[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4855-4858]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  WHAT MEXICO REPRESENTS TO ALL OF US

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
O'Rourke) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. Mr. Speaker, to listen to some in this country, and 
certainly some of my colleagues, Mexico represents nothing more than a 
threat to the well-being, the safety of this country, and to every son 
and daughter in every community within the United States.
  It is also a threat, some will tell you, to our economy, to our 
financial well-being in our homes, in our cities, in our States. This 
vision of Mexico and our relationship with that country and where the 
two join at the U.S.-Mexico border is dominated by this kind of 
anxiety, this scare-mongering, and an attitude of fear that neglects 
the truth, the facts, and the opportunities that our relationship with 
our closest partner on the world stage truly presents.
  It is my hope tonight to share with my colleagues the facts, the 
positive truth about what Mexico represents to all of us, certainly in 
the communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, El Paso, Texas, the city 
that I have the honor of representing and serving in Congress, the 
State of Texas, where I will be joined by colleagues who represent 
districts deeper into the interior of Texas, but really to everyone 
everywhere in the United States.
  When I listen to some of my colleagues, who can be forgiven much like 
those in ancient history who, not having traveled to distant lands or 
across the oceans, could only envision monsters or frightening things 
that were going to come and get them should they venture past what they 
knew and what was safe and what was home to them, those who do not know 
Mexico, who do not live on the U.S.-Mexico border may understandably 
have their thoughts and their concerns dominated by this anxiety and 
fear.
  It is my hope, as someone who lives in and represents part of the 
U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border, to shed some light using facts and 
using real people, real U.S. citizens, real Mexican citizens, and real 
people from El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, which together form the largest 
binational community in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest 
binational communities anywhere in the world.
  When you hear people who are concerned about Mexico and what it 
represents to the United States, that fear is often dominated by two 
different areas. One is economic and the other is fear about our 
security in this country. Let me lay some of those fears to rest. Let 
me address some of those concerns at face value using the facts and 
figures from the United States-Mexico relationship and, again, from the 
district that I represent in El Paso, Texas.
  Let me start with some of the economic concerns and address them with 
the economic facts and the economic argument. Some of my colleagues may 
not know this, but Mexico is our third largest trading partner. And for 
some States--like the State of Texas, like the State of New Mexico, 
like the State

[[Page 4856]]

of Arizona, like the State of California--Mexico represents our number 
one trading partner. For many other States deeper into the interior, 
Mexico represents our second largest trading partner.
  But the volume of trade between our two countries is unlike any 
other, even among our top trading partner, China, for with Mexico, for 
every dollar of import value that we bring into this country from 
Mexico, 40 cents of that dollar was value that originated here in the 
United States, components, manufactured goods that were built here in 
America by Americans, by U.S. citizens that were exported to Mexico for 
final assembly and manufacture before reimportation into the United 
States.
  It is why when we export to Mexico, we win; when we import from 
Mexico, we win. That volume of trade between our two countries is 
responsible for one out of every four jobs in the community that I 
represent, El Paso, Texas. It is responsible for more than 400,000 jobs 
in the State of Texas, more than 6 million jobs throughout the United 
States.
  I want to make clear that our relationship with Mexico does not just 
benefit border communities like mine or border States like Texas. You 
look at New York, 381,000 people depend on our relationship with Mexico 
for the jobs they go to each and every morning. In Ohio, the number is 
224,000. In the State of Washington, 128,000. In fact, every single one 
of our 50 States has a significant trading and jobs-based dependent 
relationship with Mexico.
  Were we to jeopardize that with harmful rhetoric or wrong-headed 
policies, we would not just jeopardize this historic relationship with 
our partner to the south, we would jeopardize the very well-being and 
lifeblood for 6 million American families spread throughout this 
country.
  In fact, if we don't do a better job of facilitating the trade we 
have with Mexico right now, we run the risk of losing the jobs we 
already have. The Department of Commerce estimates that for every 
minute of delay on our international ports of entry that connect the 
United States and Mexico, because we are not getting more trade into 
the United States from Mexico and out of the United States into Mexico, 
we lose about $166 million. For every minute of delay, $166 million 
lost to the United States economy.
  Now, let me talk about the security argument. I just heard from my 
colleague from Iowa that Mexico and Mexican immigrants, whether they 
are undocumented, whether they are pursuing a better life in this 
country, whether they are--as almost all of them are--net contributors 
to our economy, to our communities, to the safety of our cities, that 
somehow they represent this terrible threat, the primary threat for our 
country, and the sky and everything with it is falling should we not be 
able to deport these 11 million undocumented immigrants from 
communities like Washington, D.C., from El Paso, Texas, from Fort 
Worth, from throughout the United States.

