Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to correct the record concerning a great economist and a friend, the late Bernard Siegan, a distinguished professor of law at the University of San Diego. It will be remembered that in 1988 Dr. Siegan was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals. He promptly came under attack, one of the worst from Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard University. Tribe wrote in a public letter on May 28, 1987, to Senator Biden attacking the academic views of Dr. Siegan as being outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence. In a widely quoted section of his letter, Professor Tribe assailed Dr. Siegan's assertion that the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was ``a component of the right to travel, a right long secured by the Federal courts.'' At this time Professor Tribe claimed that this legal view was ``tortured'' and part of ``Mr. Siegan's radical revisionism . . . so bizarre and strained . . . as to bring into question both Mr. Siegan's competence as a constitutional lawyer and his sincerity as a scholar.'' This type of assault was typical of the attacks that preceded the defeat of Dr. Siegan's nomination. That was 1987, and much has changed since then. Dr. Bernard Siegan died in March 2006. His many books, speeches and articles made him one of the most prolific and respected legal and constitutional scholars on the political right. Recently, in sorting through the files of her last husband, Mrs. Shelley Siegan came upon a series of written exchanges between her husband and Professor Lawrence Tribe. Tribe wrote on September 6, 1991, ``I have reconsidered my description of your analysis of Brown v. Board of Education. I agree with your general approach that Brown can be justified by arguing from the `liberty' component of the 14th amendment.'' Tribe further wrote Dr. Siegan, ``although I do not reach the same conclusions you do, the issues you raise are important enough to be worthy of scholarly discussion.'' Unfortunately for Dr. Siegan's reputation, Professor Tribe's reevaluation was never publicly documented. However, in a letter to Mrs. Siegan on September 21, 2006, he wrote, ``Please permit me to apologize to you here for the unnecessary and ad hominem character of what I wrote to Senator Biden in May 1987. ``I am sorry to have caused him, or you, any distress, and I am grateful for the opportunity your letter affords me to set the letter straight as best I could do at this late date.'' All this tells us much about the ugly period of personal attack this country experienced during the judicial nominations of the 1980s. I hope this review of the above-cited letters makes it clear that Professor Bernard Siegan was a distinguished and respected scholar, a champion of personal liberty and private property. And contrary to the assertions made during his nomination hearings in 1987, Professor Bernard Siegan would have been made an excellent addition to the 9th District Circuit Court of Appeals. And now the record is set straight.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would prohibit any funds made available in this act to be used to prevent implementation of legally passed State laws in those 12 States that have authorized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The Founding Fathers wanted criminal law to be the domain of local and State governments. Sick and infirm people who live in the 12 States that have been granted by the voters in these States the legal right to use marijuana to alleviate their suffering if a doctor agrees, we should not make them targets of prosecution. If the voters in a State have so voted, and a doctor agrees, it is a travesty for the Federal Government to waste scarce Federal resources to harass sick people, elderly cancer patients and frail, multiple sclerosis sufferers and prevent them from getting the relief their personal doctors have recommended. We have heard here hysterical talk about how voting for this amendment will somehow prevent the Federal Government from being able to go after narcotics traffickers. That is nonsense. The DEA would still have the power to arrest anyone selling marijuana for recreational use, as well as anyone selling cocaine or any other drugs. After all, although related to opium, yes, and even heroin, morphine is already used legally in hospitals throughout the United States. That does not mean that we are going to open up the whole country to heroin because we allow hospitals to use morphine. Whether morphine or marijuana, the fact is that Federal resources could be better used and shouldn't be wasted on arresting sick people or their doctors. Those Federal resources, if this amendment passes, can be redirected away from these people, but to major drug traffickers or crime syndicates. That makes a lot more sense than trying to stop somebody or arrest somebody who has a doctor's prescription because they are suffering from cancer treatment. It makes more sense to focus on the drug dealers, for Pete's sake. Here in the House there is a wide coalition of Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, and this number has grown year by year, who want to promote State autonomy on this issue. This is what the Founding Fathers wanted. Criminal matters should be left up to the States. A vote ``yes'' on Hinchey-Rohrabacher is a vote to respect the intent of our Founding Fathers and respect the rights of our people at the State level to make the criminal law under which they and their families will live. It reinforces rules surrounding the patient-doctor relationship, and it is in contrast to emotional posturing and Federal power grabs and bureaucratic arrogance, which is really at the heart of the opposition. This is a vote for good government. This is a good vote for honest compassion. The legal, humanitarian and practical thing to do is to vote ``yes'' on this amendment. Let me just note this. I have had personal experiences on this, and I certainly respect Dr. Weldon and his opinion. And I have asked