[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10963-10966]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be 
recognized here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I'm 
hopeful that we can carry on some of this dialogue that Mrs. Bachmann 
has led over the past hour.
  I wanted to make a point about the fact we are a Nation of 
immigrants. Yes, we are. And we're certainly the Nation that has the 
most vitality that comes from immigrants. It's one of those things that 
is embodied in the Statue of Liberty. When you talk about Ellis Island 
and you look across to the Statue of Liberty, the image that's embodied 
within her is the image of American exceptionalism, the pillars of 
American exceptionalism. You see them all. Freedom of speech, religion, 
the press, the rule of law. Those are central pillars. And property 
rights, and you face a jury of your peers but you don't have to face 
them twice. There's no double jeopardy. And states' rights. The list 
goes on and on. Free enterprise capitalism. It is a Judeo-Christian 
culture and society that founded this country.
  You take out anything that I've said, you pull that out from 
underneath, and the Shining City on the Hill crumbles. But when you 
look at the Statue of Liberty and the people that love liberty all over 
the world see that statue, they find a way to come here because they 
realize that they can be the best they can be if they can just get to 
America. That's why we have, in this country, so much vigor and 
vitality. We have not just the pillars of exceptionalism that I've 
listed, but also the vigor that comes with people who have dreams.
  So they see the statue and they think, I've got a dream to come 
there. And if I can freely speak and worship and preserve the rule of 
law, I can operate in a free enterprise society, I can be inspired. If 
you put that all together, it's a natural filter that goes across the 
world. It isn't because we screened all of them here. We screened a lot 
of them at Ellis Island. About 2 percent didn't make the grade, even 
after they were screened in the old country. They came and landed at 
Ellis Island and went through the filter and about 2 percent got sent 
back to the old country. But we got the dreamers. It was almost all 
dreamers that got on the ship to come here.
  So we didn't get just a cross-section of every civilization from 
Norway to Germany to Ireland to Italy, or wherever it might be, name 
your country anywhere in the world. We got the vigor of every 
civilization. We got some of the best and the most energy that came 
from any civilization to America. So when you coupled that and think of 
a giant petri dish with all of those rights there and all of the 
freedoms and the pillars of exceptionalism that I listed, then you put 
the best people possible in that environment--it doesn't mean they're 
the smartest; it doesn't mean they're the richest; it doesn't mean 
they're the best educated; but it means that they are the doers that 
take that combination of brains and ambition and education and instinct 
and know-how, and that's what built this great Shining City on the 
Hill, this America that we are. We cannot let this be torn down. We 
cannot let them chisel away with their word processor jackhammers, 
their verbal jackhammers, or their legislative chicanery in order to 
produce something that undermines this.
  I know one of the people that understands that very well is the 
gentleman from Louisiana, Dr. Fleming. I would be happy to yield to the 
gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. FLEMING. Well, I thank my good friend from Iowa for yielding and 
for his words. And I'd like to build a little bit upon what you were 
saying, and that is that everyone speaking in this room this evening 
opposes amnesty--we've already said that each and every one of us 
opposes amnesty--but we all celebrate immigration. We come from 
immigrants. We're a Nation of immigrants.
  Going all the way back to the 1700s, my forefathers were immigrants 
from Scotland. They farmed the land. They 


[[Page 10964]]


were farmers all the way up 
until my dad left the farm to go to World War II. I'm very proud of 
that fact, and I'm very proud that other people want to come to this 
country. I celebrate that. And I want to encourage them to come, as 
long as they come lawfully.
  We have a place for migrant workers, for guest workers to come. We 
need them. They will do jobs that many Americans won't do, and it 
benefits them and advantages their families back home, and they send 
that money back. It's a great working relationship, but it must be done 
legally.
  And then we have the high-end STEM workers who come either with high 
degrees or earn high degrees here. They bring them with them oftentimes 
their capital. They start businesses. They start companies. And we want 
to attract those and keep those. We don't want them taking back our 
innovations to other countries and then competing with us. We just 
simply ask that they come here legally. We, of course, as Members of 
Congress have a responsibility to make sure that we do what's in the 
best interest of the citizens who are here, whether they were born here 
or naturalized here.
  But I want to shift just slightly to this, and we've touched upon 
this. One of the biggest fears we have about the Senate amnesty bill--
and there's no question about it, it's amnesty by any measure, by any 
metric--is that we can't trust the President. We can't trust him. 
Whatever we pass into law, we know he's going to cherry-pick.
  How do we know that? Well, look at the Defense of Marriage Act. He 
refused to defend that to the courts. Appointees to the NLRB, he did 
that when, of course, the Senate was actually not in session. It's 
against the Constitution to do that. ObamaCare, he's picking and 
choosing the parts of the law that he wants to implement.
  So I think we can create a long list here tonight of the fact that 
this President is doing something I have never seen a President do 
before. In a tri-partite government with its checks and balances, we 
have lost the balances. We have a President that picks and chooses the 
laws that he wants to obey and enforce. We have a head of the 
Department of Justice who does exactly the same, even to the point that 
Congress has held him in contempt.
  And so for lack of any better term, that makes him a ruler. He's not 
a President; he's a ruler. Because if he can just pass whatever laws 
that are going to be passed and then pick and choose the laws that he's 
going to enforce and he's going to obey, then we no longer have the 
checks and balances that go along with the Presidency.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind all Members to 
refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.

