to 
write it a different way, but the reality of history is there is only 
one history and that is the truth of what happened.
  And what happened was we didn't enforce the laws. And as a result, we 
went from a trickle across our southern border and our northern border 
to a six-lane highway bumper to bumper invasion. And that is what we 
have been facing now in the last 4 or 5 years.
  I would say, I have met with the White House on numerous occasions 
and been a very big critic of making sure that we got border 
enforcement. I will say, we are doing better at the border. We are not 
there yet, but w are doing substantially better. The numbers are down. 
The catch and release program and the ending of the catch and release 
program, although not 100 percent, but it is better than it was when it 
was 100 percent catch and release. We are detaining people. And there 
are those who want to stop us and there are those who call us inhumane. 
And, in fact, in my district, one of the real things that we 
desperately needed was a place to care for families that cross the 
border. And we had no facility that was family friendly. They built a 
family friendly, or remodeled a correctional institute to make a family 
friendly center to hold illegals with children, people who come in this 
country illegally with children. And it is in my district. It is 22 
miles from my home in Taylor, Texas. That thing has come under fire 
from our neighbors to the south who are sort of San Francisco-like, we 
would call them, in their views and they have been picketing this 
facility and claiming it is inhumane. I was there when they started 
remodeling this facility. I was there two-thirds of the way through the 
remodel, and so I went back the last month, the last week we were there 
during the President's Week, and I toured that facility.
  I have the expertise of having built two juvenile detention centers 
as a judge. I was the chairman of the Juvenile Board from its inception 
in Williamson County until I retired, so until I retired I was the only 
chairman the Juvenile Board ever had in Williamson County, now a county 
of about 300,000 people. And so I was in charge of the board that built 
our first William S. Lott Detention Center, back when we were a lot 
smaller county. We are probably the second fastest growing county in 
the Nation every year of the last 20 years. And so now we have built a 
much larger, 4 or 500-bed facility, the second one, the Williamson 
County Juvenile Detention Center.
  So when I went into this controversial holding situation that we have 
got there in Taylor, I was looking for the kind of thing that we put 
our juvenile offenders into. And, you know, juvenile offenders are not, 
under the law, criminal offenders. It is a very special category of the 
world. And so I looked at the classrooms, which, quite frankly, were 
better than the classrooms that my son and my daughter-in-law teach in 
at Round Rock High School, and I am pretty proud of the classroom that 
they teach in at Round Rock High School. They were very well managed. 
The teachers were bilingual and very, very compassionate.
  There was a glitch, bureaucratic glitch that caused some of them not 
to be taught long enough. But now they are meeting the Texas 
educational standards. They have recess, they have a playground, the 
rooms are decorated. They have done the best they can to make it 
juvenile friendly. And I figure if it is good enough for juveniles, it 
is certainly good enough for their parents.
  But there is a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, and I am certain that our 
crisis is not over on that facility. But why did we have to build that 
facility? Because there were coyotes in Mexico who knew that if, for 
sure, if you were caught and you had a child in your possession, they 
had no place to house you, no matter where you came from. And 97 
percent of the people in that

[[Page 6112]]

Taylor facility are OTM, other than Mexicans. They knew if you had a 
kid they couldn't detain you. And so we had to have some way to detain. 
Those things are improvements. But that is the kind of, this is a very 
complicated situation. And you are right, it is not something that 
calls for a quick easy fix that suits certain people's political 
agenda. It needs to be analyzed and it needs to be done, I still say, 
as we secure the border and get the confidence of the American people 
that we care about what is going on, and we are getting there. We need 
to come up with a way to identify people so we know who has the right 
to work and who doesn't have the right to work in this country. Then 
our work program, with those who are here with no pathway to 
citizenship, in my opinion, and then a work program for those that want 
to come in legally to work in a legal system, work for a period of time 
and go back type of system, and finally rework our immigration and 
naturalization laws to where they work, they are workable. And at that 
point in time, if you have violated the law, and you want to go for 
citizenship, you reapply from the nation you come from and you get in 
line like everybody else with some kind of penalty for having broken 
our laws. That makes sense. That is not something we should throw in in 
a quick laundry basket full of clothes, everything mixed up, and it 
will all work it out. We will work it out later, because, my friend 
from Iowa, ask the people that are in the trenches that are dealing 
with this immigration problem at ICE and other places. They are 
overwhelmed now. If you throw the 7 to 20 million that are hiding out 
in this country back on their shoulders to deal with, what are they 
going to do if we don't think this out logically?