him for his opinion many times for problems of my own. But I lost my mother, and I recently lost my brother, to cancer. I will tell you in both cases there was a loss of appetite and just a pessimism that came over my mother and my brother both. If marijuana would have helped them, and if a doctor would have prescribed it for them, it would have been a horrible thing to think that Federal agents would come in and try to interfere with that so they would not be able to get marijuana, if that is what their doctor felt would have helped them. That is what we are deciding today: Is that a right use of resources, number one, to go in and interfere with this doctor-patient relationship? They already use morphine in hospitals. That doesn't interfere with people trying to get control of the sale of heroin on our streets. No, this will not interfere with that. But what this will do is prevent a terrible waste of Federal resources. And let us note again, if people are sick, and a doctor says yes, this would be a good treatment, I don't think our Founding Fathers, who wanted the State governments to make these criminal laws, but I don't even think that they would have wanted the State governments to interfere in such a relationship. Our Founding Fathers believed in individual freedom, and they believed in limited government. Where else but in the doctor-patient relationship should we have a limit on the government coming in and making things criminal matters? I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, the Ramos and Compean prosecution has been the greatest miscarriage of justice in my 30 years in Washington, DC, and, believe me, I have seen a lot. Ramos and Compean were veteran Border Patrol agents. They had unblemished records. They had both served in the military. Ramos and Compean were veterans of the Border Patrol, 5 and 10 years, respectively. Both had been in the military. In fact, Mr. Ramos, I believe, had been a 10-year veteran. He was a naval officer in the Navy Reserve for 10 years. Ramos had been nominated the year before as Border Patrol Agent of the Year. Yet these two agents, their lives have been destroyed, and they have been vilified by Department of Justice officials and this administration. One day 2 years ago, they interdicted a drug dealer. After a scuffle ensued, the drug dealer ran toward the border, shots were fired, the drug dealer was shot in the buttocks. At the end of this incident that took place in just a few minutes, where a split- second decision was made to shoot their weapons, they decided that he had gotten away. They didn't know that the drug dealer had been hit. There is where they made their mistake. They decided to not go through the 8 hours of arduous drudgery of filling out all of the reports that are necessary, the paperwork that is necessary when there is a shooting incident. So they and their supervisors, I might add, helped collect the little shell casings and determined, well, the guy didn't get hit, we will just forget it. Well, that was a violation of procedure, yes. For that they might have deserved a suspension. Instead, this administration chose to throw the book at these men and turn what should have been just a violation of procedure, perhaps just a paperwork mistake, which sometimes happens even here in this body, they turned that into a felony. They have destroyed the lives of these two defenders of our country who have spent 5 and 10 years of their lives willing to take bullets for us on the border. But our administration, this administration, decided to throw the book at them and give a free pass to the drug dealer, to the man who is bringing in $1 million worth of narcotics into our country. That decision is so indefensible that I believe that the administration has been trying to cover up for that mistaken decision since that moment. What we have had, for those of us who have been looking into this, is we have been completely stonewalled by this administration, by the Department of Justice, by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in trying to get the information about the drug dealer and the free passes, the free passes that he had to transit into our country unescorted after this incident. The fact of the matter is that the jury was told that the drug dealer involved was a one-timer who was trying to raise money so he could buy medicine for his mother, his sick mother. That was a lie that was presented to the jury, a lie. Let me repeat that. It was not true, and the prosecutors understood they were given something not true. In fact, we were told by the U.S. attorney, Johnny Sutton, well, the fact that the information that the drug dealer had been picked up a second time before that trial was kept from the jury, but that the judge was the one who decided that. That too is a lie. A lawyer may believe that, but the fact is we know the prosecutors were the ones who demanded the judge. It was their motion to keep that from the jury. So why do we have an administration that feels so intent on destroying the lives of these two Border Patrol agents that they vilified them, that they keep information from the jury? This whole thing stinks to high heaven and the smell seems to be emanating from the White House. Ladies and gentlemen, these are two people, two men, two brave heroes who were defending our country every bit as much as those men and women who are overseas right now defending our country. They were willing to risk their lives for us. We should not sit aside and let them languish in prison as their families go down into abject poverty without any health care, without any source of income. Their retirement benefits are destroyed. This is the most mean-spirited, nasty attack on some of the defenders of our country that I have ever seen in my lifetime. We cannot let it sit. If we are patriotic Americans, it doesn't go to just posture ourselves with the defenders of this country and then let these two men languish in prison.