World War II Memorial

WORLD WAR II MEMORIAL -- (House of Representatives - May 17, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of South Carolina). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me first identify myself with the remarks of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) whose very eloquent and heartfelt remarks certainly touched our hearts, and her actions and her activity and all of the diligence that she has put into this, and the hard work and commitment she has put into this project is to be commended. There are those of us that stand in awe of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and all the work she has done for this generation.

I take it as a personal favor to my family that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) has been doing this because my father, of course, is part of that generation, and everything she said about those brave men and women applies to my father, who served in the Marine Corps during the Second World War and who left a poverty-stricken-type of family background in North Dakota to walk off, save the world, save the world from the dread and the tyranny of Japanese militarism and Naziism. Certainly this heroism is something that we owe such a great deal to.

So, Mr. Speaker, tonight first let me tip my hat to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and those who put such a lot of work into this project.

ILLEGAL ALIEN INVASION

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me just note that the person who alerted me to the subject I will talk about tonight was a World War II veteran. His name was Frank Casado, a very proud Mexican American, who owned and built Lucy's Restaurant in Los Angeles. Frank later became very politically active. He was a Democrat, I might add, but he was a very close friend, and I would go to his restaurant as a young reporter and then as I worked in Ronald Reagan's staff in the White House; and Frank would always pull me aside and say, "Dana, you have got to do something about the illegal alien invasion of our country. You have got to do something about it." If there ever was an American of Mexican descent it was Frank Casado.

Frank joined the Navy in World War II, and he always prided himself that he had been on the boxing team and been one of the contenders of the championship of the fleet, and he was a very, very proud man. He was proud of his Mexican heritage as well, but he knew that the flood of illegal immigrants into our country was bound to bring us down, and if we can do anything to keep faith with those veterans who have sacrificed so much for our country over the years, it is that we should have the courage to face the issue of illegal immigration and to deal with it, to understand that those people who fought and died in World War II and have sacrificed over the years for our country to create this wonderful country of ours, they would be appalled to know that we are afraid to discuss the issue of illegal immigration, afraid to discuss the issue that perhaps is the greatest threat to America's well-being today, and that is an onslaught, an uncontrolled invasion of, yes, good people but people who will have a dramatic impact, negative impact on the American way of life. They did not give their lives in order to make sure that this country could be taken over by anyone who would thwart our laws and basically massively come into our country illegally.

We need to have the courage to face the issue. Frank Casado, as I said, first alerted me to how this major influx of illegal immigration was changing the nature of California as he knew it and as he grew up, because he was a native Californian. He was a man who grew up in Los Angeles and described for me how this massive influx of illegal immigrants was bringing down the people of his community. People who should have been on the upward path instead were being brought down by a flood, an uncontrolled flood of illegal immigration.

Let us keep faith with those people who defended this country and won our freedom and wanted us to live in a high standard of living and wanted our people to have a good country. Let us keep faith with them.

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And certainly let us not do one thing, let us not permit the benefits that we give to illegal aliens to have a negative impact on these very same senior citizens, these very same soldiers, whether defeated Hitler or Tojo.

In fact, today we have a very limited amount of health care dollars. At a time when our economy is moving forward, but not as strong as it was, let us say 10 years ago, we need to make sure that every dollar counts. Because if a dollar is not spent most wisely, the people most affected will be our senior citizens and also will be our children. And so, today, I plead a case for these seniors and these children. Let us not dissipate the funds that are available to take care of our seniors and our children in order to provide services for illegal immigrants who have come here thumbing their nose at our law and blatantly and arrogantly breaking the law to come here.

And, yes, these are generally honest, good people, coming here to improve their lives, but we cannot afford to take care of all the good people of the world if it means, and it will mean this, that we will have to cut back on what we give to our own citizens.

I rise tonight to alert my colleagues to a vote that will be taken tomorrow on the floor of this Congress, a vote that will mark a turning point for our country or it will reflect a continued unwillingness by America's elected officials to do anything to protect us from what I am calling, what I believe to be the greatest threat to our national security and well-being.

Now, again, what am I talking about when I say that? Tomorrow morning, there will be a vote on legislation that I have offered, H.R. 3722, which will attempt to protect us from a major decline in our quality of life and a decline in quality, I might add, of the health care we have for our seniors and our children due to the uncontrolled onslaught of illegal immigrants into our country and into our hospitals and into our emergency rooms.