                              {time}  2045

  They are going to be more overwhelmed. And when a government system 
is overwhelmed, it just stops working. And that is what we are 
experiencing in the United States today. You can't blame these people. 
When they have got a pile of a thousand applications on their desk and 
you walk through the door with 10,000 more, they are going to say, I 
can't do the thousand, I sure as heck can't do the 10,000.
  So I think it is really wonderful that the people in this Congress 
are willing to keep bringing this issue to the floor and reminding the 
American people that we care, because there are those of us who care 
very, very compassionately about this issue. We can do it and we can do 
it right. And when it is done right, justice will prevail. I have been 
in the justice business all of my life, and I have been in the justice 
business as a judge for almost 21 years. I believe that what we owe all 
people who reside in this country is justice. Justice occasionally 
requires responsibility for your actions, and these are the kind of 
things we need to think about as we address this problem.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  As I listen to you talk about this, Judge, and you live down in that 
territory where it has been part of your life and the flow of our life, 
from my background in the work that I have done, there have been some 
times in my life when there was something that was so complicated, so 
convoluted and so unpredictable in its elements and so many 
hypotheticals that came out of each of those elements that no matter 
how hard I tried to chart a course through that and lay out contingency 
plans on, I call them if-then formulas which you can put on a 
spreadsheet, if then, we will do that; if that happens, then we will do 
this. And it threads through the whole equation.
  This immigration issue is so complicated, so unpredictable and has so 
many hypotheticals that I contend that it is impossible for a body of 
100 Senators or 435 House Members or a President to chart a course 
through that and be able to put law in place that deals with all of the 
contingencies and ends up with the kind of product that if we can even 
agree on what that is, we could not get there. It is beyond human 
ability to put that into a law and make that work; too many 
hypotheticals.
  So what I will submit is that we need to take this, as you suggested, 
one step at a time. I am for let's go ahead and get things under 
control at the border. Stop the bleeding. As Dr. Gingrey has often said 
from Georgia, we have got to stop the bleeding before we can decide how 
we are going to stabilize the patient and give him rehab. That is step 
one. And we started on that, as you said. I have been down to look at 
that. In fact, a couple weeks ago I went down there and helped build 
some wall with Secretary Chertoff down south of Yuma on the border. It 
occurred to me that probably the only person in America that actually 
has gone down on the southern border and put border fence up with Chris 
Simcox or the Minute Men, and then turned around and welded steel wall 
on the border was Secretary Chertoff. I don't think those two guys are 
going to get together and do this together. I had the privilege of 
doing it on different occasions with each of them. But we can control 
this at the border; in fact, we must. And if we can't do that, then all 
the rest of the policy we talk about goes for naught.
  And another fundamental principle that I stand on is that of all the 
discussions that come out of the House and the Senate and the ideas 
about guest worker, or temporary worker, how we will give them a card, 
how that all might work; how you do background checks on people and 
then legalize them here, I don't hear anyone address what you do with 
those that don't come forward. Because those that come forward with a 
clean background record, they would then get their pass to either guest 
worker card or a path to citizenship, depending, they might feel pretty 
comfortable if all they did is come into the country illegally and that 
this government should write up a law, which I would oppose, that would 
be amnesty, too. But those that have a criminal record beyond that, 
those that have run afoul of the law for whatever reason, they are not 
coming out of the shadows because they don't want the hook of the law 
in them, they don't want to go off to prison and they don't want to be 
deported.
  So we will not be uncovering the bad elements of society by trying to 
do background checks on people. And those elements of society, those 
slackers that don't want to come forward for whatever reason, those 
that have reasons not to come forward, they still remain in the shadows 
an illegal core in this civilization, and the only way you get them out 
is to actually send people back home again.
  So I submit that we should use all of our local law enforcement. We 
should end all sanctuary policies. The local police force, county 
sheriffs, the highway patrol, the Texas Rangers, all those folks that 
are involved in law enforcement at all levels, and have them 
cooperating at all levels.
  I grew up in a law enforcement family. And it was not something that 
we could have conceived of, but there would be a city police officer 
that would be prohibited from cooperating with a Federal officer on a 
law in this Nation because it happened to be Federal law as opposed to 
a city ordinance. So by that rationale, city police would only enforce 
city ordinances and State highway patrol and State officers, DCI or 
whatever, could only enforce State laws and then Federal officers could 
only enforce Federal laws. And I don't know what the county sheriffs 
are going to do except maybe they are just going to serve warrants and 
papers.
  So we need to cooperate on all levels and we need to reestablish the 
rule of law.
  Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman would yield, I absolutely agree with 
that. And as law enforcement, we have learned how to cooperate over 
those jurisdictional boundaries. There is no reason in the world why we 
can't cooperate over jurisdictional boundaries with the Federal law 
enforcement officers, also. It can be done. We have done it in Texas, 
we have done it across the country. We can do it with the immigration 
issue.
  And I do agree with you, also, that no one is talking about what do 
you do with the people who don't? That has to be addressed, also. If we 
are going to hold out a carrot of a work permit for