                              {time}  2140

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, personally, I like the President. And 
I will refrain from those kind of comments; although I will continue to 
disagree with him on his approach to this.
  I wanted to make a comment in response to the discussion here by Dr. 
Yoho and Dr. Fleming.
  Yes, we're a Nation of immigrants. I have continually heard that 
testimony before the Immigration Subcommittee for over a decade now. 
And so one day I just had this thought that was a little bit off the 
wall. I just asked this question: Can you name me a nation--I had this 
panel of experts in front of me--name me a nation that is not a nation 
of immigrants. And the witness said, well, let's see, that would be--
well, name me a people that is not a nation of immigrants, a nation 
that's not a nation of immigrants. She said, well, that would be the 
Incas and the Aztecs. The Incas and the Aztecs are not immigrants. I 
said who, according to anthropologists, came across the Bering Sea 
about 12,000 years ago? Would you like to try again? Of course that was 
it for her. She didn't want to try again.
  I've asked that question a number of times, and I've been challenged 
to do a little bit of research. I haven't found a nation that is not a 
nation of immigrants. Some will say Japan is about as indigenous a 
population as you can find, but even they, there are a couple of 
definitions on where they come from. There are two distinct groups for 
the Japanese, and some of their roots go down to the Polynesian 
islands, they think--that they might have arrived there. Some of them 
might have arrived from Asia. And their language and even their 
appearance differs from the north to the south--I don't know that, but 
they do.
  So if Japan isn't a nation of immigrants, if they did come at one 
time, name your country around the world. We're all nations of 
immigrants. The history of the world has been about the migration of 
human population. That doesn't mean that nations shouldn't exist or 
shouldn't have borders. Look back over the last couple hundred years 
and name for me an institution more successful than the nation-state. 
The nation-states emerged from the city-states, which emerged from the 
castles in the feudal era, where they had to build a castle and get 
inside the moat to defend themselves from the marauding hordes that 
traveled the countryside to rape and pillage.
  So then the castles became the city-states, the city-states joined 
together and became the nation-states, and the nation-states defended 
themselves against the other nation-states. Nations have borders. You 
can't be a nation without a border, and you can't call it a border if 
you don't defend the border.
  So if people are willing to argue against a nation-state--that's true 
with the globalists. They argue against a nation-state. They think they 
should be able to trade--buy, sell, trade, make gain, and move human 
population wherever it suits their economy.
  So I started to wonder about this. The nation-state is a successful 
institution. There's nothing wrong with a border; you must have it. 
It's Biblical as well. When St. Paul gave his famous sermon on Mars 
Hill in Acts 17, he said: And God made all nations on Earth, and He 
decided when and where each nation would be.
  Well, this is the United States of America--a very blessed nation, a 
nation that was formed with this religious concept, driven also by a 
lot of other forces of manifest destiny. This country was formed and 
shaped from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from sea to shining sea, 
in the blink of an historical eye. How did that happen? How did that 
happen that we happen to have all of these rights that come from God? 
Not accidental.
  We are an extraordinary nation for a lot of exceptional reasons, and 
we've talked about those exceptional reasons. But nations should be 
proud of the nations that they are, and no nation could be more proud 
than the United States of America. We are the unchallenged, greatest 
nation in the world, and we risk a decline if some of the people in 
this Congress don't come back around to embrace the pillars of American 
exceptionalism.
  So I ask myself, what is it that the people on my side of the aisle, 
but also across the country, what is in the Gang of Eight's bill that's 
good for America and Americans? Who has benefited when you look across 
the country? First I looked at it and my serious thought was, well, 
nobody. Then I dug a little deeper, and I said I'm going to be 
challenged if I say nobody in America is benefited by this. So I 
produced a complete list. I think this is a complete list of the 
Americans that are benefited by the Gang of Eight's bill.
  First, the elitists--the elitists being those people that want to 
hire cheap labor to take care of their gardens and their lawns and 
clean their houses and their toilets and do those things that people 
say Americans won't do or don't want to do. So they want to be able to 
hire cheap labor to take care of themselves, and maybe paint the gate 
in their gated community and oil the hinges for them and then lock the 
gate outside, or however they might do that. Elitists benefit from 
cheap labor.
  The next group of people that benefit are Democrat power brokers--not 
the blue collars, not, in the short term, the unions, not the workers, 
but Democrat power brokers who have a long-term strategy--which isn't 
very far down the line--to capitalize politically on the massive votes 
that they would bring in if the Gang of Eight bill is passed.
  You don't have to ask Democrats what they think--it's very, very 
clear: 