If left unchecked, illegal immigration will destroy everything which those World War II veterans were fighting for: a decent quality of life for our people, a government that is reflective of our values, and a country in which we can take care of those who are in need because they are people of our communities and of our States and of our country who have also served our country, whether they be Mexican Americans, like Frank Casado, or black Americans, or Caucasian Americans, or Asian Americans.

We have a country of rich diversity, but all of us need to stick together and care about each other more than we need to care about people who would come into our country illegally and dissipate the funds that are needed for these other Americans and even our own families to get the education and health care that they need.

It is unforgivable that our government has refused to act when the evidence is so clear. Millions of people are being permitted to get into our country and then to stay in our country illegally. And this is having an horrendous impact on our standard of living, on safety in our country, and on the quality of life of average Americans.

For tens of millions of Americans and local and legal residents, real wages have stagnated over the last 15 years. We have seen a major increase in our standard of living and in the statistics that indicate how much wealth our country is worth; yet we have a huge number of people, citizens and legal residents, who live here and have not seen their standard of living increase. In fact, they see all the time little indications that their quality of life is going down, whether it is the fact they cannot afford to buy tires for the family car, or their children cannot afford to buy a home, so they have to stay at home now because they cannot afford to get a house of their own, or the fact that their kids are not expecting really to have a good job. They see these indications that something is happening to our country, where the middle class and working class people are not living as well as they did before and, in fact, have been cut out of this huge increase in the wealth that has taken place in our society of these last 2 decades.

Well, the answer is very clear. The factor that is intervening is a massive flow of illegal immigration that is undercutting the ability of our own people to have good-paying jobs because we are holding wages down with an influx of illegal immigrants. And we are also taxing all of the services provided to our people, the people who have worked all their life to pay taxes; and sometimes, what is happening is, illegals will come into our country and they will not be paying taxes. They will work at jobs where taxes are not paid, and they will bring their families in to consume those benefits in education, health care, and otherwise that are meant for our own people.

Our education and the education of our children has been undermined. Real wages have stagnated. Our health care resources that are necessary to take care of the health of our people have been depleted and the safety of our streets and neighborhoods, and thus, yes, the safety of our families, has been compromised. This is not a back-burner issue. Illegal immigration and how we solve it, or if we ignore it, will determine what America is going to be like tomorrow.

This deals with a crisis of today. It seems to me that we have political people here whose only real goal is to prevent a crisis of the moment. Let us not have a crisis now; let us put that off. Well, I say, no, we need to deal with the threats to our country, just the way the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) was speaking about the threats to the world and to our country that loomed there 50 years and 60 years ago when Hitler and Tojo threatened the world. That generation, the Greatest Generation, did not turn its back and simply say let us try to find a compromise and it will go away. They understood that unless something was done, unless the issue was looked at with courage and with conviction that the United States would cease to be the country that they had inherited from their families and their parents.

So, today, this attitude of elected officials that we should do anything to get away from confronting this
issue, let us not have a crisis today, let us not have a confrontation on it today, this works totally contrary to the tradition that we have had that has kept our country free and prosperous. Elected officials have basically remained silent about illegal immigration. Every poll that I have seen, and I include the polls of Americans of Mexican descent, indicates that the vast majority of our people are angry and upset with the fact that illegal immigration is permitted to go uncontrolled and that illegal immigrants are pouring into our neighborhoods and destroying our way of life and the quality of life and the possibility for better jobs for a whole segment of our population. The American people are angry that their elected officials refuse to deal with this issue.

The American people need to ask themselves: Why is it, why is it that elected officials refuse to even think about confronting illegal immigration? Well, a large number of American people, as we know, are deeply troubled and enormously concerned about the onslaught of this massive flow of illegal immigration in the United States. So why are our officials not acting?

First and foremost, I believe that many elected officials have been intimidated from addressing this burning issue. Now, when I say intimidated, what does that mean? Today, in the debate on my bill, 3722, which we will talk about later, one of the Members came forward and said this represents mean-spiritedness. And, of course, that means racism. That is a little catch phrase for racism. And also I was pulled aside by several people after the debate, oh, you should not bring this up, because they think this is a racist attack.

Racism. The elected officials of the people of the United States are afraid to be called racist. They are afraid to be called mean spirited. Well, I can be intimidated in a number of ways, but I can tell you it means a gun or a knife. They can call me all the names they want, but I am confident in my own heart that I am dealing with this issue and other issues based on a love for humanity; and more than that, and I will admit this, a love for the people of the United States of America, in gratitude for the contributions and the sacrifices that people like those people in the Greatest Generation, people like my father and the others the gentlewoman from Ohio was talking about. The sacrifices they made give me strength and give me the willingness to know that I am trying to do things that are positive.