                              {time}  1830

  I would like to share something with my colleagues and with you, Mr. 
Speaker, about the effect that immigrants have on the safety of our 
communities. As I mentioned, I represent El Paso, Texas, which, with 
Ciudad Juarez, forms one-half of the largest binational community 
anywhere in the world. Twenty-four percent of the people that I 
represent were born in another country, most of them, the country of 
Mexico. And I will tell you, it is not in spite of that fact that we 
have so many migrants in our community but, in large part, because of 
it that El Paso is this country's safest city of over 500,000.
  So of all large cities in this country, from Los Angeles on the West 
Coast to New York on the East Coast, El Paso is this country's safest 
city. And it has been not just in the past year, but for years before 
this last one; and for the last 10 or 15 years, it has been rated one 
of the top five safest cities in the United States. And that is because 
the relationship that we have with Mexico.
  The migrants who come from that country are coming to this one to 
build a better life for themselves, certainly; but more importantly and 
connected to our relative safety, they are building a better life for 
their kids. They are keeping them focused on their studies, on 
contributing to their communities, on staying out of trouble and 
getting ahead and doing better. That is what I want you to know when we 
talk about security connected to immigration and when we talk about 
security relative to Mexico.
  I also want my colleagues, who themselves are taxpayers, and the 
taxpayers they represent to know that today we spend $18 billion a year 
to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. In the last 10 years, we have doubled 
the size of the Border Patrol force, from 10,000 agents to 20,000 
agents, and we are reaching, if not already past, a point of 
diminishing returns where we can do no more good by spending more 
dollars and by adding more agents to already swollen ranks of the 
Border Patrol. Let me give you some facts that bear that out.
  In the year 2000, we had 1.6 million apprehensions at our border with 
Mexico. This last year, in 2015, we had 330,000 apprehensions.
  Another way to look at this is that, in 2005, the average Border 
Patrol agents on the southern border, our border with Mexico, made 106 
apprehensions a year. Ten years later, 2015, last year, the average 
agent made 17 apprehensions the entire year; and in El Paso, again, one 
of the most critical sectors for our connection with Mexico, the 
average agent made 6 apprehensions all year--not in a week, not in a 
month, but 6 apprehensions for the entire year.
  So El Paso is the safest city. Other border cities on our side of the 
U.S.-Mexico border are much safer than the interior of the United 
States. We are spending record sums, and we are seeing record-low 
levels of apprehensions. We are literally seeing less than zero 
migration from Mexico now, and we have been for a number of years.
  When I hear my colleagues about securing the border before we proceed 
with immigration reform or any other sensible, realistic, logical 
policy with regard to Mexico, it begs the question when they ask if we 
secure the border: How much more secure can we get? How many more 
billions of dollars do you want to spend? How many more miles of walls 
do you want to construct? How many more thousands of agents do you want 
to hire? How many fewer apprehensions can we have? How far below zero 
can our immigration from Mexico reach?
  The last point on the security issue that I want to stress for my 
colleagues is this one. Despite the rhetoric, despite the anxiety, 
despite the fear that is often provoked on cable TV or even in this 
Chamber, there has never been nor is there now any credible terrorist 
organization, terrorist threat, or terrorist who is using the southern 
border--our border with Mexico--to infiltrate the United States. And I 
have that on public record from the Director of the FBI, the Director 
for the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Secretary of Homeland 
Security.
  The danger of continuing to surge more resources where we don't have 
a problem is that we take our eye and our money and our men and women 
off those places where we know we have had threats in the past, like 
our international airports. In fact, even at our northern border with 
Canada, attempts have been made in the past, and certainly with 
homegrown, home-radicalized terrorists or potential terrorists in our 
communities.
  That is where we know we have a threat. That is where we need to 
pursue that threat. It doesn't mean that we do not remain vigilant 
against the potential for a terrorist threat coming along our border 
with Mexico; but I would argue that, with 20,000 agents, $18 billion 
spent a year, drones flying overhead, 600 miles of wall, we are very 
vigilant against the potential for any terrorist incursion from Mexico.
  Before I yield to my good friend from Dallas-Fort Worth, I want to 
talk a little bit about the people who actually live in this binational 
community that I have been talking about, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, 
where, between the two