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleagues to search their hearts. We can do something about this. You know, first of all, it has been a dismay to me to see how we have treated each other in this body. I don't know why, but people are looking to bring down each other because people disagree. We can understand that with philosophical differences, but how can we ever justify someone who has gone out of their way, our representatives in the Department of Justice going out of their way to bring down two defenders, turning a paperwork mistake, a procedural error, into a felony which has destroyed these men's lives. If we stand up for Ramos and Compean, we stand up for the people of the United States. They know that; they are watching us. They know if we really care about the little guy, and that is what this is all about. We care about the little guy because that is what America is all about. I support the amendment and ask my colleagues to join me in doing so.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution. Let me note, I have all along argued, and I think the people on our side of the aisle have argued, that we are not in Iraq in order to have permanent bases or any other such thing. American efforts in Iraq have been totally based on benevolent and noble motives, and I would hope that this is well-understood and appreciated by the people of Iraq themselves. The fact is that there is some confusion because, during the public debate on what American foreign policy should be, far too often we have heard in the hype of emotions the charges, even from people in this body, that America is being imperialistic. I mean, that word ``imperialism'' has actually sprung up in several hearings that I've been at as a Member of Congress. That is an insult to American military personnel. We can honestly disagree about what's going on in Iraq without having to debase the people of the United States of America by claiming we're imperialists like the former empires in Russia and Germany, et cetera. No, I think we've been benevolent from the beginning. Our people wanted to come in, to liberate Iraq from a bloody tyrant who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people. We came there to help the people of Iraq and hopefully establish a democratic government. Now, whether or not we succeed or not, I'm not sure. I would hope the majority of people in Iraq appreciate that, and today, we are reaffirming to them we are not there to have any permanent presence. I, in fact, will be proposing legislation this coming week which suggests, as a sense of the House, and I would ask the Speaker of the House to be aware of this, that we need to have a sense of the House resolution calling on the Iraqi Government to have a referendum of whether they want the American troops that are there today to begin an immediate withdrawal or whether they would like American troops to stay there until order has been restored and order has been brought to the people of Iraq. I think that if the Iraqi people vote that we should have an immediate withdrawal, we should go. We should go. But if the people of Iraq decide they appreciate and want us to be there to help them fight off radical Islamists and others who would impose their brand of dictatorship on the people of Iraq, well, then, perhaps we should take into consideration that the Iraqi people want us there. So I will be proposing legislation later on in the week calling for this referendum, and in the meantime, let us reaffirm with this legislation that it had never been the intent of the United States of America to use Iraq as a permanent base for America's military presence in that region. I thank you very much for your leadership, Madam Speaker. Thank you for your leadership in this, and I appreciate you are an activist. Since I've been in this Congress, you have always been an activist, and we have been on the same side in that activism.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to correct the record concerning a great economist and friend, the late Dr. Bernard Siegan, a distinguished professor of law at the University of San Diego. In 1988 Dr. Siegan was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals. He promptly came under personal attack, most notably from Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard University. Tribe wrote a public letter on May 28, 1987, to Senator Joseph Biden belittling Dr. Siegan as being outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence. Tribe further asserted that Dr. Siegan ``reveals himself to be not a judicial conservative but an ideologue of the right, one who would deploy the Constitution in service of a conservative economic philosophy.'' In a widely quoted section of his letter, Professor Tribe assailed Dr. Siegan's support of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling as ``a component of the right to travel, a right long secured by the Federal courts,'' which was, of course, Dr. Siegan's reason for supporting Brown v. Board of Education. At the time Professor Tribe claimed that this legal view was ``tortured'' and part of ``Mr. Siegan's radical revisionism.'' At the conclusion of the letter, Professor Tribe wrote, ``The notion that it is a black child's freedom to `travel' onto the school grounds that segregation laws infringed is so bizarre and strained . . . as to bring into question both Mr. Siegan's competence as a constitutional lawyer and his sincerity as a scholar.'' This type of assault was typical of the attacks which preceded the defeat of Dr. Siegan's nomination. That was back in 1987. And much has changed since then. By the time that Dr. Siegan died in March of 2006, he had many books and speeches and articles that made him one of the most prolific and respected legal and constitutional scholars on the political right. He is today credited with being a father of the recurrent rejuvenation of property rights theory in law. In response to Dr. Siegan's defense of his views regarding Brown v. Board of Education, Tribe replied in a letter to Dr. Siegan's wife, and this was September 6, 1991: ``I have reconsidered my description of your