[[Page 6113]]

people to come out and turn themselves in and report and file whatever 
pre-procedures this Congress establishes, we have to have a stick for 
those who don't; that if we don't, it won't work.
  I am not for pounding anybody, don't misunderstand me. My whole point 
is the carrot and the stick policy is law enforcement, the way we do 
some things in law enforcement. And it is important that we have that. 
If you don't, there are going to be serious ramifications for not 
joining and trying to solve this problem.
  And those people that are in this country illegally out there 
tonight, if they are listening, I hope they know that whatever this 
Congress does, and I am with you, as it works out this thing logically 
and putting a focus on each element as we move along, not a big trash 
basket, when we do, we put together a program, we expect you to 
participate. And if you don't participate, I think there should be 
serious consequences.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. And I know that 
there are some people in this Congress and across the country that will 
say, well, what about two sticks and no carrots. We may hear about that 
from the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Goode, who I would be happy to 
yield as much time as he may consume.
  Mr. GOODE. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to be here with Mr. King; I 
appreciate the time he has allotted to me.
  I want to thank him for his hard work in combating illegal 
immigration and the many problems that such brings to our country. I 
know today he had a forum over at the Woodrow Wilson Institute and had 
to slug it out with others who did not concur with his views.
  Judge Carter was here. I also want to thank him for his hard work on 
this issue, and for recognizing the need to secure our borders.
  First, I wish to commend the Mayor and Council of Hazelton, 
Pennsylvania for their courageous stand in defending the sanctity of 
Hazelton, the well-being of its citizens, and the integrity of the rule 
of law. The courage of this community should spur this Congress to be 
resolute in standing for the security of our Nation.
  By setting forth the city's determination to impose penalties of 
those who rent to illegal aliens and requiring employers to verify the 
legal work status of potential workers, the leadership of Hazelton is 
speaking for a majority of Americans who know and believe that strict 
measures must be employed if we are to secure jobs for workers who are 
here legally, if we are to preserve the traditional culture of our 
Nation, and if we are to be protected from criminal illegal aliens.
  Further, Hazelton's action to stipulate English as their official 
language is a step that this Congress should also take in order to 
prevent our Nation from becoming divided into splinter groups that 
hunker down in the assertion of their individuality rather than 
becoming a part of a great melting pot that Americans have cherished 
for over two centuries.
  Hazelton is now defending itself against the legal challenges of the 
ACLU and others. Hazelton should know that it is supported by millions 
of Americans who know that its cause is just.
  I would also like to mention, Madam Speaker, the movie ``Borders,'' 
which was showing in the Cannon Office Building last week. It is 
produced by Chris and Lisa Burgard. Lisa hails from Pittsylvania 
County, which is in the Fifth District of Virginia. We were honored to 
have in attendance Mr. and Mrs. Robert Duvall and Mr. Ron Maxwell, who 
starred and directed ``Gods and Generals.'' We also had some Members of 
Congress to witness this film. Hopefully this film will be showing in 
theaters across the country in the near future. It illustrates the need 
for a secure fence along our southern borders.
  The criminal activity along our border with Mexico is rampant. The 
coyotes and the drug dealers bring people across on a regular basis, 
bringing drugs with them, paying them to smuggle in the illegal drugs 
so that the main ones are not caught with the drugs on them. This is 
just an example of the illegal activity that a secure southern would 
prevent.
  Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne from Idaho, 
spoke about a fence that he saw on national land along our border with 
Mexico. He told how it is believed that the drug cartel would jump that 
fence at night.
  When we talk about a fence that will secure our border, we cannot be 
lulled into thinking that you can have a woven wire or one fence that 
would keep our borders secure. We must have something akin to the 
triple fence that exists between San Diego and Mexico. You have a 
fence, then a roadway for the Border Patrol to ride up and down, then 
you have a large barrier in the center, you have another roadway, and 
then a third fence.
  The Secretary told about how the drug cartel would get these great 
drivers who would jump that fence with inclines and keep on going. I 
dare say, even if you had someone like Dale Jarrett or Bobby Labonte, 
they could never jump the San Diego fence. It would be mighty tough to 
tunnel under it, too. And Mr. King, I know you have illustrated that 
fence here on the floor. That is the kind of fence that will keep them 
out. And that is the reason a number of persons oppose this fence and 
do not want to see it funded because it will do the job.
  You mentioned amnesty, Mr. King. You are right on the money. We 
cannot afford to have amnesty in any way. We have a great country in 
the United States of America; various beliefs, different religions, 
tremendous tolerance. We cannot afford to be swamped and sunk by the 
invasion of illegals into this country.
  Just the talk of amnesty means more illegal entry. Those that come in 
illegally say well, let's go and stay just a few years. If we can go 
and stay a few years, we are going to get to stay forever. In the 
1980s, they gave those that came and stayed a while amnesty. In the 
1990s they, meaning our government, gave those that came and stayed for 
a while amnesty. And those that come across now, every time the body on 
the other side of this Capitol talks about amnesty, more want to come. 
When they hear the President say we are going to create a new guest 
worker program with a glidepath to citizenship, more want to come 
because they know. And the sidewalk talk is correct, if we can get 
there and stay just a little while, we are going to get a blue card, a 
red card, a green card or something, and we are going to have our 
glidepath to citizenship. And we will have ridden around a system. And 
everybody that is playing by the rules and waiting in line, well, they 
are just foolish. We broke the law, we got away with it, and they are 
giving us amnesty.