[[Page 4857]]

communities last year, there were 32 million crossings. Thirty-two 
million times someone crossed from El Paso into Ciudad Juarez or Juarez 
into El Paso. I thought I would share with you, through these pictures 
to my right, some of the remarkable people that I live with in the El 
Paso-Juarez community and some of the amazing people that I represent.
  The first person that we are looking at is Armando. I started with 
Armando at the end of his day as he closed up the plant that he manages 
in Ciudad Juarez. Even though he and his children live in the United 
States, are U.S. citizens, and attend U.S. public schools in El Paso, 
Texas, he crosses over the border into Mexico every morning. He works a 
hard day managing a plant there; and then he comes back over into the 
United States, where he pays his U.S. property taxes, his U.S. income 
taxes, where he contributes by going and helping to coach his son's 
soccer game, which is where we took this picture with Armando and his 
wife. He is one of these 32 million people that is crossing the border. 
He is somebody that has come from Mexico that is contributing to this 
country, whose children are growing up here. He is someone that I am 
very proud to have in my community.
  This next slide shows a picture of Israel. Israel lives in Ciudad 
Juarez but attends school at the University of Texas in El Paso.
  In its infinite wisdom, the State of Texas granted instate coverage 
for citizens of Mexico to attend schools in our communities in the 
State of Texas because we know that Texas will be the net beneficiary 
of their talent and their human capital.
  So Israel gets up very early every morning, sometimes before 5 
o'clock, so that he can make it over the international bridge in time 
to get to the University of Texas at El Paso, where he is an all-star 
student and also works at the Keck Lab, which is one of the premier 
additive manufacturing facilities at any academic community in the 
United States. These are 3-D printing jobs that are the future of 
manufacturing technology. And if we do right by Israel, Israel is going 
to want to spend his life and his career and add value and add tax base 
and add tax income and create jobs in our country, in the community 
that I represent. That is why I crossed the bridge with Israel to learn 
a little bit about him and his experience.
  This slide shows a picture of Vicky, whom I joined in downtown Ciudad 
Juarez. She is walking up Avenida Juarez. Another block or two and we 
will pass the Kentucky Club, which I want everyone to know we did not 
go into. It was before 5 o'clock. But Vicky, who is a Mexican national, 
is carrying her shopping bags because at least once a month she comes 
over to the United States, to my community, to spend her hard-earned 
money in our local retail establishments and other stores to do the 
shopping for her and her family.
  In fact, Mexican nationals like Vicky spend about $1.4 billion in the 
El Paso community annually. That supports tens of thousands of retail 
jobs and small-business owners that I represent here in the House.
  This is the face of the border, the face of Mexico, the face of our 
connection. This was Vicky, with whom I crossed the border a couple of 
weeks ago.
  This next slide shows Manuel, who is driving a load of Werner 
ladders.
  Werner is the largest ladder manufacturer in the world. They 
manufacture about 70 percent of those ladders in Ciudad Juarez. The 
inputs for those ladders come from all over the United States. They are 
connected to jobs in this country that go over to Mexico. They are 
connected to jobs there and then reimported here for export for benefit 
of the United States and Mexico.
  Here he is crossing his load--his part of the $90 billion in U.S.-
Mexico trade that crosses our ports of entry that are connected to 
those 6 million jobs spread throughout the United States.
  If we could get those bridges moving a little faster, get more CBP 
officers to facilitate that trade, we can get more loads of ladders 
moving across, more jobs connected in the United States to trade and 