[[Page 10965]]

they're political beneficiaries; if they're power brokers, they 
want this done. Elitists and Democrat power brokers.
  Third, employers of illegals, whatever their party might be. They 
want to be able to hire cheap labor. And they would say, well, if you 
legalize them, the cost of wages are going to go up. Well, they want to 
have a continual supply of cheap, illegal labor coming in. That's why 
this is perpetual and retroactive amnesty. It doesn't stop the flow of 
illegal immigration, it just lets those that want to legalize 
themselves get right with the law. It gives amnesty to the illegal 
employers--they can't go back on them after the Gang of Eight's bill 
might become law.
  So that's the three groups of people that benefit from the Gang of 
Eight's bill--elitists, Democrat power brokers, and employers of 
illegals. By the way, go to any of those groups of people and ask them: 
Do you want those folks to go back to where they are legal? Just 
challenge them. I would tell you the elitists don't. They want their 
cheap labor to clean their toilets and cut their grass and take care of 
their gardens, their flower gardens for them. Democrat power brokers 
surely don't. By the way, they understand this--that they have 
political power anyway, legal or illegal, because the census counts the 
people, not the citizens, for purposes of apportionment and 
reapportionment. So what that means is there are 9 to 11 congressional 
seats in America that would change hands politically if we counted 
citizens instead of people. Because some of these districts are way 
overloaded with illegal populations, they're counted. I didn't see how 
many votes it took for--well, I'd better not get personal with this. 
I'll just tell you it takes me 120,000 votes at least to get elected 
before we redistricted. And there are seats here that it only takes 
40,000 to win. That's because there are a lot of illegals in the 
district that are counted. They have representation in this Congress.
  So who doesn't want them to go home? Just ask them. Do the elitists 
want them to go back to their home country? No. They're beneficiaries. 
Democrat power brokers? No. They're beneficiaries. Then what about 
employers of illegals? Certainly not. They're beneficiaries. They get a 
continuing supply of illegal labor--a labor that is going to be 
legalized. And then those folks that come in afterwards, that deadline, 
they're going to be legalized too. That's the three groups. Otherwise, 
there isn't anybody in America that's a beneficiary from this that I 
can come up with. The rest of Americans are disadvantaged by this idea.
  If you have two jobs and three people that are qualified to do that 
work, then you've got at least somebody that can bid that work down. If 
there are only two people available for that job or meet the 
qualifications, they name their price. Well, multiply that out into the 
millions and see what happens with the no-skilled and the low-skilled 
workers. That's where you get double-digit unemployment, no-and-low 
skilled.
  Why would you bring in more no-and-low-skilled people--especially 
those illiterate in their own language--to come in and do more of this 
work when you've got an overload there anyway? And the supply and 
demand piece of this tells it.
  We listen to the numbers of 24 million unemployed Americans--that 
would be those that are unemployed and those that are underemployed I 
think that number adds to, if I'm not mistaken. But I know that Stuart 
Varney said that there are 88 million who are simply not in the 
workforce. That number now goes to 92 million. If I understand the data 
right, you add the raw unemployed number to that. However you do that, 
we end up with more than 100 million Americans of working age who are 
simply not in the workforce.
  Now, what kind of a nation would you have to be to decide that even 
though you've got double-digit unemployment in the no-and-low-skilled 
jobs, that you would go find a few more people that--go bring in 
millions more to add them to the unemployment rolls and add Americans 
or legal immigrants to the rolls as a consequence.
  This is an appalling miscalculation on the part of the people that 
advocate for this. They apparently have not done the math or they don't 
care, or they fit within the category of elitists, Democrat power 
brokers, or employers of illegals, or those who are, I'll say, 
influenced by their opinions.
  I want to yield to the gentlelady from Minnesota and then to the 
gentleman from Texas.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I will just be brief.
  It seems like you have the power brokers in this country act like 
this is such a difficult issue to solve, that this is some big, 
perplexing issue with immigration.
  The fact is immigration policy worked beautifully for hundreds of 
years in this country. And as recently as 1950, when my in-laws 
immigrated to the United States from Switzerland, it was pretty simple. 
You had to show that you were physically fit when you came into the 
country; you didn't have a transmittable disease that other people in 
America could pick up. That's pretty self-explanatory. You had a little 
bit of money in your pocket. You didn't have to be wealthy, but you had 
to show that you had a little bit of money on you. You also had to have 
a sponsor. You had to have someone here in the United States who would 
vouch and say if anything happens to that person, I'm the one who will 
be responsible, I'm the one who will answer. And the person coming in 
had to verify that they would not become a burden on the taxpayers of 
America. Because they knew when they came in, they had to come in as a 
net plus for the country. They couldn't take more out than what they 
were bringing in. That was the agreement.
  The other part of the agreement is, whoever came into the country had 
to swear under oath they would learn to speak the English language--as 
Mr. Yoho indicated--and they would learn the Constitution of the United 
States and a little bit of the American history. They had to know that.