analysis of Brown v. Board of Education in footnote 10 on page 1379 of the second edition of American Constitutional Law. I agree with your general approach that Brown can be justified by arguing from the `liberty' component of the 14th amendment . . . '' Now, that was a letter sent to Siegan years later by Dr. Tribe and when Dr. Tribe and Dr. Siegan were corresponding. These letters were found by his wife, Shelley. Tribe in that same letter writes: ``Although I do not reach the same conclusions you do, the issues you raise are important enough to be worthy of scholarly discussion. I am now in the process of drafting a rather substantial supplement to my treatise summarizing recent developments in constitutional law. In my discussion of the equal protection clause, I will include a citation to your book that I am sure will please you more than the citation did in the last book.'' Unfortunately for the public reputation of Dr. Siegan, Professor Tribe never did complete the supplement to his treatise, and Dr. Siegan, of course, passed away after that exchange of letters. Mrs. Siegan wrote to Professor Tribe after discovering these letters and asked Dr. Tribe for information on the planned, but not completed, supplement. She also asked the following question: ``In the 19 years since you penned your letter to Joe Biden, I wonder if you have reconsidered your comment regarding Bernie's competence as a constitutional lawyer and a serious scholar?'' Tribe replied to Mrs. Siegan on September 21, 2006. ``Please permit me,'' he wrote, ``to apologize to you here for the unnecessarily ad hominem character of what I wrote to Senator Biden in May of 1987. To help correct the record, if only posthumously, I am sending a copy of this letter to Senator Biden. Despite the differences in our perspectives,'' he said, ``I came to think of Bernie, just as you write that he thought of me, as a colleague in the profession we both truly love and consider to be one of the noblest.'' I would submit the rest of this statement for the Record and note that Lawrence Tribe has set the Record straight, and now the Record is straight on the great person and great scholar that Dr. Bernard Siegan was. I am sorry to have caused him, or you, any distress, and am grateful for the opportunity your letter afforded me to set the record straight as best I could at this late date. Mr. Speaker, the correspondence between Professors Bernard Siegan and Lawrence Tribe and the subsequent correspondence between Shelly Siegan and Professor Tribe tell us much about the ugly period of personal attack this country experienced during the judicial nomination hearings of the 1980s. A review of the above cited letters makes it clear that Professor Bernard Siegan was a distinguished and respected scholar and champion of personal liberty and private property. Contrary to assertions made during his nomination hearings in 1987, Professor Bernard Siegan would have made an excellent addition to the Ninth District Circuit Court of Appeals. And now the record is set straight.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to discuss with the Members here assembled and those listening on C-SPAN and those who will be reading the Congressional Record an issue that may well be determined here on the House floor in the next few weeks, at least perhaps in this session if not in the next few weeks. It is an issue that will fundamentally alter and I would say dramatically diminish a constitutionally protected right and will have tremendous long-term consequences for our country; yet, very few people in this country know that this issue is coming before us. Very few of our Members even understand that an issue of this significance will be discussed here. But there will be a fight, and there is an issue of great importance that will emerge here in the not-too-distant future. The fight over this issue of course is not a new fight. In the late 1990s, similar attempts were made at what will be attempted in the next few weeks. Those attempts were made, but they were defeated. They were defeated after the public was mobilized, and powerful forces that were at play here in our Nation's Capital were defeated. Without the public mobilizing against this particular change that was being proposed by the corporate elite here in Washington, our system of technology in the United States would have been dramatically impacted and the well-being of our people in the long run would be condemned. The battle, which took place in the 1990s, lasted for years. Corporate pressure was brought to bear, and every attempt was made to accomplish what I consider to be an insidious goal through stealth, and it was being done in a way that would keep as low a profile as possible. We see that happening today. Very few of our Members know that there is an issue of this magnitude coming before us, but special interests are already at play. We see people, we see organizations being well financed to come here and talk to us about technology issues, not realizing the real purpose of these organizations and the financing behind them is to push forward a change that will dramatically impact America's ability to be the technological leader of the world and dramatically implicate our innovators and our inventors. The American people, however, back in the 1990s, once alerted and made aware of the significance to our country of the changes that were being proposed, stood up and fought the good fight and beat back this attempt for fundamental change in a stealth manner. They in fact beat back the onslaught, but just barely. However, once the American people were made aware of the significance of what was going on, they won the day. Does it sound familiar? Yes, it sounds tremendously familiar if you look at what just happened with the immigration bill in which the elites of this country were trying to foist upon us a bill which would legalize the status of tens of millions of illegals that are in this country, only bringing tens of millions of more illegals into this country, an attempt to foist this