[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17190-17193]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Walorski). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, let me offer my congratulations to 
those who have served our country in the Congress who now will be 
retiring and moving on. All of us will get there sometime.
  This is a noble job if we make it such, and many people who have 
served here have done great things for the United States of America. 
Why? Because they, number one, believe in the principles of the United 
States, what were set down by our Founding Fathers. Even more than 
that, what we have had here and what we need more of in America are 
leaders who care specifically about the American people and what impact 
they are having on the American people and what impact those policies 
that they advocate will have on the American people.

                              {time}  1730

  All too often, people come to Washington, and pretty soon, what they 
care about is this or that specific special interest. Or they have a 
special idea, special interest or special ideas. They have a 
philosophy. They have a vision that goes beyond what the benefit to the 
American people is, what they are going to establish because of this 
philosophical commitment to some ideal.
  Well, both of those are enemies of the well-being of the people of 
the United States. If people who are elected by the population come 
here and are loyal to special interests that have to make a profit in a 
specific area, even though it might be detrimental to the American 
people as a whole, or people come here and they don't care about the 
American people--they want to see their dream come true, their 
intellectual and philosophical ideal put into place--well, the American 
people get left out with that type of leadership.
  And what we are doing today, one of the most important issues that we 
have been facing for almost a decade now, with constant pressure to do 
something about--what? About immigration policy in the United States. 
And what we do, what we finally do on this issue will tell us whom we 
care about and what are our ideals and who we care about more. Do we 
care about

[[Page 17191]]