And I will not be intimidated because people are willing to call me, and try to use the tactic of calling me and others, a racist. I will tell you this, the label of racist and hatemonger has caused fear throughout Republican ranks. The liberal left knows this, and they constantly try to play that card. It is time for the American people to totally reject this type of racism in and of itself, the people who bring up racism in order to defend policies that should be discussed on the merit.

Unfortunately, as I say, when someone says you are a hatemonger, most Republicans just wither away because they are afraid to be called hatemongers. They basically know, as I do, that most illegal immigrants, if not all illegal immigrants, are wonderful people. Ninety-five percent, let us say, or ninety-nine percent of illegal immigrants who come to this country are wonderful people. But this is not a debate about whether illegal immigrants are themselves bad people. We can care about them. They are probably good people. And we can care about the rest of the world. But that does not mean that we have infinite resources here in the United States so that we can provide benefits and goods and services and a place to stay for anybody in the world who can make it to the United States.

If we try to do that, if we are cowed from discussing the issue because we are afraid to be called racist because we know we have to draw a line somewhere or it is bound to bring our people down, if we keep doing that, what is going to happen is that our citizens are going to experience a major decrease in their standard of living. A threshold will be reached and the American taxpayer will be spending more and more, and yet our citizens will actually be living lives that are not as high in quality and filled with opportunity as when the tax rates were even lower.

It is not hateful nor is it being racist to use scarce resources, like the amount of tax money we have, the amount of health care dollars we have, the amount of education dollars we have; it is not a racist thing to say we are going to provide for our own people first, realizing that our own people come from every race and every religion and every ethnic group. That is what makes us so proud to be Americans. But if we do not think of our own citizens first, then we have abandoned the one thing that ties our Nation together, and it is a feeling of love and solidarity with all other Americans.

Let me say that I believe even if we take this down to the family level, and we say some family that works hard, saves their money, and spends their money that they have saved on their own family, on their children and on perhaps their father and mother, are these people actually filled with hate, are they hatemongers, do they deserve to be called that simply because they refuse to spend money on the needy people down the street rather than on their children's education or health care? Well, I believe that it is not hateful. It is not negative to try to take care of your family first. And no one should apologize that that is the policy of our government or that that should be the policy of our government, which is what we are advocating today.

That does not mean you do not care about your neighbors or that you do not care about the neighbors down the street. But first and foremost caring for your family is in and of itself an act of charity and love. And let us never forget that charity begins at home. And for us to be giving away the limited dollars available for health care in this country to people who have come here illegally, and taking the money away from that pool of money that should be going to our own citizens, our own children, our own senior citizens, to that great generation that the gentlewoman from Ohio talked about it, is sinful. It is sinful for us to take it and give it to strangers, many of whom have never contributed anything to the country.

Now, yes, some illegal immigrants have contributed, but let me note that many illegal immigrants who come here do not work at jobs where they take the taxes out of their paychecks. Then they bring their families, and so their families are basically being taken care of by the taxes that come out of our pockets, that we gladly gave to take care of our own families and our own fellow citizens, but these other folks who have come here illegally often do not pay any taxes at all.

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To make matters worse, the employer that employs them and gives them a job and then pays them under the table more often than not does not give them any health care benefits. Thus, they do not pay taxes, are taking away the benefits, the health care benefits, that should be going to our own people who are paying taxes.

I say this not because I dislike people, but because I do like people from other countries. Our greatest asset is that we are a country that is made up of people of every race and every religion. But I say this, every person who is an American and who is here and conducting him or herself in a legal way and trying to live their life as best they can, these people are part of our American family, and we need to care more about them than we do to take care of someone, even though he might be a good person, or the family that comes from China or Latin America, that we need to take care of our own people first. It has nothing to do with race.

The people that are involved in the United States of America, they are good Americans who come from every race and every religion, but we cannot take care of every wonderful person in the world. If we try to, we will hurt our fellow Americans. We cannot try to do everything for everybody, especially when we mean everybody in the world, and expect that we will be able to do anything for anybody, and that includes anybody in the United States, because our system will break down.

As Members hear this debate about illegal immigration, whenever we try to draw a line, the other side chastises us for it as if we are being mean-spirited. Where do they draw the line? The Members opposed to H.R. 3722 seem to believe we can give unrestricted and unlimited health care benefits to people who have come here illegally and it will not impact the American way of life or quality of life of our own American people. That seems the height of naivete.