                              {time}  2100

  Illegal immigration has swamped our hospitals. It has jacked up 
health care costs for Americans not only in the southwestern United 
States but all across this land. We want to do something about health 
care costs. Shut off illegal immigration, and you will get a benefit.
  I have been to community health centers which have gotten 
significantly increased funding over the last 5 to 8 years. Community 
health centers serve those primarily who have little or no assets and 
who have little or no insurance. They don't question whether someone 
may not have the wherewithal or whether someone is in this country 
illegally or not. They see someone needs health care assistance, and 
they get it. A big impact on community health systems is illegal 
immigration. A big impact on free clinics is illegal immigration.
  Social services, now, they say there are some rules against providing 
them for illegal aliens. But, again, the check system at the local 
level is not there. And there would be some if they did like Hazelton, 
Pennsylvania. They are saying you are being too harsh. Well, a lot of 
illegals have left Hazelton, Pennsylvania; and if we had more Hazelton, 
Pennsylvanias around this country, we would have a lot less problem.
  Corrections, illegal aliens, a huge negative impact on local jails 
and local prisons. A huge impact on the State

[[Page 6114]]

prison systems all across the country. Last year the head of the 
Federal Bureau of Prisons testified that out of 189,000 Federal 
prisoners, 50,000 were illegal aliens. And I think you figured it at 
about 28 percent.
  I surely hope the illegal alien population in the United States is 
not that high. It is high and it is growing. We got to 300 million much 
quicker than anticipated. A huge strain on our energy, a huge strain on 
many aspects of our society.
  Let's stop illegal immigration and improve America. Our policy 
towards illegals needs to be clear: keep them out, direct them back, 
and save America.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia 
for a clear message.
  The American people appreciate straight-talking, clear messages. 
There have been far too many of these messages that are muddled and 
confusing, and those muddled and confusing messages cause more problems 
with more people coming across the border. And I am not hearing people 
stand up and say it would be wonderful if everybody could wake up in 
their own country one day in a legal fashion and not have to look over 
their shoulder and rebuild their own nation, rebuild their own society, 
rebuild their own economy.
  I had this conversation with the ambassador to the United States from 
Mexico. And I say, If you encourage your people, the vitality of your 
nation, to come here to the United States, who is going to be there to 
reform Mexico? Who is going to be there to rebuild Mexico? And he had 
to concede that is no way to run a country.
  At this point, Madam Speaker, I would be very happy to yield to the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).
  Mr. JORDAN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  The gentleman mentioned his recent trip out to the Mexican border in 
the State of Arizona. I had the pleasure of accompanying you on that 
trip and found that very insightful.
  As we begin to move into this debate this session of the Congress, I 
think it is important that we keep some principles in mind. And, 
hopefully, these principles, I think, if they are followed, will help 
us arrive at the right public policy decision. And I think there are 
just three key ones.
  And the first one is and it has been mentioned by the previous 
speakers this hour, but the first one is we have to focus on security 
first. As we discovered down at the border with Secretary Chertoff, it 
is important that we secure the border and we do that first. I think 
the former Speaker of the House has made the statement, does an 
antiballistic missile defense system make a lot of sense when a 
terrorist can rent a truck and drive it across the border? That is an 
important thing. It is about security.
  When we were down there on our visit, a few things stuck out in my 
mind, and the American people understand this. The first is how real 
this problem is. As the gentleman from Iowa knows, we were in a 
helicopter flying out along the border, and the pilot came over the 
intercom and said, Look out the window right there and you will see 
some aliens attempting to cross right now. And we literally saw 
approximately 20, 25 people coming across. We were flying right along 
the Mexican/United States border, and we saw 25 people trying to cross 
the border illegally, and they attempted to hide under a tree. There 
wasn't much cover out in the desert, as the gentleman remembers, but 