                              {time}  2150

  My in-laws took that very seriously. They were farmers in Wisconsin. 
They've been net plus to this country, proud Americans. They've fed 
thousands of people with the work that they've done in Wisconsin. But 
they kept their end of the bargain. America kept its end of the bargain 
to my in-laws, but they kept their end of the bargain also.
  Again, I think Dr. Fleming hit it earlier when he quoted Dr. Milton 
Friedman, You can't have an open border in a welfare state. Because, 
you see, in 1950 there was no modern welfare state. That is our 
problem.
  We have to deal with our current reality, don't we? Our current 
reality is we have a gigantic welfare state. Knowing that, we cannot 
bring people into this country who will not add to the economy. Why 
would we import into the country people who are going to consume more 
revenue than what they bring in when they are $17 trillion in debt?
  This adds up. That's why this is not very difficult to figure out. It 
is actually fairly simple. All we have to do is abide by the policies 
that we embraced in 1950, and you've got a solution; you've got a 
solution to the problem.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time for a moment, some of the 
institutions out here that advocate for open borders will argue that no 
matter who comes into this country, if they do an hour's worth of work, 
they've contributed to the GDP; therefore, they're a net asset to our 
economy. How would a tax attorney respond to such a statement?
  Mrs. BACHMANN. What I would say is this: Who is benefiting? The 
studies all confirm that it is the illegal immigrant who is the 
recipient of that money. It isn't going to the taxpayers.
  What we do know from a tax point of view is that illegal immigrants 
on average pay somewhere about $10,000 in taxes, but they receive over 
$30,000 in taxpayer-subsidized revenue benefits; therefore, they are a 
net negative to the American Treasury of $20,000 a year.
  Now, why in any universe would you import people into the United 
States 


[[Page 10966]]


that cost us on average, not just $20,000 one time, $20,000 
every year? As a matter of fact, Robert Rector has said in his work 
that the average illegal immigrant cost the United States Treasury over 
the course of their lifetime about $1 million. Why would we do that? 
Why would we do that? Because we are robbing from our children. That's 
why it doesn't make sense. We are hurting the American middle class who 
are here legally.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota.
  Reclaiming my time, I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. I too want to follow up on something Dr. 
Fleming was referring to. The Senate bill was considered some great 
panacea. It's going to solve all the problems. We are finally going to 
get border security, we are told.
  But I can think of at least a couple of times when this President has 
said, if the Congress doesn't change the law, I will. Basically he 
said, if they don't act by changing the law, then I'll act.
  We've seen him do that. When he didn't like the law on immigration, 
he changed the law just by his own decree. We've seen with regard to 
even ObamaCare--his signature bill from his first administration--it's 
not going well. He wouldn't come ask Congress, uh-oh, it's not going 
well so let's change the law. So he just gave ``so as I speak so shall 
it be,'' which is not reminiscent of normal Presidential conduct.
  It is important that a President enforce the law, advocate for 
changes in the law, but under no circumstances is the President 
supposed to change the law to fit his own desires. I mean, you 
advocate, but the checks and balances which are the real genius behind 
the Constitution that do create gridlock, that create tensions between 
the different branches are what keeps this place from becoming a 
monarchy.
  This President, when he says, If Congress doesn't act to change the 
law, then I will take care of it, well, we've seen that with gun 
control. He didn't like the fact that Congress was not changing the law 
when we were demanding that he enforce the laws that are there. All of 
these killers that have just been a plague on society, they violated 
plenty of laws. But this administration may be the worst at enforcing 
the gun laws. Certainly this administration has really been wanting in 
the area of enforcing the gun laws; and instead they come around and 
say, we want new gun laws. Well, that's not the way to do it.
  I know that Republicans say, look, look, it's important we get this 
off the table, let's just get it off the table so let's pass something 
and that will get it off the table and then we can get on to the other 
things. I have already mentioned I think the thing to do is say, 
Resolved: the House is not going to take up an immigration bill until 
the President, the executive branch, Homeland Security, secures the 
border. Woodrow Wilson--and I'm not a fan of his historically--but in 
1916 when Americans were threatened by rage across the border and 
Americans killed, that President secured the border, pure and simple. 
He secured the border, and he didn't go run around demanding that a new 
immigration bill be passed and we give amnesty to people.
  There is a great article that National Review had from Fred Bauer. He 
said:

       Any argument that says the GOP should support such a 
     measure to remove immigration as a political issue should be 
     treated with immediate suspicion. Millions would be left as 
     illegal immigrants under the Senate plan and most other 
     legalization plans a million more illegal immigrants, 
     according to the Congressional Budget Office, would arrive 
     over the next 10 years. Many provisions of the Senate bill, 
     from the law wait time for citizenship to the status of guest 
     workers, provide plenty of opportunities for the left to 
     demagog this issue. Any changes to U.S. immigration law also 
     change the future composition of the body politic. 
     Immigration as a national policy question has not been ``off 
     the table'' since 1789. Don't expect the latest link of 
     congressional sausage to change that.

  I think that's well said.
  This is not going to be off the table. The way that we should deal 
with it responsibly is hold the administration accountable. You enforce 
the law and then we'll get an immigration bill done very quickly after 
that. I know we will.
  All my colleagues here know there are parts of the immigration law 
that need to be fixed. But until the border is secure, not closed, but 
secured, we are wasting our time talking about a comprehensive 
immigration bill, or even good bills like Trey Gowdy or other bills 
that people have had; we shouldn't even be talking about them. Let the 
immigration secure the border and then we can work these things out 
very quickly. It's like a huge flood in your basement. If you run down 
and start with a mop while the water is still pouring in, you're making 
a mistake. You first stop the flood, and then you can clean up the 
problems after that.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from 
Texas. I just think of Congressman Phil Gingrey, another doctor that 
engages in policy here, who once on this floor, probably at least once, 
said that when he is working in the emergency room and a patient comes 
in on a gurney and there's blood pouring off the gurney, you don't just 
go get the mop and the bucket and start to mop up the floor; you stop 
the bleeding first. Let's stop the bleeding at the border.
  I think how hard is it to secure this border? It is not that hard. 
With the resources that we have, we are spending today--this is a 
2,000-mile border, it's not just a rounded number, I mean, it is right 
at 2,000 miles--we are spending over $6.5 million a mile on the 
southern border each and every year. So I look at that and I think, 
what are the economics of this? This is one of the advantages of being 
a ditch digger, a construction guy, because I figure this stuff out on 
what it cost to build things.
  We are building interstate highway through expensive Iowa cornfields 
for $4 million a mile, buying the right-of-way, doing the engineering, 
the archeological, environmental, the fencing, the seeding, the paving, 
the shouldering and the painting. All of that gets done for $4 million 
a mile, and we are spending $6.5 million a mile to guard a long barren 
desert that a lot of it doesn't even have one barbed wire fence on it. 
It's just got a concrete pile on from horizon to horizon--$6.5 plus 
million a mile.
  So think of that. What would it take to build a fence, a wall and a 
fence if we can build interstate for $4 million a mile and we are 
spending $6.5 million a mile to--I guess they interdict perhaps 25 
percent of the people that try? Instead, we can build a fence, a wall 
and a fence, we can secure the border, and we can do it with the 
resources that we have. We just have to want to. It has got to be about 
the rule of law, it has got to be secure the border first, it has got 
to be and who's going to be the metric. Let it be the border State 
Governors, the border State legislatures passing a resolution that the 
border is secure. Then let's have the balance of this conversation, not 
until, not unless.
  It's like your teenager coming to you saying, Dad, I need the keys to 
the car. I know I've never mowed the lawn or carried out the garbage, I 
promise I will, just let me have the car tonight. I'll be back 
tomorrow. Is he going to keep his word? He hasn't even fired up the 
lawnmower yet. He doesn't know where the gas is. He probably doesn't 
know where the mower is.
  Do the job first and then come back to us and talk to us, but let's 
not destroy this rule of law that's an essential pillar of American 
exceptionalism. Whatever it takes, we must block amnesty.
  Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your attention and all of the 
people that spoke here tonight for this hour and a half to preserve and 
protect the rule of law, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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