But there are other Members who are not naive at all about this issue. While we are proud of Americans, of every race and religion, these other people have another motive on wanting to have illegal immigrants coming into our country, and it is not just to be benevolent.

But let me get to this issue and that is the idea, and we hear this because it is not just racism that is charged, but those of us who want to do something about illegal immigration, we are being charged with the idea that we are anti-immigrant. I believe around 15 percent of the population are immigrants. They are a sizable force in our communities, and they are doing great things for America, great things.

In fact, one of the things we can be most proud of in the United States is that we permit 1 million immigrants to come here every year, along with 400,000 refugees from many of the horrible spots around the world where people live in total desperation. With a population of 280 million people, I believe we can absorb 1 million immigrants a year along with 400,000 refugees. That is our contribution to the world.

That figure represents more legal immigration into our country than is permitted in all the other countries of the world combined. All of the other countries of the world combined do not permit a million immigrants into their country. But just in the United States, we permit a million people to come here, along with 400,000 refugees.

It has worked well for us because people who come here legally must be healthy, they cannot be bringing diseases into the country, they need to be honest, and they need to be self-supporting or they are not permitted to come in. That is a wonderful thing. I think legal immigration is something we can all be proud of because, of course, Americans are immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants, and proud of it.

In fact, every American immigrated here, and that includes Indian Americans who at one point emigrated from the Siberian tundra when there was some sort of ice bridge between Asia and the New World, so we are all immigrants here. But we have come here to prove that we can show people how to do things and have a better way of life. We did not come here, however, to take responsibility for the health care and the benefits for everyone in the world.

We have people now who are coming and swarming into the United States above and beyond that million people. There are probably 2 or 3 million illegal immigrants that are coming here every year, but that is just a guesstimate. They are coming here without control, so we have no idea whether they are criminals, whether they are bringing diseases to our country, and perhaps they might be terrorists. Perhaps they want to do us great harm because they identify with Islam or some other faith and hate the United States. Maybe they are coming in as illegal immigrants. We do not know. The fact is by bypassing the legal system, they have thumbed their nose at our law and they are putting us in jeopardy because we do not know.

I want to draw my colleagues' attention to the dire consequences of not stemming the uncontrolled flood of illegal immigrants into our country. Every day tens of thousands more illegals arrive in our country. If they are sick or criminals or they are terrorists, we do not know. This is a catastrophe in the making. It will lead eventually, if left uncontrolled, to a destruction of the American way of life or a major crisis in our country in which our people will suffer greatly.

The American people see what is happening. They know, they can see what is happening in our cities and in our communities throughout the country. The American people are seething with anger, and every poll suggests 60 to 80 percent of the American people are outraged that nothing is being done and their country is being taken away from them by an uncontrolled flow of illegal immigrants from other countries. Where is our courage? Where is our tenacity?

Yes, we stood up to the Japanese empire during World War II and the Nazis and the Communists after that, but now we are going to give our country away to other people who come here illegally thwarting our laws, thumbing their nose at our way of life in order to come here and consume the resources that have been put away by our mothers and fathers, and squander all of the institutions that we have invested in for our own children?

I think the World War II generation, and every time I have spoken to them, they are ashamed that we are not doing anything about illegal immigration, and they give the most support of any segment of our society in the demand to do something about illegal immigration.

Every time it comes to a vote, we can see that the American people do not like and are upset about illegal immigration, and they are upset that their elected officials are not doing anything. Elected officials are blowing smoke in the faces of their constituents. They are refusing to be honest about this issue, and we need to have an honest discussion between the elected officials of this country and the American people about illegal immigration.

There was a direct vote by the people about 10 years ago, Proposition 187, in California. Every news media was against it. The establishment of California was totally opposed to Proposition 187. It was going to lose. People were being attacked for being racist. And I know I was attacked as a racist skinhead for supporting Proposition 187. Although you could not tell it from the commentators who were saying what a great disaster it was for the Republican Party, no, Proposition 187 passed in a landslide, a landslide even though all of the major interest groups were against it and all of the major media were trying to bringing it down.

Even though an overwhelming number of voters voted for Proposition 187, it was portrayed immediately thereafter as a loss and something the Republican Party should really worry about. Let me note that 1994 was the biggest year for Republicans to gain seats than in any other election in my memory.