there they were. And they had the clothes on their backs and jugs of 
water in their hands and they took off running back to the border. But 
it just reinforced in my mind what the American people need understand 
about how real this problem is.
  The second thing that I think I came away with from that visit is the 
fence is working. As the gentleman from Virginia pointed out, where 
they are constructing it right now is having an impact. And obviously 
the strategy of our Secretary of our government is to put the fence up 
first in those areas where it is going to have the best and greatest 
impact, and that is in the urban areas. And it is working, and it is a 
double fence, as the gentleman talked about. And it is making a 
difference.
  The other thing that is making a difference out there is our National 
Guard, our good men and women in the National Guard who are helping 
build that same fence where I know you welded and we all had a chance 
to do a little welding there. They are providing more eyes to see the 
illegals as they attempt to cross, and they are helping with that 
fence. But security has to be priority number one, as we think about 
the policy that makes sense for our country.
  The second principle that has to guide this debate, and, again, it 
has been highlighted already, is the idea that our country is great 
because we have a lot of great principles that were there at the 
founding and are still present today. One of those fundamental 
principles that makes America the greatest Nation ever is the concept 
that the rule of law matters. And when people willingly, knowingly 
violate the rule of law, there have to be serious consequences. And 
that is why amnesty as a policy makes no sense for people who willingly 
and knowingly violated the law.
  And, finally, the third thing I would point out, and I think 
sometimes as we focus on making sure we are securing our borders and 
following the rule of law, one of the things that seems to get left out 
in the debate is we should welcome people, we should welcome immigrants 
who want to come here legally. I mean, immigrants have always been a 
great treasure to this country, have always added to the greatness of 
this country. And for those folks who want to come here and learn our 
culture, learn our language, learn English, we should welcome them.
  And who can fault people who want to come to the freest, greatest 
Nation in history? So if they want to do it the right way, the legal 
way, we should work on a policy that also helps the bureaucracy work 
better to help those people who want to be a part of the American 
culture and want to be a part of this great country.
  Madam Speaker, this is the greatest Nation in history. And for people 
who want to come here for the right reasons, we should welcome them 
here. If these three principles drive our policy, I think we are going 
to get at the right policy and I hope we do, but it has to be driven by 
these three principles, and security has to be of paramount importance.
  And I appreciate the gentleman from Iowa's leadership on this issue 
and others here in the United States Congress.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Jordan).
  I did appreciate the privilege to travel with you. And there is some 
extra value in that, and that is you see what it is that people notice 
and you understand what their priorities are and you begin to 
understand how people rearrange their priorities and the basic values 
that come together. And you have heard some of these basic values flow 
out from Mr. Jordan here this evening, Madam Speaker. And I look 
forward to a lot more of these kinds of events in helping to shape 
policy for the American people.
  I look at this overall immigration policy that we have, and I think 
there are some great big blanks out there and questions that are asked 
and not answered, seldom asked and never answered. The first question 
that one should ask is, Is there such a thing as too much illegal 
immigration? Or let me put it this way: Is there such a thing as too 
much immigration? And if the answer to that is ``yes,'' then you need 
to divide that between legal and illegal. And for me illegal 
immigration, any of it, is too much. All immigration should be legal. 
We shouldn't tolerate illegal immigration, and we surely should not 
reward it with an amnesty plan, which I believe is being worked on 
right now in the offices over in the Senate and perhaps on the House 
side, preparing to reach that kind of an agreement between the House 
and the Senate and the White House to quickly bring a bill that we 
don't have time to scrutinize and time to debate thoroughly.
  If you look at what happened last year, there was mistake after 
mistake after mistake made in the Senate's