special interests? Do we care about some ideal notion that is not so 
tangible? Or do we care about what policy will do specifically to the 
American people?
  For years--and especially on this election year--we have heard 
repeatedly about the plight of the people who are here in this country 
illegally, over and over again about how these poor souls, how we need 
to give them legal status. We need to reach out and do something for 
them because they are in a bad situation. And, yes, they came here 
because there was a desperate situation in that land from which they 
came.
  Unfortunately, when you hear people constantly talking about how we 
are going to help these illegal immigrants who are here in our midst, 
you don't hear about how what is being recommended to help the illegal 
immigrants will impact the American people. This is what we should be 
talking about. This is what needs to be discussed. The people elected 
by the American people should talk about what is going to happen to the 
American people if this policy that is being recommended is put into 
place.
  Yes. We would like to help people who have come here illegally, and 
we would like to help people all over the world. There is no reason not 
to, if we care about the people who have come here illegally, thumbing 
their nose at our law, but they are human beings, and we care about 
them.
  By the way, they are also people whom we can identify with because if 
we were in their spot, we would do the same. We care about them.
  But you know what? We have to care more about the American people. We 
have to care about them if they care about the things that we are doing 
here. Or maybe they will just write off their government because their 
government is more concerned about a foreigner who has come here 
illegally than about the well-being of the American family and the 
American working people.
  We hear this word ``comprehensive.'' Over and over again, we have 
heard, We have to have comprehensive immigration reform. 
``Comprehensive immigration reform,'' what does that mean? Why do we 
hear that over and over again?
  Because they can't use the word ``amnesty.'' And they know that, 
really, comprehensive immigration reform means one thing and one thing 
only because there is really not any type of a real argument about 
making our system better. But to them, when they say ``comprehensive 
immigration reform,'' they mean changing the status, legalizing the 
status of those millions of people who are here illegally.
  They claim that there are 11 million. That is an old number, and that 
number has not been updated. And almost everyone I talk to believes 
that it is more like 20 million illegals who are here, not 11 million.
  So there is not any real problem on our part with the idea of 
``comprehensive reform,'' if we were to say, let's make the system more 
effective. Yes, we need border control, for example, and we need to 
restructure the visa system because there are a lot of people who are 
not only coming across the border illegally but who come here and 
overstay their visas. In fact, the largest number of illegals now--
people keep thinking that we are talking about just people from Latin 
America. No. We have got people coming in from all over the world--many 
of them on visas, many of them sneaking across the border--who have 
come here illegally and are currently residing here. That number of 
people have an impact on the well-being of the American people.
  So, yes, let's make the system better. But let's realize that we are 
not talking about things that we disagree on. It has all been about 
whether you legalize the status of people who are here illegally.
  But let's just note this: We have no apologies to make about the 
generosity of the American people with our current system of 
immigration. Yes, it needs to be reformed and made more efficient. But 
we provide for over a million immigrants to come into our country 
legally every year.
  To put that into perspective, that is more than all of the legal 
immigration into other countries, into every country of the world, 
combined. So we permit more legal immigration than every other country 
of the world combined. But yet over and over again, we are made to feel 
guilty, that we in some way should feel guilty about our immigration 
system and about the fact that you have people who are here illegally 
and we won't legalize their status.
  Well, what would legalizing their status do? What would it do? We 
know what it would do for them. These people who are here illegally, if 
they have illegal status, they would then be able to perhaps be 
eligible for government programs, maybe as part of that. Certainly 
their relatives would be or their children would be.
  Right now, even the people who are here illegally are the recipients 
of government benefits. Of the people who are here receiving--for 
example, their children have health care, emergency health care. And 
then, of course, an emergency becomes anything that someone is sick 
with. And they also, of course, are here, and their children are 
educated here. And we have government benefits that people have 
managed, if they end up coming here illegally and have one child--one 
child then justifies a wide variety of Federal assistance and other 
welfare assistance programs to these individuals who are basically here 
illegally.
  Well, what does that mean? At a time when we are $500 billion more in 
debt every year, we are borrowing money from overseas in order to take 
care of these people who have come here illegally? That doesn't make 
any sense at all. And it especially doesn't make any sense when we know 
that our own government programs, our own government programs today, we 
are struggling to make ends meet, to make sure these programs stay 
vital, to make sure that they have money to function and do their jobs 
efficiently.
  The Veterans Administration, we have heard so many problems about how 
the Veterans Administration had not been doing its job. Well, the money 
that we spend on people who come here illegally comes right out of the 
pool of money that should be going to Americans or should at least be 
going to reduce our debt so that in the future, our American children 
aren't going to have to pay it off.
  Now, we have nothing to be ashamed of in terms of the overall number 
of people coming here legally. But even now, when the people who are 
here illegally, their impact is incredibly detrimental, as I just said, 
in terms of how much money is being spent by the government on services 
to them rather than services to the American people.
  And we also know that illegals, of course, do take jobs. They are 
working at jobs, most of them. And they are hardworking, good people. 
But what impact are they having on the jobs that American people want?
  They have actually taken jobs that should be--well, let's say 
Americans wouldn't want to work at that pay level. But the pay level 
that we are talking about is the pay level that happens when you have 
tens of millions of illegals in the country willing to work for a 
pittance. They have come to our country and bent down the wages of 
America's lower-income people. They have bent them down and taken jobs 
that should have gone to Americans.
  For example, I know that the hotel and restaurant industry is very 
upset with the idea of not legalizing the status of these people. And 
let me just note that once you legalize the status of these 20 million 
illegals that are in our country, well, what will happen, of course, is 
that they aren't going to work for the pittance wages anymore. And they 
will start making more wages. And then there will be another wave of 
illegals that will come in and underbid them. So these particular 
people will earn more money, but the American people will earn less and 
less.
  And right now, there are many women in the United States who are 
single mothers, many urban women who have families and live around big 
hotels, but the hotels hire people who have come here illegally to 
clean the rooms when there are many thousands of single mothers who 
would love to

[[Page 17192]]

