Congressioanl Immigration Caucus
CONGRESSIONAL IMMIGRATION CAUCUS
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Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, welcome to the chair. I hope you enjoy your duration up there, as many years ago, it must have been 1995, I had the privilege of my first time in the chair. I hope you enjoy it as much, and I hope everybody at home is watching you in your day of glory.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
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Mr. BILBRAY. I appreciate that, Mr. King.
At this time it is my privilege as the new chairman of the Congressional Immigration Caucus to actually recognize Congressman NATHAN DEAL of the great State of Georgia, who actually has agreed to serve as the subcommittee chairman on the Immigration Caucus for Birthright Citizenship.
At this time I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
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Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say thank you very much to Mr. Deal for taking a leadership role on this issue. It is quite appropriate you are pointing out how broad the problem is of this automatic citizenship given to people that have no obligations, no responsibilities, and are leveraging the fact that some people think that everyone born on U.S. soil somehow gets automatic citizenship. The fact is I think that the Korean parents are a good example.
The subject to the jurisdiction clause of the 14th amendment does not only mean that you can be arrested. It means that you must, according to common law, be totally obligated. You must be able to be tried for treason and be forced into the military.
Can you imagine if these terrorists from Korea were told, sorry, you are now going to be drafted into the United States Army? People would come unglued. They would say that is inhumane, that is outrageous, how can you do that. Well, it is just as outrageous to give automatic citizenship to the people that have no obligations and no responsibility to the Federal Government, to give them citizenship, as it is to require them to be tried for treason against the United States or to serve in the military when they are not, quote, unquote, subject to the jurisdiction in a manner that applies to the 14th amendment.
This thing we have to understand, that rights and responsibilities come together, and as these legal Korean tourists come to our country, they have certain rights and certain responsibilities, but they do not have total responsibility, and thus they do not have birthright citizenship.
I think that is a clause to get into. I just wish that the people who would be as outraged about us drafting a Korean tourist or trying them for treason will be just as outraged about the people leveraging and taking advantage of our hospitality and then trying to demand rights where the rights obviously do not exist historically or in fact.
I appreciate the fact that you took a leadership role on this after I got my 5-year sabbatical that the voters gave me from Congress. You picked up the baby and actually carried it, and I really appreciate that and your leadership will be appreciated.
It is astonishing that back in the 1990s when we first brought up this issue, some people were saying, well, what is this issue. But more and more when you go talk to the American people, they want to know what has kind of been tagged this, what they call it, ``anchor baby' issue because they see this huge open door for abuse.
In California alone, I want you to know and I just say this to the people, how big a problem, how big a price tag can automatic citizenship to foreign nationals and illegal aliens can be. How big can it be? Just in California, it costs the State of California to pay for the births of the children of illegal aliens $400 million a year, and that is a price tag to people who are illegally in the country.
Let us face it, that $400 million could sure provide a lot of basic health care to legal Americans, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, that is being denied those people of need, while we accommodate those who have broken our laws and their families and encouraged them to emigrate.
So I thank you very much for taking this leadership role, and I greatly appreciate the fact that Georgia is represented on the Immigration Caucus, and that is a great advantage for us. Thank you very much.
Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege to serve on the Immigration Caucus, and as someone who grew up on the Mexican border between San Diego and Tijuana, I saw this issue as it has evolved over the last 45 years.
I grew up in an area where illegal immigration was just sort of a matter of fact. You saw people going north, and I got to tell you, as a young man, you never knew where they were going. They were all going to a place called L.A. or norte, norte, and you never understood what was the impact in the communities beyond the border.
But, seriously, I think the one thing that I would ask those of you that live beyond the border, you do not see on the border, like those of us that grew up there, I happen to have had the privilege to serve as a life guard in a small community on the border called Imperial Beach. In that job, I had the experience of rescuing illegals when they were drowning in the Tijuana River. I recovered their bodies when they did not make it, and in the 1980s, some of you may not remember a thing called the bonsai charges, where the coyotes, the smugglers, would organize illegals into huge groups at the border and rush them up the freeway.