manufacture in Mexico. It is good for my community, good for each of 
the communities represented by the Members here in the Chamber tonight.
  And the last slide I will show you is Lisa, and you can see that I 
jumped into the backseat of her car as she left the plant that she 
works in in Ciudad Juarez.
  She moved down to El Paso from Michigan about 20 years ago. She has 
been working in Ciudad Juarez every day with other U.S. and Mexican 
citizens, creating value in both countries, economic growth in both 
countries.
  And so here we are in her car, about to cross back into El Paso, 
Texas, where, again, she pays her taxes, where she contributes to her 
community, and where she is the face of the U.S.-Mexico relationship 
and why it is so important not just to preserve it, not just to respect 
it, but to grow it and to capitalize on it and create more jobs, more 
opportunities, more growth in both of our countries.
  I thought these five El Pasoans and Juarenses, whom I have the 
pleasure of living with in El Paso, the honor of representing here in 
the House, might tell you a little bit of a different story than the 
one that has prevailed and dominated from people who do not live on 
and, frankly, do not understand the border or our relationship with 
Mexico.
  But someone who does and who is here with me tonight, represents a 
congressional district in Fort Worth and Dallas, who understands the 
importance of our relationship with Mexico better than almost any other 
person that I have worked with, is Marc Veasey. I yield to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Veasey).
  Mr. VEASEY. Thank you very much, Representative O'Rourke. I really 
appreciate your work on this issue. You have been doing a great job of 
really kind of setting the facts straight about this issue.
  There has been a lot of rhetoric out there about what immigration 
means. And the fact that you have worked so hard to bring recognition 
about the economic benefits that the border has, particularly to our 
State of Texas, and you have been very tremendous in your efforts, I 
really, really do appreciate that.
  I wanted to just talk about the fact how important the relationship 
is--the economic impact that you talk about all the time--how important 
it is to Texas and the United States.
  According to the United States Trade Representative, U.S. goods and 
services traded with Mexico totaled an estimated $500-plus billion in 
2015. Mexico was the United States' second largest goods export market 
in 2015. In 2013, Texas, our home State of Texas exported over $109 
billion in goods with Mexico, and that was a 63 percent increase since 
2008.
  It is really hard to argue with those numbers. It just shows how 
healthy the relationship is with Mexico and about how incredibly 
foolish it would be to try to create barriers between our two countries 
that would cause economic harm to both Mexico and the United States and 
our border State of Texas.
  The United States' relationship with Mexico, again, when you look at 
the economic picture, agriculture is something that people oftentimes 
take for granted--how they get their milk, how they get their fruit, 
how they get their vegetables.
  Agriculture is how we eat in this country. I have met with different 
organizations that represent agriculture. I just had some cattle 
raisers from the Fort Worth area here. They talked about the fact that 
we don't have a comprehensive immigration reform bill and how we need 
to improve our guest worker program and how it is really hurting their 
industry.

                              {time}  1845

  And these are conservative Republicans that are telling me this, 
Representative O'Rourke. These aren't liberal Democrats or advocacy 
groups. These are people that are concerned about economic growth and 
prosperity in the United States and in border States that are saying 
that, hey, we have a huge problem here in agriculture.
  One of our conservative institutes in the State of Texas, Texas A&M 
University down in College Station, did a