drop their child off at school, clean that room in the middle of the 
day--which are the hours that they need them at the hotel--and come 
back by the end of the day to pick up their child. But they are not 
willing to do it now because those people who work in those hotels, if 
they are illegals, are paid a pittance. And the American people--no, 
they won't work for a pittance. And they shouldn't.
  And it will be a good thing if it increases the price of a hotel room 
by $10 a night in order to make sure that we have American citizens who 
are paid well and are able to take care of their families. Yes, that is 
the policy we should have.
  We shouldn't have a policy that, instead, brings down the cost of 
that hotel room by a certain amount, increases the profit of the hotel 
by a certain amount, and is paid for by the fact that American women no 
longer can take those jobs because there isn't enough being paid for 
them to take care of their family.
  Now, of course, if you live as many illegals live--three or four 
families to a home--they might be able to succeed or at least survive. 
That is not the kind of society we need to build here. That is not what 
America was all about. And what our policy should be is aimed at people 
who are American citizens who would like those jobs. And if we don't 
permit this illegal flood into our country, wages will go up, as 
compared to if we don't. And, yes, we should be happy that American 
people are making more money.
  Over the last 20 years, we have actually seen the wages of the 
American people in real terms go down as we have had illegals pouring 
into our country. Well, whose side are we on? Who do we care for? And 
that is what this is all about. We are being told that we are heartless 
because we don't care enough about the people who are illegally in our 
country to legalize their status when, in fact, we need to make sure 
that we are not doing anything that will hurt the American people who 
are struggling right now.
  And what will happen if we legalize the status of those people who 
have come here illegally? What will happen? Let's say there are 20 
million here. I know officially it is only 11 million. But every one of 
those people that we legalize the status for are then going to be 
eligible for family reunification. There are tens of millions of others 
who are going to pour in.
  It is estimated, from just the legal people coming in after the 
amnesty, that we are talking about 40 million new people, mainly poor 
foreigners coming to our country. Does anyone think that it is not 
going to have a huge impact on the economy of our country, on our 
economic system, on our neighborhoods, on our schools and the well-
being of working people? Does anyone think that 40 million foreigners--
  And that is what is going to happen.
  When you hear ``comprehensive immigration reform,'' think legalizing 
the status, which will then eventually bring into our country 40 
million new foreigners, mainly poor people. Well, that is what this 
debate is all about.
  I would submit that it is not wrong for people, and it is not 
hateful, it is not being too concerned about money and material things 
to think in our hearts about our own people before we think about the 
well-being of foreigners.
  What keeps America together? Look, we don't have one race. We don't 
have one religion. We don't have one ethnic group here. What we have 
got are people who have come here and are a part of the American 
family.

                              {time}  1745

  We have to care about what happens within the American family because 
we don't have that sharing of one race or one religion or one ethnic 
group. What is it going to do if we bring in 40 million foreigners now 
to those people who are now part of our American family?
  Well, someone says that we should expand the American family. Well, 
yes, we could just say: Hey, anybody in the world who wants to get 
here, we are going to make them an American and just forget about what 
that does to the 300 million Americans who are out there depending on 
their government to watch out for their interests.
  What would happen if we have that situation? We will have a very 
harmful decline in the well-being in their communities, in their jobs, 
and in the government services that they are able to collect of the 
American family.
  Again, that doesn't mean that illegals who are here are bad people--
they aren't--nor are the poor people around the world who will flood 
into our country--because, if we legalize the status of those who are 
here, you will see a flood into the country.
  Just think about this, just the discussion of what they call this act 
that was being aimed at legalizing the status of people who were 
brought here when they were younger, just that discussion of that issue 
brought 50,0000 to 60,000 people swarming in. They sent their children 
to the border.
  Whatever happened to those kids, by the way? What happened to those 
60,000 kids who were down on the border? Well, they are all over the 
United States now. And do you know what? In schools in California, we 
have children coming in illegally from other countries, and some of 
them are carrying diseases. This is a horror story.
  Who is watching out for our children? We do care about those 60,000 
kids that were there and the millions more kids that will come in if we 
legalize the status of our own illegal immigrants here. We care about 
our own kids first, and there is nothing wrong with that. We don't have 
to apologize about it, and we don't have to apologize also that we have 
the most generous legal system in the world.
  By the way, for those people who always talk about, Well, immigration 
really helps our country and helps our economy, if you look at the 
statistics that are being presented, often what you are being told 
about are the effect of legal immigrants, which is true. They do add, 
and I personally would like to go on the record in saying that I 
believe in legal immigration.
  I believe that our million people, we can absorb that, 300 million 
people, we certainly can absorb 1 million more legal immigrants, we 
should refine our system, so that those legals that are coming in are 
people that have a means and a skill or an education level, so they 
will be contributing to the wealth of the country rather than consuming 
it.
  There are a lot of businesses that say they need some specialists. 
Yes, let's try to structure the legal immigrants in that way so it 
meets the needs of America, as well as brings in very highly-educated 
people into our country.
  When we bring in people who are not that, when we bring in people who 
are not producing wealth, but instead are consumers, that means there 
is less wealth in our society, and that means that especially America's 
lower-income people are worse off.
  Now, when I was a kid, I mowed the lawns in my neighborhood. It was a 
good thing. You get a work ethic when you are mowing the lawns. I 
actually painted houses and dug fence posts. I was an ice-cream scooper 
at Marineland snack bar, and those are the jobs kids did, but today, 
one of the factors of illegal immigration--and especially if we 
legalize the status and draw even more illegals in because now, all 
over the world, they know, Hey, all we have to do is get here, and we 
can outweigh them--all these entry-level positions, these positions 
that are actually giving young people a chance to get some work 
experience, many of these jobs are being taken by people who are here 
illegally.
  They are willing to work at a very low level, and they don't just 
become entry-level jobs. That is the job they stick with. That means 
that job is no longer available to an American kid who wants to get 
some experience in the workplace, a box boy or someone who works at a 
fast-food restaurant or something like that.
  We are actually hurting our young people, we are hurting our poor 
people, the people at the lowest end of the scale, and of course, we 
are hurting the people who are dependent on government programs.
  Before I go on to that, there are a group of people in our country 
that