[[Page 6115]]

version of the bill. And first they had a bill on the floor that would 
have legalized between 100 and 200 million people. And then there was, 
I believe, a Bingaman amendment that reduced it and put a cap on one or 
two of those categories that took that number down under 100 million. 
Different numbers came back and forth. The Senators voting on that 
didn't know how many numbers they were talking about. You could ask 
them point blank, and they would not answer. But the best numbers, the 
most reliable numbers came from Robert Rector of the Heritage 
Foundation, and the numbers that I saw there near the end of that 
debate were 66 million people that would be brought into the United 
States under the policies that exist and the ones that the Senate would 
have added in their reform bill that they passed last year. A lot of 
that same sentiment; 66 million people, Madam Speaker.
  And so I went back and looked, and I wondered how many people were 
naturalized into the United States legally in all of our history. And 
it turns out that we began keeping records in 1820. Not at the 
beginning, but in the 1820s. The numbers were small prior to that. They 
were small in 1820. And we tracked this thing up until the census of 
the year 2000. So between 1820 and the year 2000, the complete totals 
that we have, the number is 66.1 million people have been naturalized 
into the United States in all of our history. And this Senate version 
of the bill last year would have matched the pot all in one fell swoop. 
And they did this all with a straight face, Madam Speaker.
  I recall the amnesty in 1986 that Reagan signed, and it was supposed 
to be 1 million people. I was appalled that 1 million people would get 
a pass on the rule of law. Well, I was triplely appalled when I 
realized how bad it was because that 1 million turned into more than 3 
million by most accounts because, first of all, they underestimated how 
many people would apply. Secondly, they underestimated how persuasive 
the fraud would be with people that raced across the border and jumped 
in line so they could get their amnesty.
  I have met some of the people that received amnesty in 1986, and they 
are almost universally in favor of amnesty in 2007. And the reason is 
because they were a beneficiary of amnesty. When they had amnesty, it 
was good for them; so, of course, they advocate that for anyone else. 
Certainly their children were taught: amnesty was the best thing that 
ever happened to you, sons and daughters of mine, and we need to make 
sure that everyone else can take advantage of this same thing.
  But amnesty comes with a price, and the price is you sacrifice the 
rule of law if you grant amnesty.
  So the 3 million that received amnesty in 1986 became great advocates 
for more amnesty. And then each generation after that, more people have 
come into the country, that 3 million, and today the most conservative 
number of illegal immigrants in the United States is about 12 million. 
Many of us believe that number exceeds 20 million. Some believe it 
exceeds 30 million. I am in that above-20 million category, and it is 
anybody's guess up in that territory. But if there is an amnesty bill 
that comes out of the Senate and through the House and to the White 
House, then you are going to see tens of millions of people that take 
advantage of this, and we will be sacrificing, Madam Speaker, the rule 
of law.
  And I have talked about why would we do this, what would be the 
purpose for this kind of a policy. Well, first of all, the Federal 
Government has failed to enforce adequately our immigration laws. And 
as we got more and more illegal immigrants into the United States, it 
became a magnet for more and more to follow. They began to recruit in 
their communities. We had companies that put up billboards in Mexico 
encouraging people there to illegally come to the United States and 
apply for a job. Some of them recruited them down there and brought 
them across the border to go to work in their factories and in their 
plants. And this is commonly known in the communities that utilize this 
kind of labor. So what kind of a Nation would do that and why would we? 
First of all, the Federal Government didn't enforce the law.
  Secondly, employers took advantage of that because they could hire 
illegal labor cheaper than they could local labor. And capital is 
always rational. Capital is going to do the smart thing. Capital is 
going to follow the path of least resistance like electricity. So there 
wasn't a resistance on the law enforcement side; so capital then hired 
illegal labor, brought them into the United States or hired them when 
they came here. Regardless, that was the magnet.

                              {time}  2115

  They understood that they could pay illegal labor less and there were 
far fewer contingent liabilities that went along with the illegal 
labor.
  So if you have to pay $15 an hour as a going rate for an American 
citizen or someone who is lawfully present in the United States to do a 
job, but you can hire someone who is here illegally because they are in 
the shadows and have to scurry around and hide away from the law, if 
you can hire them for, let's say, $8 an hour, and then if you have to 
provide health insurance, retirement benefits and take on the 
contingent liabilities of legal employees, the $15 an hour, plus the 
health insurance package, plus the retirement package, plus the 
worker's comp piece, which is going to be higher because they are more 
likely to file the claims, plus the litigation risk of filing a suit 
against an employer, and then the unemployment claims that would come 
if you lay people off, none of that exists in any significant quantity 
when you are hiring someone who is illegal.
  So you hire them cheaper, maybe at $8 an hour, compared to a $15 an 
hour legal person, but then that is all you are really ending up with, 
was 8 bucks an hour. But if you hire somebody at $15 an hour and they 
are legal, then you have to add on to that so much for health 
insurance, so much for retirement benefits, so much for worker's comp, 
so much for unemployment, so much for contingent liabilities. What if 
this employee turns around and sues me for something? You add that all 
up, it is far cheaper to hire the illegal laborer than the legal. Then 
that magnetized and brought more and more into this country.
  Americans have allowed it to happen under their nose. The 
administration hasn't sounded the alarm. They could seal the border 
more quickly than they are, and they are accelerating their efforts 
here, and I want to compliment them for that effort. But I am also 
watching closely to see if this effort is a real, sincere committed 
effort, or if it is an effort that is designed to help clear the 
political groundwork so that Members of Congress will be lulled to 
sleep, so-to-speak, and adopt a comprehensive plan, which again the 
word ``comprehensive'' is the substitute word for amnesty plan.
  So do we do this because we need the labor, is one of those 
questions. The statement is made over and over again, well, we have to 
have the labor. After all, we have willing employers and willing 
employees. That should be the standard.
  Madam Speaker, if you can give me cheap enough labor, I want to hire 
them all. If you can get me reliable workers, I want the first 100 at a 
buck an hour I can get. I probably want the first hundred at $2 or $3 
an hour, or in fact $5 an hour. We will find a way to make some money. 
I want them legal. They have to be for me.
  My point is though the cheaper labor gets, the more demand there is. 
Kind of like if gas goes down to 50 cents, people are going to drive 
more, or if porterhouse steaks go down to 50 cents a pound, a lot more 
people are going to eat the fancy steak instead of eating the 
hamburger. Cheap labor, the same thing; the lower the price, the more 
consumption there is.
  So it isn't an equation of willing employer-willing employee, because 
the employer is always going to be willing if he can make money off of 
a willing employee who will work cheaper than the going rate. It is an 
advantage for the employer to do that.
  I hear from Member after Member, think tank head after think tank 
head,