[[Page 4858]]

study back in 2012 that looked at dairy farms and found that the dairy 
farms are very heavily dependent upon migrant labor. Three-fifths of 
the milk in this country is dependent upon migrant labor.
  I think that that speaks in and of itself.
  Without these employees, the study predicts economic output would 
decline by $22 billion, and 133,000 workers would lose their jobs. And 
what are we going to do if that happens? Like, what are we really going 
to do? What are Republicans going to do if that happens, if they were 
able to create borders and barriers between our southwest border?
  They are certainly not going to make it up with any sort of social 
services to help people because they are always hollering about how 
they don't want to expand government. So what are they going to do if 
we lose all of that money? They are going to do absolutely nothing, and 
it would be very detrimental.
  Then there is also immigrant entrepreneurship. In addition to 
providing a reliable workforce, immigrants are also a boost to local 
economies when they open up businesses in their communities. More than 
40 percent of the Fortune 500 companies here were founded by immigrants 
or by their children according to the Partnership for a New American 
Economy.
  I want to highlight one of my friends that has a business in my 
district, Gloria Fuentes. She was actually my guest, Representative 
O'Rourke, at the State of the Union earlier this year. She was someone, 
back in the 1970s, that was fleeing her home country of El Salvador. 
She immigrated to the United States, and her visa expired. Later, she 
became a permanent resident in 1986. And because of her hard work, 
working extra jobs, going to nightclubs at night to sell tamales and 
tacos, now she has a restaurant chain of 15, all across the State of 
Texas. That was done by someone that came here as an immigrant.
  Why wouldn't we want to make it easier for people like Gloria to 
migrate to this country? Why wouldn't we want to make it easier for us 
to be able to exchange and trade ideas with people from countries that 
are south of our border?
  We are really moving too slowly on the immigration issue. And again, 
the rhetoric about the southwest border is really hurting our country, 
particularly when you look at the net migration and how many people 
have decided that--you know what?--they don't want to live in the 
United States anymore just because of all of the rhetoric, the hateful 
rhetoric that is out there, mainly coming from the Republican side. I 
think that it is time that it stop because I think that our country--I 
know that our country--is better than that.
  I just want to thank you for getting this conversation started. I 
want to thank you for your expertise and depth on this issue. 
Particularly with you coming from El Paso, it is certainly great to 
have you talking about this so much and reminding people about the 
facts, because there are a lot of things out there that are floating 
around the Congress--again, coming from the Republican side--that are 
completely untrue and deliberately false and meant to spread fear 
across our country. But the fact that you are here and you are 
educating the country on this very important issue means a lot to our 
State and to the United States. So thank you very much, Representative 
O'Rourke, and thank you for letting me share this time with you.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. I thank my friend from Texas, amidst all this heat and 
the rhetoric around Mexico, our relationship with that country, the 
cost or benefit of immigration, that he is able to shed some light 
using the facts, sharing the truth, so that we understand our shared 
interdependence, shared benefit, and the value of the relationship 
between the United States and Mexico.
  Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time remains?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has about 3 minutes remaining.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues who have used the 
excuse--because they believe it--that we must first secure the border 
before we can do anything else, before we can improve our relationship 
with Mexico, before we can capitalize on the shared production platform 
that is the United States and Mexico today, where 40 percent of the 
value of everything that we import from Mexico originated in this 
country, is connected to jobs in this country; I invite my friends who 
use securing the border as an excuse not to move forward on immigration 
reform, despite the fact that we have 11 million people here who are 
living in the shadows, who, despite that, do their best to contribute 
to this country each and every day in service to this country and 
creating jobs in this country, in serving those in this country; I 
invite you to see the truth, to look at the facts, and to understand 
that our relationship with Mexico has never been more important, our 
border with Mexico has never been more secure, by any metric we want to 
look at.
  Whether it is apprehension, whether it is the total spent on the 
security of that border, whether it is the number of men and women, 
20,000, who are patrolling that border with our closest partner--
certainly the closest trading partner in the State of Texas, I would 
argue the most important country for the United States--whether you 
look at it economically, demographically, historically, or culturally, 
I hope these facts, this truth, this light that we are working to shed 
on the issue, will help my colleagues to make better decisions, better 
policies, and move forward in the self-interest of this country, every 
district, and every person we represent, to do the right thing when it 
comes to Mexico, to do the right thing when it comes to immigration 
reform, and to do the right thing in the interest of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________