off on the American people, to cover it up with clouds of smoke talking about a comprehensive bill whose only purpose was really to legalize the status, to give amnesty to those who are already here. And once the American people understood that, that bill was defeated. We need that same type of mobilization if America's future generations are to be protected from the greatest theft of American technology and innovation that could ever be imagined by our people today. Today, we face this onslaught that is very similar to that of the 1990s because the same goals are in mind by the same interest groups who would have fundamentally changed the American patent system, but they were defeated. Luckily, they were defeated because the American people, as I say, were mobilized. What we have here, as we had in the case of the fight on immigration, was that the issue itself, whether it is immigration or the fundamental changes being proposed to our patent system, are part of a greater threat. That threat which would manifest itself every now and then, perhaps four or five times a year we see this emerging, is part of a strategic maneuver by those who we would call globalists. The fundamental threat is the globalism, which is being advocated and sometimes touted on television, et cetera, is something that, if we don't watch out, will be experienced at the expense of the American people. Globalism as it is being foisted on us as the immigration bill was will come at the expense of the American people of their freedom and their prosperity and, yes, even the safety of our country. The battle at hand is the globalist strategy to deprive us, the American people, of the greatest source of our Nation's progress and strength: the creative genius of our own people; the innovation and technological leadership that has provided us with a decent standard of living for ordinary people and more freedom than any other country on the planet. The globalists are at it again, seeking to change our laws in a way which would facilitate their power, would facilitate in this case the theft and transfer of American technology, the theft of the genius of our inventors, which has been one of our country's greatest assets. People say, how could this possibly be? Well, how could it be that this Congress almost passed, there was a steam engine and a steamroller coming down the path at us that almost passed an immigration bill that would have brought millions, tens of millions, perhaps as many as 50 million more illegals into our country because we would have been legalizing the status of 10 million to 20 million illegals who are here already. How did that almost happen? Well, it almost happened because there are forces at work in a democratic society. In this case, the globalist forces, the same ones who were at play on immigration, the ones who thought it would be better for everybody if we just had an open border with Mexico, because that is what really was the goal by the immigration fight. The whole fight was all about big businessmen who thought it would be really good to have an open border so we could keep down wages, and of course the liberal left of the Democratic Party who felt that as many immigrants that we have swarming into our country gives them a political base. Well, those same people who are pushing that are now working to push through wholesale changes in our patent laws, changes that will undermine our independent inventors and allow our competitors to steal our technology, American technology, and seriously weaken our country and its competitiveness. The legislative vehicle for this legalized larceny is H.R. 1908, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act. In this case, because it reflects a very similar bill that was attempted a few years ago, we will call it the Steal American Technologies Act, the Sequel. It is a dramatic altering of our patent laws, and our patent laws that they're trying to change have been in place since our country's founding. Patent law, of course, is an issue that is somewhat obscure, and it is an issue that is very difficult to understand in that it is related directly to new and unknown technologies and science, and deals with complicated parts of American law. The globalists have hoped that this issue will seem so perplexing that it will be ignored by much of the public and perhaps not even understood by most Members of Congress. Yet, how Congress resolves this issue, once it's brought before us in legislative form, will determine the future well-being of our people and the security of our country. It is just that important. Just as the immigration bill was important and important for the American people to get involved, this issue is of equal importance to that in terms of our future. This Congress will determine the fundamental patent law, the legal protections, the organizational structure in which we deal with technology commercialization. All of this will determine what our country is going to be like in the next 50 years and who and what kind of power we will have as a people on this planet. We will be making a determination of what the patent law of the United States of America will be for this generation and future generations of Americans. Of course, in the past, our Founding Fathers were in the same position; they made the right decision. They put in place patent law, which now we are seeing the elite of this society and the globalists throughout the world trying to bring down this fundamental law that was put into place by our Founding Fathers. Patent law is part of the American legal system and, as I said, it is something that perhaps has been taken for granted by the American people. Who pays attention to patent law? As I say, it's complicated, hard to understand. However, every time we turn around, we can see that it is America's technological edge that has permitted the American people to have the highest standard of living in the world and permitted our country to sail safely through the troubled waters of economic crisis, of world wars and of