[[Page 6116]]

they get on the media airwaves every day, Madam Speaker, and they say a 
willing employer, a willing employee. We have people that need this 
labor. There is a demand for it. Therefore, we have to find a way to 
provide it. Otherwise, what happens in America if we don't flood the 
cheap labor market?
  Well, one thing that has happened from flooding it is we have seen 
the unskilled purchasing power drop by 12 percent over the last 10 
years, that is because there is a flood of cheap labor on the market. 
And it should go the other way. We want a broad middle-class. We want 
an ever more prosperous middle-class. Instead, the pressure that is 
coming here is those that are making money off of the cheap labor are 
becoming an aristocracy. They are part of nouveau rich in the United 
States of America. And our upper-middle class, or upper class, for that 
matter, is growing, and so is our lower class growing, because we are 
importing it, and that is putting a squeeze on middle America.
  One of the principles of a free society is you need to have a broad 
and prosperous middle-class. We have been growing and broadening that 
middle-class for generations and becoming a stronger Nation because of 
it. But this last generation it is going the other way, Madam Speaker. 
This last generation, we are growing the aristocracy and we are growing 
the lower class, importing a lower class, all at the expense of the 
middle class, which is being squeezed in between the two.
  But in the middle is the real America. In the middle is the real 
America that understands truth, justice, the American way, the merits 
of hard work, the American dream. They have a tremendous work ethic, a 
sense of family and community. They are being squeezed, Madam Speaker, 
by the interests on the upper levels of our society and by the 
thunderous herds that are coming across particularly our southern 
border, on the lower end of our society, at the expense of our middle-
class.
  I would point out that if you envision this society like a barbell, 
and the middle-class would be the bar, and the weights on each end 
would be the bells, on one side you have the weight on the right side 
of that barbell, that is the business interests in America. A lot of 
them are Republican interests, but certainly not all of them. There are 
a lot of liberal elitists that sit in that category too. And they are 
clamoring for more cheap labor because they make money doing it, and 
they are not threatened, nor do they believe their children will ever 
be threatened by the competition in the labor market that takes place 
down in the lower end of the spectrum.
  The people on the right side of that, the business side of that 
barbell, that interest, they will send their children to Ivy League 
schools, upper crust universities, they will get an education. They 
won't ever have to compete, probably, with the lower income people that 
don't have that kind of education, that kind of culture, that gives 
them a path to professionalism.
  So they will end up living in their ivory towers and end up living in 
their gated communities and getting rich off the cheaper labor, and 
their children will be wired into that same kind of thing. And that is 
how you grow an aristocracy. That is how you grow a ruling class. That 
is how you grow an arrogance, that they have a birthright to a servant 
class, which they are creating.
  That servant class that they are creating is the other end of this 
barbell, and that is this massive number of people who give especially 
the left a lot of political power. Even those who are in this country 
illegally give political power to many Members here in this Congress 
because we count people rather than citizens when he with redistrict in 
America.
  As we count people, that means we count illegal immigrant in these 
districts. So illegal immigrants give political power to the Members of 
Congress who are here because they don't have to get their vote. They 
only have to compete.
  There will be a couple of seats here in the House of Representatives, 
where it will take about 110,000 votes for me to get reelected to my 
seat, there are a couple of seats that take around 30,000, 35,000 votes 
for the same thing, and the reason is because the illegal population is 
counted in the census, and the larger that number is, the fewer 
citizens are left to actually cast a ballot. And that is the 
circumstance.
  So think of this barbell. On the one side is the ruling class, on the 
other side of the barbell, the political power of the lower class, the 
new servant class that is being created, and in the middle, the bar 
itself is the middle-class that holds it altogether that is being 
squeezed by the two. That is what we are up against, Madam Speaker.
  So, do we need this labor? I would point out that if it is 12 million 
in the United States illegally, according to I believe it was a Pew 
Foundation study, that the illegal labor amounted out of that 12 
million, 6.9 million workers are actually working. They don't all work, 
of course. Some are homemakers, some are too young. But 6.9 million 
working illegals in America.
  Of that 6.9 million, that represents 4.7 percent of the overall 
workforce, and 2.2 percent of the actual production, because they are 
unskilled, they don't produce like a more highly trained worker does. 
So they are only doing 2.2 percent of the work.
  Well, if you opened up your factory doors in the morning and you 
found out that 2.2 percent of your production, your work force, wasn't 
going to show up that day, in order to make up for the difference, I 
would send a memo out to my staff that said, you know, your 15-minute 
coffee break this morning and your 15-minute coffee break this 
afternoon, I am going to shorten that to 10 minutes.
  If you do that, if you cut your two coffee breaks, morning and 
afternoon, by 5 minutes each, you will have picked up 2.1 percent of 
the production, almost the same thing that the illegal labor 
represents. Ten minutes a day out of an 8 hour shift of America, that 
is how much we would be missing. Yet I hear Chicken Little, oh, we 
can't get along without this labor. We must have it. If we don't have 
it, the economy will collapse.
  It will not collapse, Madam Speaker. We can adapt to it easily. We 
have taken years to get here, at least 20 years to evolve into this 
circumstance that we are today, and we can evolve away from that, away 
from the dependency, away from this addiction, away from this methadone 
of illegal labor that we have in America, and it will not be that hard 
to do.
  Also there are 6.9 million working illegals in America, but then the 
argument is, well, but we have unemployment at essentially record low 
rates of 4.6 percent. Well, that is nice. That is effectively a very 
low unemployment rate. It is not the lowest. It is not record low 
unemployment. In World War II, we had a 1.3 percent unemployment rate 
then.
  But it is about 4.6, and they will say you can't get enough workers 
out of the unemployment rolls to fill the gap we need for this labor. 
Well, maybe you can't, and probably in fact I will say certainly you 
can't.
  I will say also going into the welfare rolls, we couldn't hire all of 
them. Many of them would not be employable. If we could hire half of 
them and if we could hire half of those on unemployment, we still 
wouldn't put a very significant dent in that 6.9 million labor force.
  But I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that going to look at the 
Department of Labor statistics, it shows an entirely different story. 
If you were going to place a factory in a location, you wouldn't simply 
look at the unemployment rate in that location and determine how many 
people there were to hire. You would hire a consulting company, and 
that company would go in and survey the area and determine the 
available labor force that was in the area. This is a standard known 
practice in all business and industry. The consulting firm would 
identify the available labor.
  I went into the Department of Labor Statistics to determine the 
available labor supply in America, and I began to add up the different 
categories of age