I would just ask any of you to consider what your reaction would be if you were driving along at 65 miles an hour, 55, and you saw massive pedestrians running at you on the freeway in a manner that you do not have a chance to stop. Well, let me tell you something. After seeing what happens when somebody gets hit by a vehicle at 55, 60 miles an hour, I became committed as a member of the county board of supervisors in San Diego to finally say stand up and say this is wrong, this is immoral, this is outrageous.
Americans should be ashamed that we do not control our frontier, that we do not guarantee our sovereignty on U.S. soil. And the immigration issue is an issue of sovereignty. It is a concept of protecting the land that our forefathers have given to us and also protecting those rights and those privileges that should and can be rendered to those who are citizens and legal residents.
But, sadly, we have found excuses to look the other way. Be it political correctness or some sick concept that encouraging illegal activity somehow is going to be good for America, it is sad that we allow not only illegal immigration but all the illegal activity that happens along the border.
I am really encouraged, though, to see colleagues like the gentleman from Georgia and Mr. King, people from the interior, that get it, that understand that the immigration problem is not something at the border that can only be addressed at the border, but is something that is in our neighborhoods every day; that it is on the street corners, we see it every day; and that the American people, though they have been ignored on this issue for too long, are saying we are going to hold both parties accountable if you do not address that.
I think in all fairness, as a Republican, I think we can all agree that a degree of the problems in the last election was that voters did not believe Republicans were doing enough and are going to demand that Democrats and Republicans put their partisanship on the side and take care of this problem.
I am glad to see the kind of general support that we have seen working on this issue and the community support on this; and at this time, if I may, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to Mr. King.
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Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. King, first of all, I have to say I am so proud that you are our ranking member on the Immigration Committee. With you on that, leading the Republican side of that committee. Hopefully you will be able, and I know it is a tough sell; I am going to meet with your chairman and try to point out what is the obsession that the Senate and some Members of the House of Representatives have to give amnesty and reward 12 to 13 to 15 million people for breaking the law?
Do they really think we can defend the concept, the rule of law, by having up to 60 million people in this country celebrating the fact that they are here because they broke the law? You know, I am thankful that I was able to listen to you tonight, because I keep saying, and I was saying to a couple of Senators this week, what is the obsession, what is the motivation for giving amnesty and rewarding people for breaking our laws? What message have you seen? What agenda are you fulfilling? What political group are you fulfilling?
Now that you brought it up, you are right, you point out you gave amnesty to a group that originally was proposed to be 300,000, ended up with all the delays in the agenda to be 3 million; then you get all of their relatives coming in. This is the group that is lobbying and able to vote to encourage more people to come in, and this downward spiral has started. If we don't stop it now with the American people that really believe in the rule of law, that really believe in the concept of common decency that you do not punish somebody for waiting patiently to immigrate legally while you reward somebody who breaks the law, if we are not willing to stop this downward spiral now, it will continue to grow larger and faster down the line.
I think the American people here know this is not a Republican or Democratic issue; this is an American issue. If anybody doesn't believe that the rule of law is important, I can take you to a lot of places I spent a lot of time in other countries where people can buy off the law by politics or by money.
This amnesty, it just seems like the most un-American concept I heard. Let me tell you something, my son was sitting there, 19 or 20 years old, and he brought up the interesting issue, and I guess from the mouths of babes, he said, Dad, let me get this straight, Mr. Kennedy says that if you break the law for 5 years, you now get rewarded for it? Does this mean that if I am willing to testify that I have driven without a license for 5 years, I get a license for free?
Because that is what people think they can do with immigration and make it work. It won't work with the traffic situation; it won't work with an immigration issue.
I am glad you bring this up, and just seeing a self-made special interest group that is driving us toward an abyss of the destruction of the entire concept of what this greatest Republic we call the ``American experience.' I yield to Mr. King.
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Mr. BILBRAY. Let me say, what we are fighting for here is nothing short of the middle class. The fact is there are those on the left and the right that say we desperately need more poor people. You know why? It is because the major corporates want cheap labor on the right, and the left wants cheap votes. And they are willing to sell their children's birthright out, their grandchildren's future out just to be able to capitalize off of this illegal activity.
At this time, I have the privilege of recognizing the gentleman from California who has agreed to be the subcommittee chairman on the Border Security Policy Committee team for the Immigration Caucus, Mr. Royce.