international threats. It is American technology and our genius that has made all the difference when it counted. And it is the American patent law that has determined what technology and at what level of technological development that America has had. This is not an obscure issue. This is an issue that will change our way of life. This is an issue of vital importance to every American, and it will determine the future standard of living of our people and the safety of our country. We Americans came to this continent, by and large, as poor immigrants, millions of us. We faced the most undeveloped land imaginable. There was no land anywhere in the world at that time that was more undeveloped than the United States of America. When our Founding Fathers and mothers came here, they suffered deprivation. They were not safe. They were not prosperous. They died of hunger, and they worked very hard. And yes, we had space. Yes, we had lots of space and resources. But it wasn't the space and the resources that changed this group of huddled masses that came here, these poor souls that came here over those hundreds of years. It wasn't the resources and the space that changed their way of life and made them a prosperous and free people. The secret of America's success is found not in our wide expansions or the deposit of minerals. Instead, the secret to our success can be found in the fact that our people had the freedom that our Founding Fathers fought for, and they had guaranteed rights, and also, of course, we, as a people, had a dream. We had a dream of a country where average people, yes, even people who are below average, can come and can prosper and can live at peace, a country made up of people from every part of the world, every race, every religion, every creed, every ethnic background, who could come and could live together in dignity and with liberty, and, of course, they could live free from fear. They could live with the understanding that everyone's child would have an opportunity to improve him or herself, to enjoy a rising standard of living that was based on their hard work and, yes, as Martin Luther King said, on the content of their character. We believed, as a people, in rights and believed these rights to be given by God and that the purpose of government was protecting these rights. Well, most people, when they think of that, think of religion and think of speech and the right of assembly. But patent rights are a right of property. It's a right that is written into our Constitution. The United States of America is one of the only countries of the world to have written into its founding document, the Constitution, a section dealing with patent rights. Let us note that in the body of the Constitution, before the Bill of Rights, the word right is only used once, and that is the right of an author or an inventor to own and control the product of his labor, his or her labor, for a given period of time. In fact, Benjamin Franklin was a great inventor as well as one of our Founding Fathers and one of the great champions of liberty in the history of humankind, as was Thomas Jefferson, as was Washington. It was George Washington who requested of the First Continental Congress that they pass, as one of their first laws, a patent law, the Patent Act of 1790, which became the foundation of America's technological progress from that point till today. Others of our Founding Fathers were people who believed in freedom, but they also believed in technology. Visit Monticello and see what Thomas Jefferson did with his time after he penned the words of the Declaration of Independence and had served as President of United States. He went back to Monticello and spent his time inventing things, things that would lift the burden from the shoulders of labor. Yes, he, in fact, signed his name as the first Patent Commissioner of the United States, which was invested in the Office of the Secretary of State at that time. Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the bifocal and the stove, the potbellied stove, which made a huge difference in the well-being of people for hundreds of years thereafter. These Founding Fathers were our Founding Fathers, and they knew that with freedom and technology, we could increase the standard of living of our people, all our people, not just the elite, but the average person could come here and live with a modicum of dignity and decency and prosperity in their lives. Our people were not just the Americans who were here, our Founding Fathers knew that, but were the tens of millions of Americans who would come here in the future on such a grand scale. And we would know, and they knew that if the people were going to come here and occupy this land from one part of the continent to the other, that wealth would have been to be produced on a grand scale as well. It couldn't be relied on just on brute muscle strength and the strength of animals. Instead, our Founding Fathers knew that machines and technology would produce the wealth necessary to have a free and prosperous society. That's why they built into our Constitution the strongest patent protection of anywhere in the world, and that is why, in the history of mankind there has never been a more innovative nor creative people. It's not just the diversity of our people that's given us this creativity. It's been the innovation and progress that was inherent in the way we structured our law, our patent law. Recently I sat next to a Japanese minister over lunch, and he was telling me how Americans are always the ones who are coming up with the creative new ideas; what we do is just improve on those ideas, but we're trying to make our people more creative. And he was discussing different ways. And I said, it's real easy. All you have to do is make sure you change your patent system. You have a fundamentally different patent system than we do. He was shocked. He'd never thought of that. And, in fact, the patent system in Japan was designed to help corporate interests utilize technology rather than protect the rights of the