Let me also note, when we examine the issue of illegal immigrants, that Americans of Mexican American descent like my good friend Frank Casado, they are just like other Americans. They believe that illegal immigration is an evil that is doing great harm to our country, and about 50 percent of the Mexican Americans are with us when we want to make a stand because their children and their homes and their families are the ones suffering the most by the negative impact that goes on, economic impact and elsewhere, when our country ends up flooded by illegals.

So the Mexican American community, however, was told afterwards you have to be against 187. That was drummed into their heads. Even today, examine the polls. The majority of people who are Americans of Mexican descent, people who are citizens or who over the years came here legally, those people are with us. A majority of those people are with us.

Let me note that the gentleman from southern California (Mr. Gallegly) has told me over and over again how there are several cities in his congressional district where a majority of their citizens are Americans of Mexican descent, and he is very proud to tell me in those cities Proposition 187 got a very strong showing. It actually won a majority vote in several of those cities. Why is it then that we have conservatives and Republicans who are afraid to lead the charge on this issue and to discuss it openly and bring it up?

Again, they do not want to be called racist, and they do not want to insult their fellow citizens. They actually care about their fellow citizens of Mexican descent, and they are afraid they may be insulting these folks if they bring up the issue of illegal immigration. That is the guilt trip the news media is putting on these people.

Let me just say that Americans of Mexican descent are with us on this. They do not want their families to suffer from being unable to get higher wages for their children or income earners of their family, or education funds to be totally eaten up or health care funds being dissipated by people who have just come here, whether it is from Mexico or anywhere else. These are great Americans and these are Californians.

We Californians understand that. California is itself a name that suggests a past culture, what we think of as sort of a paradise in California.

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It is a Hispanic culture. All of us are proud in California of this Mexican heritage. Before our State was a State, there was a proud Hispanic civilization there. California is based on a mythology of an island where there was always milk and honey, and the fruits were always ripe and ready to be eaten. It was a paradise on Earth. We know that. That came from a mythology that was written out in the Spanish language. We understand that, and we Californians are proud of that. We believe we live in that paradise. Yet we will lose paradise if we do not take those steps that are necessary to maintain the quality of life, not just for the upper middle class and the upper class but for all Californians. Illegal immigration is the greatest threat in California to the quality of life of every one of our citizens and legal residents.

Let me note, they know that we are not hatemongers because we are protecting them. We need to join an alliance of all Americans to solve this problem and to speak frankly about it and not worry about being called names. We Americans must stick together. It is our loyalty that creates one Nation, our loyalty to each other; and if we are going to permit half of our population to suffer because we are giving away the benefits that were paid for by tax dollars to people who have come here illegally at the expense of that other half of our Americans who live with us, then we are committing a very sinful act. We are not caring about our fellow Americans and we are showing our disrespect for them by not trying to ensure that someone from the outside, a stranger, does not come in and take away the health dollars and education dollars they need.

Turning one group of honest citizens against another group of honest citizens in order to keep the flow of illegal immigration into our country has worked to intimidate people, but it is a dishonest tactic. We will hear it over and over again. But I hope that the American people are beginning to fine-tune their hearing and their listening of these arguments so that when people start saying, this is mean-spirited, this is racist, that they will know that that person is insulting them and trying to get them not to look at the issue of the day. I would alert my colleagues and the American people to pay no attention when they are called names.

The real hatemongers and the racists are the ones who would turn Americans against Americans. They are the ones who do not care about us as a people. We care about each other, and let us demonstrate that. I would suggest today that America is so far down the road towards a disaster that we have got to come to grips with illegal immigration, or there is going to be irreparable damage to our country. Already many of our people are suffering, and sometimes they do not even understand why.

What else besides what I just described, this fear of being called a racist, prevents us from dealing with the illegal immigration issue? There is another factor involved. This is also a powerful factor, but it is not quite as visible as the one I just described. Everyone can see that people on the liberal left are calling other people names. They are calling them racist, et cetera. We can see this effort on the left side of the political spectrum to try to unleash and keep the flow of illegal immigrants coming to our country because they want to use them as pawns, political pawns.

But there is another very powerful factor involved and that is there are some enormously powerful and enormously wealthy forces in our society which are benefiting from the massive flow of illegals into our country. Who am I referring to? I am referring to Big Business. I am referring to corporations and Big Business and all those people who would make a profit by keeping wages down. Keeping wages down. That is what is going on. There are some powerful interests in America suppressing wages so that people who are in the middle class and lower middle class, working people, are finding themselves in a trap rather than finding their own standard of living increasing.