[[Page 6117]]

groups. 16 to 19 year olds, we have 9.3 million non-working 16 to 19 
year olds in America. Now, not even part-time. Some of these are part-
time jobs. And so I start there, because that is where young people 
learn their work ethic.
  As I add up these age categories from 16 on up to 19, and then from 
20 to 24 and the list goes on up the line, and I got to 65 and I had to 
make a decision, and I looked around and concluded that Wal-Mart hires 
up to 74 years old, so I added them all up to that. One of the reasons 
I am going to confess, Madam Speaker, is because it was a convenient 
number I could memorize. It is not substantially changed if you lower 
the number down to 65.
  But it works like this: 6.9 million working illegal laborers in 
America could be replaced by hiring one out of ten of the 69 million 
workers in America who are simply not in the workforce.
  What Nation would ignore 69 million people not in the workforce and 
go and bring people in from another country? That would be like having 
a lifeboat with that percentage of people on it, and deciding you 
needed some more people to pull on the oars, and having all of those 
people up there in steerage riding along, and no, it wouldn't occur to 
us to go up and say come on down here and grab ahold of that oar. Why 
don't we pull off on an island and see if we can't recruit some more 
people, load them in the lifeboat, and maybe 7 out of 12 of them will 
row. That is what it amounts to, Madam Speaker.
  So we have not been very objective in this. There is also a 
tremendous amount of crime, and the victims of that crime, it has been 
a tremendous price paid here in the United States. We talk about it 
very little, but every day there are American citizens that die 
violently at the hands of criminal aliens who are in this country and 
who, if we had enforced the laws, with not be here.
  I had a gentleman say to me today, there isn't a shred of evidence 
that illegal immigrants commit crimes at any greater rate than average 
Americans do. But the truth is, Madam Speaker, there is a tremendous 
amount of evidence that they do.
  In fact, the numbers work out to be that in the United States, the 
violent death rate is 4.28 per 100,000 annually. In Mexico, it is 13.2 
per 100,000. That is a solid three-plus times greater violent death 
rate in Mexico. And Mexico is the most peaceful nation south of our 
border that I can identify. Honduras has nine times the violent death 
rate. El Salvador's is not published, but we know it is very high. If 
you go to Colombia, their violent death rate compared to the United 
States is 15.4 times higher.
  So if you bring people from that society, of course they are going to 
commit more crimes. They are committed in their home country. They 
bring that culture with them. Also, $65 billion worth of illegal drugs 
pour across that southern border every year, brought in by these 
elements.
  I am not here to say that they are all bad people. No, the vast 
majority of them are very good people looking for a better life for 
their families. But they have a higher percentage of violence among 
them, even as good people, than the average American that is here, and 
we are paying a price of about 12 Americans a day who lose their life 
as victims of murder to criminal aliens, about 13 a day who die at the 
hands of negligent homicide, mostly the victims of drunk drivers, not 
the drunks themselves.

                              {time}  2130

  That is the magnitude of this, Madam Speaker. And I recognize by the 
clock I am in a position where I need to say thank you for the 
privilege of addressing you on the floor of the House of 
Representatives

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