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Mr. BILBRAY. Thank you very much, Mr. Royce. Seeing that you are the chairman of the Border Security subcommittee, it is good to hear today that the administration has found the money to finally fill in the border tunnels across our border. A lot of people when I say the fence isn't working, if the fence wasn't working, the cartels would not be spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to tunnel under the fence.
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Mr. BILBRAY. I thank you for that. Because before the fence, as somebody that grew up down there and watched this game being played, any criminal on either side of the border could jump across the border and avoid enforcement on the other. Even in Mexico, they had the area called the Zona Norte, the northern zone, and everyone knew that it was a criminal hideout because they could always jump onto the American side if the Mexican officials came. So this issue of creating a barrier is common sense and common decency.
As Governor Ruffo of Baja, California, once said, he said something in Spanish and said in Mexico, we have a saying, Good fences make good neighbors. Frankly, I think those people that always attacked the concept of having secure borders should just listen to Ruffo's advice that common sense does go a long way.
I yield to the gentleman.
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Mr. BILBRAY. I appreciate that. The fact is most Americans may not understand that it is so out of control that they have had over 30 police officers murdered in Tijuana and over nine Federal prosecutors assassinated in Tijuana. In fact, it was so bad that the Mexican government 10 years ago sent their army to the American border. You hear an outcry here when we talk about the possibility of sending our troops or our National Guard down to the border. I wonder where these people are that are so outraged about America exercising our sovereignty, using our resources, when they ignored the fact that Mexico did the right thing by bringing their troops up.
I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your work on this and look forward to working with you.
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about border control, but I want to make sure that the American people and everybody recognizes, in your district, the real problem exists that those who hire illegals are the ones who are creating the number one source of illegal immigration. When we talk about the violence at the border, when we talk about people dying, drowning at the border trying to come into this country illegally, the people that are at fault for that are those employers who provide the incentive for people to break our immigration laws and those who are profiteering off illegal immigration, and that is the illegal employers.
I would ask you and I would ask every Member of Congress and I would ask everyone who is listening across the United States to take a look at H.R. 98 which is a bill that Silvestre Reyes, a very respected Democrat from El Paso, who is a former Border Patrol agent, and David Dreier, a Republican, former chairman of the Rules Committee, put together working with the men and women who actually have to control our frontier and control immigration, the immigration agents themselves. They put together a bill called H.R. 98, and it is so simple that there is no excuse for anybody not to support it, unless they think that there is an advantage to encourage illegal immigration.
In this bill, it says one thing. It says, let's get rid of the 37 different documents that anybody can prove they are legal to be in the country to work. Let's go down to one simple document, a tamper-resistant Social Security card to allow Americans and foreign nationals alike to prove that a Social Security number that they are required by law to provide for employment is actually their number and not one that they have taken or 20 of their buddies have taken from somebody else and are using because they have stolen a Social Security number. One document for any employer to know to check, to be able to verify electronically that whoever is in front of them is qualified to work in the United States. Because it is essential that we give employers a simple, verifiable way of knowing who is legal and who is not legal so that we can do what I think Democrats and Republicans who really care about America can do together and, that is, crack down on the employers who knowingly hire illegals. We all know who they are, we know where they are, and we need to eliminate the excuse for hiring illegals. We need to start cracking down on that.
I just ask that when we get into this issue, let's not talk about amnesty, let's not talk about excuses for rewarding people for illegal immigration, let's talk about working together and cracking down on the illegal employers, making it clear that if you want to come to this country and work, then you come here legally, you play by the rules, you get rewarded for that.
So, Mr. Speaker, a lot of people may not know, but I am privileged to have a mother who is a legal immigrant who came back to this country back in the 1940s. And as she reminds me so often, everyone who rewards illegal immigration is insulting those immigrants who came here and played by the rules. Anybody who talks about giving amnesty or any reward to those who have violated our immigration law is insulting the hard work, the patience, and the perseverance to be a legal immigrant and everyone who has played by the rules and stayed within the law.
So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say tonight that every Wednesday night we are going to try as the Immigration Caucus to give a report to the American people about what is going on with the immigration issue. It is something that politicians have ignored for too long, but it is something that the American people are demanding that we finally address if we want to stay in this city representing the people.
So tonight I appreciate the time to be able to address this issue.
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