As I say, there is the liberal wing of the Democratic Party who wants to exploit illegal immigration for their own political purposes. They want to use them as pawns. Then we have Big Business in an unholy alliance with the liberal left of the Democratic Party. These people are trying to exploit helpless people who come to our shores, of course in order to make a bigger profit, so they will not have to give health care benefits, so they do not have to pay as much; and in fact, the wages of all their other employees are brought down because other employees know they can always hire some illegal immigrants from China or from Mexico or elsewhere to do these jobs if we will not do them for this minimal salary that they are offering.

These powerful forces obviously do not represent the interests of the American people. First of all, let us note this. It is estimated that if illegal immigration goes unchecked, everything else being equal, our population in our country will jump from 280 million people today to 420 million people just a few decades from now. 420 million people. Is that in the interest of the people of the United States? Is that the type of increase in the number of people that we feel comfortable with? Along with that, of course, with this huge increase in our population comes a huge increase in the demand on scarce resources, especially those scarce resources: places to live, good housing, good jobs, good health care, good education. If we let illegal immigration continue, we will have in the blink of an eye a half a billion people living in the United States. Is that what we want? Is that what the American people deserve?

If we leave illegal immigration unchecked, with millions of new people coming to this country illegally every year, if that continues, as I say, we are going to have teeming masses. We will have people who are trapped in situations that are totally inconsistent with the vision of the American dream that has motivated the American people for over 200 years now, the opportunity to dream of a place where people can uplift themselves with hard work, a place where every person willing to work can live a dignified life. If we continue to allow this to go unchecked, all of that will disappear. The American dream will disappear. It will disappear in a mass of faces, of people who are unhappy because they do not have the opportunity that their grandparents had. We will look into the faces of people who are angry. The level of hostility in our society will increase. The America that we know and love will cease to exist.

Were we meant to have an underclass of working people who have no hope for a better life? We are beginning to develop that now. We can see it. Because wages are being held down. There is no doubt about who benefits from low wages. The people who own companies, people who want servants, et cetera, these are people who benefit from illegal immigration. Let me add, there are a lot of upper middle income people, people let us say in the top 20 percent and upper income people who have benefited by illegal immigration. Those people should understand that their whole way of life would not exist if it was not for the people who went out and fought the wars and work hard every day and are honest citizens and are willing to stand up for the principles of America that we respect each other's private property and we respect their rights to live their lives.

These wealthy people would not have that if it was not for all these other Americans who were willing to sacrifice and they do not need as much. They just need a clean and decent place to live. They need to know that their children are going to be educated. They need to have some hope in their lives. This will be taken from them unless we come to grips with a massive flow of people who are coming into this country from every corner of the world and consuming the seed corn necessary to plant the gardens which will give us the food and the benefits and the good life that the American people have worked so hard for.

My dad and mom came from very poverty stricken homes. I used to go there. My dad joined the Marines, but he was there for 20 years. We used to go back to North Dakota in the summers and sometimes in the winters and work on the farm. They were very poor farms. Those people knew that if they worked hard that America had a promise for them. But what about in the future where that promise does not exist because the education level for the children of working-class people, in California we see it, the education level is going down. It is not going down because of anything they have done. It has been going down because our State is being flooded with illegal immigrants, and their children are pouring into the school system, and they cannot even speak their own languages correctly; and thus the teachers are spending all of their time with problem students from other countries whose parents have never paid the price for the education system in the first place. So the working-class families, their children do not get the education they deserve. It is wrong. It is absolutely wrong. We have got to have the courage to face it.

What are we going to say, that every person in the world will be subsidized in their education and their health care and everything else by the American people? Where do you draw the line? If you disagree with what I just said, where do you draw the line? The other side has no answer for that at all except, you are a racist for bringing it up.

Let me note this: we are being told by those captains of industry who are now condemning any effort to try to get illegal immigration under control, we are told that illegal immigrants are taking jobs that Americans just will not take. That is why we have got to let them here, so they can take these jobs that no one else will take. That is not true. The fact is that that is no justification for allowing this massive influx into our country which is bringing down the wages of all of our people. I suggest that Americans are willing to do just about any job, but they are not willing to do any job at the pay level that is being offered.

Yes, if our country was not flooded with illegal immigrants, employers would have to pay more money for the jobs that they need to have done. That is okay. It is a good thing when you have an increasing standard of living or an increasing GNP that working people get their share and that you have higher incomes and that the people are able to own their own home and have a car and treat their kids out to dinner a couple of times a week. That is okay. But, instead, we are being told, oh, my, we would have to pay them so much money, it would make it impossible. Let us pay 25 cents more for a hamburger if it means that people who work in those shops giving us those hamburgers and that meat have a decent standard of living and can take care of their families.