[[Page 17193]]

would like to be self-sufficient. They have skills, but they have some 
sort of physical disability. Those people are struggling to come out 
and have some self-dignity in earning their own living.
  Those people are being replaced by people because, Oh, well, we will 
just hire this illegal, even if we can hire a disabled person, we can 
get an able-bodied illegal in here for the same amount, so why have 
someone who has a physical disability?
  The people at the very lowest level--where is unemployment the 
highest? In our black community and in the Hispanic American community. 
These are the people who will be the worst hit if we legalize the 
status of those who are here illegally.
  If there are tens of millions more who pour into our country--and as 
I say, it will be at least 40 million--and then when the word goes out 
all over the world that we have this surrender of our borders, you can 
bet there will be even more than that. It will be a massive betrayal of 
the regular people and lower-income people in the United States, of 
American citizens--again, the disabled people, lower-income people.
  What about those people who have worked all of their lives for 
government, who made sure that they pay their taxes, knowing that the 
government is going to have certain things to back them up as they got 
older or whether there are things that they would need in cases of 
emergency, or how about the education of their family and things such 
as that?
  No, these programs will have so many tens of millions of more 
illegals come in because we have legalized the status of those who are 
already here, those programs now which are suffering, some of them will 
break down.
  So how can, with a straight face, people in this body say they are 
backing the President's efforts to provide 5 million--this is his first 
step now--5 million work permits to people who are here illegally?
  This is at a time of high unemployment. We are defining who we care 
for. We have already defined who we are as a Nation on how we have set 
down a rule of law and whether we try to be fair. We are an imperfect 
society. We know that. We know we have got some real problems we have 
to solve and work together on.
  We are a multiracial, multiethnic society, but our society as it is 
will disintegrate if we have tens of millions of illegals pouring into 
our country. That is just the way it is.
  Again, the poorest of the poor will be hurt, and when we give 5 
million work permits at a time when we have such high unemployment, 
when we give 5 million work permits to people who are here illegally, 
we are actually betraying the American people who are struggling at the 
lower end of the economic scale. We are betraying them. It is something 
we all need to think about.
  We need to say to the American people: we are on your side, and we 
want to do things that are right for you. I have been dismayed by that 
element of just sort of, not disdain, but a frivolous overlooking of 
the well-being of the American people when those people are advocating 
comprehensive immigration reform.
  Let us also just note that immigration is something that is on our 
agenda. We keep hearing about it, but there are special interests at 
stake here. The reason why it is being pushed is not just this 
humanitarian special ideal, this humanitarian philosophical thing which 
I say we have to make sure that those special ideas that they think 
they become more human, to give our money away to various peoples of 
the world, that it doesn't hurt Americans, but there are also special 
interests who are profiting from this.
  It is not only a bad idea and a bad ideal that is driving this toward 
these decisions, but we have special interests that want cheap labor. 
We have people in the business community that want cheap labor. Now, 
don't tell me that Americans can no longer work as carpenters or as 
plumbers or as roofers. The construction industry slowly, but surely, 
now is evolving into where they are hiring illegals. That is wrong. 
There are people who can do these jobs, but they will take the lower 
pay alternative--of course they will.
  There are people that claim that they have to hire illegals because 
they can't hire Americans at that. No. If people were being paid more 
money, they could hire Americans at those jobs, but we have special 
interests that want lower pay, and we have special interests on that 
side of the aisle who want political pawns to come into this country to 
serve them when election day comes in the future and you have got 40 
million new people here over a 20-year period that they will be voting 
for their political party.
  That is just how cynical it is. Low wages and political pawns are 
being pushed. That is the factor that is pushing this comprehensive 
program that will be dramatically harmful to the well-being of the 
American people.
  I would hope that we postpone any decision on that until next year 
when we Republicans can debate this issue, go to the American people, 
and get their guidance on what policy that they want our country to 
have when it comes to immigration into our country.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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