A good example of what I am talking about and what has happened to our country when we are flooded with illegals who are now living in substandard housing with their whole families and it has sort of brought down the quality of life of whole areas in Southern California, let me mention this. When I went to graduate school, I worked at night as a janitor. Yes, I cleaned toilets and there was nothing wrong with that type of work. Every person who works and sustains himself or herself as an honorable job and as a dignified person, we honor them. When you are taking care of your own needs and you are self-sufficient, that is what it is all about and that is fine. It has been a long time since I was a janitor. I have to admit I was not a very good janitor, but I worked hard. If you look back, 30 years ago when I was a janitor, the gross domestic product of this country has dramatically increased in those 30 years. Yet the money that janitors make in real dollars is about the same. That is it. Our country has had a major increase in wealth, but the janitors make about the same money. It is because our country has been flooded by illegal immigrants who are willing to take those jobs. The people who run the building say, we could not afford to actually hire all these janitors if we had to pay them more money, the market value, without the illegal aliens there. All that would mean if they were paying more money to our own people to clean those toilets, there would be a toilet-cleaning machine and there would be a fellow there, a man or a woman, who could clean 10 times as many toilets with this technology and they would pay him $50,000, $60,000, maybe $70,000 a year. That is a good thing. That is fine.

But, instead, we have had a flood of illegal immigrants and instead of one American earning a decent standard of living and taking care of his family, we have got seven or so illegals who are living substandard, have brought their families in, they are all totally dependent on government benefits, and it is bringing down the quality of our neighborhoods, et cetera; and we have a teeming mass with no hope instead of an American, a proud American being able to take care of his own family and having a decent standard of living. That is what illegals have done to our society. It is a very sinister impact, but it has happened very slowly.

I had an L.A. Times reporter come to my house this weekend looking around, sifting through everything to find out if I had hired any illegals. I did not hire illegals to do my lawn work.

[Time: 21:45]

My wife, who just had triplets, as people know here, we did not hire a service unless that service agreed to guarantee that there would be no illegal immigrants in that service. So I try my best.

I try not to buy products from China, because I believe that China is a slave trade state. They use slave labor. But sometimes I end up buying Chinese things unknowingly, as much as I try not to, and I guess sometimes I buy a hamburger from an illegal immigrant.

But let me put it this way. This fellow came to me and said, "Who takes care of your lawn?" It just happens to be that the lady I rent from, and I rent a very modest house in Huntington Beach, her brother, who is a senior citizen and is retired now, takes care of the lawn. That is what he does on the side as a side job.

He said, "All over your neighborhood, your neighbors are using illegal immigrants to do their lawns. Is that bad?"

I said, well, it really is. I will tell you why it is bad. When I was a kid, I did the lawn work. I actually earned all of my spending money by cutting people's lawns, and a lot of my friends did, too.

I think it has a horrible impact on our society that the young people do not cut their own lawns now and earn their own spending money, but instead we let these slave-like laborers come in from different countries and do our lawn work for us. It would be better for our own children to earn their spending money than to pay someone else a pittance so they can live in destitution in our country and then live off of government benefits.

No, that is not the way to a better country. And we have had this impact, and it has been coming on and coming on, and we have not even noticed it, that our kids do not have the dignity now of earning their own spending money by cutting people's lawns.

So that is why we can be such a prosperous country right now, and there can be so much growth in the wealth that is available in our society, yet there is a whole group of people in our country who are being left out. The illegal immigrants are being left out, but so are those people whose wages are being impacted by the illegals' presence here, and it brings down those wages of our average working people. Their share is being gobbled up.

At one end of the spectrum you have got wealthy people. You have got wealthy people over here, they are gobbling that wealth that should go to the middle-class because they are hiring all the illegals and they do not have to pay as much. At the other end of the spectrum it is being gobbled up by bureaucracy and big government.

You have liberals and leftists basically advocating more and more government programs, and what they do, with more and more government programs, they have to tax you more. So what we are doing is taxing the lifeblood and the way of life out of our people in the middle-class, and we are, as well, keeping their wages down and destroying their way of life. They are being attacked by both sides of the political spectrum.

I would say that if it was not for the influx of illegal immigrants today, many of our college students would be out probably doing these jobs during the summer that they say we cannot get Americans to do. I think Americans will take these jobs, if they are given the right kind of pay incentives.

What we have now is a focus tonight on something that I wanted to bring up specifically about the bill that was debated today. My piece of legislation, H.R. 3722, was brought to the floor for a vote.

This piece of legislation is designed to come to grips with a new issue confronting us on illegal immigration, because something happened a few months ago that very few people saw. What I am talking about is the fact that in the Medicare bill, a bill that passed this House, I guess it was 4 or 5 months ago now, when it passed through the House there was not this provision. But when it came back from the Senate, a provision sort of secretly had been inserted by Senator Kyl from Arizona. It was the creation of a $1 billion fund, a $1 billion fund that will be used to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants, a $1 billion for the emergency health care of illegal immigrants. It is the first time we actually have a budget item to legally pay for the services of an illegal immigrant.

What does that do? That means that $1 billion in this fund will go to emergency rooms who take care of illegal immigrants.

Well, what does that mean? That means that in the future, when this is being used, American citizens who do not have health care benefits, and a lot of them do not have health care benefits because the employers will hire illegals if someone demands a health care benefit, an insurance policy, health care insurance, so if they do not have health insurance and then they have to go to the doctor, to the emergency room, what happens? Unless we do something about it, we have set up a perverse priority.

What is going to happen is that the American citizens who do not have health insurance and the legal residents who do not have health insurance are going to be told to go to the back of the line, because we can get the money from the Federal Government to pay for the health care, the emergency health care, of illegals. We quite literally are taking care of foreigners who have come here illegally at the expense of the American people.

My legislation, H.R. 3722, will ensure that the money that we have, the health care that we have, will not be dissipated dramatically by illegals, because what it does is it states very clearly for the hospitals of America, if an illegal immigrant comes to your emergency room, you do not have to give them extensive treatment for diseases that are not at that moment life-threatening.

Thus, they will take care of an illegal whose life is being threatened, but they will not have to take care and spend $300,000 or $400,000 for cancer treatments, and this happens, for all types of transplants of organs, for hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars worth of health care that illegals are getting right now.

My bill says they do not have to do that. If they want to, they can, but they do not have to do it. This legislation is vital to make sure that the pool of money available to the American people for their health care goes to the American people and not to illegals.

It also says that if someone is illegal and they come in and they are an emergency and they are taken care at the hospital, when they are seeking compensation from the fund, they just have to make that same information that they are collecting in order to be compensated, they have to make that available in a computer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

What we have heard again are bogus arguments this morning, over and over again, that this is going to increase the paperwork of doctors; it is going to make doctors policemen.

Not true. The bill we are talking about only says the information, that they will collect anyway in order to get compensated by this fund, must be made available to the INS and the Department of Homeland Security. They are not being turned in by anybody, it is just available. The other government agencies at that point have to take over. There is no reporting on the part of the doctors.

So we hear these bogus arguments over and over again, as if people are going to bring some type of contagious diseases into our country if we do not treat every illegal alien that comes into our emergency health care.

Let me note this: If you want to see diseases that will spread in our country being brought into our country from overseas, just make sure that everybody around the world knows that we are now paying for illegal aliens' health care in this country. No matter who gets into the hospital, they will be taken care of. They will bring communicable diseases from all over the world, and that is what is happening right now.

We need to instead come to grips with what my legislation does, that if someone is indeed here illegally and they are dissipating the use and the amount of money that is available for our own citizens or their health care, that illegal alien should be sent home. They should go home to their home country. That is what H.R. 3722 says. The information will be available to the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and they will proceed from there.

This is not on the back of the doctors. The doctors are freed from responsibility on that, because they no longer have to treat anything, unless someone's life is threatened at that moment.

Let me add one other thing. If they do treat an illegal immigrant in an emergency situation, my bill insists that we go to the employer, because that is the only question that hospital has to ask, who is your employer? And if that employer has not done due diligence to see if he is hiring an illegal immigrant, that employer has to pay for the emergency health care costs of the illegal immigrant. Do you get that? The taxpayers are off the hook.

What has happened is, this bill, which would be an of incredible importance to the middle-class Americans, this bill, which strives to protect us from having our limited health care dollars being drained away by people who have come here illegally, this bill is being attacked by the Chamber of Commerce. It is being attacked by big business on one end, and being attacked by the liberal left organizations that control the Democratic Party on the other.

I suggest tomorrow the vote on H.R. 3722 is one to watch, and whose side you are on will be determined by how they vote on that issue.

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