creators of new ideas. And of course, if the creators are being bullied and robbed, they're not going to come up with much. And guess what? In Japan, they don't, because your Shogun system of elitists in Japan steal the technology from their own creative people, and thus, their people don't create. Americans have known that they have rights to own their own creations since the founding of our country. That has become part of our character, although most people don't relate it back to the law. Most people don't relate the character of our people back to the law when it comes to freedom of speech and those things in our Constitution as well, freedom of religion. But they are so important to the development of our national character. We would have had a different national character without those rights and without the rights that were granted to our inventors and our technologists in our Constitution by our Founding Fathers. Everyone has heard about Thomas Fulton's steamboat. Well, let me note that Thomas Fulton didn't invent the steam engine. He invented the steamboat. Because in Europe and elsewhere, they didn't see technology necessarily as something that was very good. The average person thought technology was going to replace me as a job, and the steam engine was not permitted to be used there. In the United States, the American people always understood machines will help produce more wealth. It will magnify the production and the by-product of our labor, and it's good for people to have a society which has more wealth rather than less. So Mr. Fulton put that steam engine on a boat and put it to work because we knew, and the American people as well as our leaders knew, that machines, good technology will help all the people of a country. Cyrus McCormick invented a reaper that helped produce more food so people were well fed in this country, as compared to other societies which have had so many famines. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, which led to the telephone, et cetera. Thomas Edison, the light bulb, and so many other inventions. Black Americans, here's something that is never recognized too much out of the Black community, but Black Americans have been prolific inventors. Even at times of mass discrimination against our Black fellow citizens, the patent office and rights, property rights for inventions were respected, and the Black community succeeded in, perhaps more than any other community compared to their numbers, in offering inventions and innovations. Jan Metzlinger was a Black, former Black slave who invented a machine that was used in the manufacturing of shoes which dramatically changed the shoe industry. And before then, Americans had one pair of shoes. They could expect to have one pair of shoes in their life. And it was a Black man who invented the machine that made the production of shoes so effective and efficient that people could have different shoes. And when they wore out, they didn't have to wear shoes that had holes in the bottom of them. George Washington Carver, one of the great renowned American inventors, respected by scientists, respected throughout the world; there are so many examples of Black inventors, because their rights in that area, that one little area of the Constitution, while they were being suppressed in other areas, their rights for ownership of patents was respected and thus, in that area, they prevailed and they flowered. And they invented things that did wonderful things for our country and the rest of our population. It's too bad it took so long for us to catch up in the other areas of protecting the rights of Black Americans. But they can be proud that, even during the time when they were under suppression, that they were able to succeed in developing new creative ideas that helped this entire country. We are proud of our history of technologies, because we know, as Americans, as we have always known, that these inventions, no matter who invented them, would produce more wealth with less labor and thus increase the standard of living of all of our people and the opportunity of all of our people. And thus, it built a society which we have become very proud of and that we should be proud of. But I suggest today that if we change those fundamental laws, which this bill is attempting to do, we will obliterate, in one or two generations, the great progress that we've experienced in the standing of the American people among the nations. Yes, we look back at the Wright brothers; we remember them. The Wright brothers, who were they? They were men with little education, probably like Mr. Metzlinger. I just mentioned he worked in a shoe factory. These men worked in a bicycle shop, and they ended up inventing something about 100 years ago that they were told was absolutely impossible by the experts. Yet they went ahead and they received a patent. They received a patent on how to shape the wing of their airplane, and they changed the future of mankind forever as we uplifted humankind off the ground and put us on a road to the heavens. Two Americans, ordinary Americans, not rich people, not educated greatly. Two people who ran a bicycle shop. These are the people we are proud of because we understand that is what America is all about that these people have their rights and freedom. Innovation, a great creative genius, is the miracle that produced our wealth. Not just the muscle. It was the genius of our people. It was the tenacity of the Wright brothers and Cyrus McCormick and others and their genius that produced the wealth and produced these technologies that have changed all humankind and all Americans. And this creativity that we are talking about was protected by law. We have treated the intellectual property rights in this country and the creation of new technology just as we have treated other rights. They are property rights and they are respected. They have been part of our country, part of our law, that individuals have a right, as determined by our Constitution and as outlined in our first fundamental laws since 1790, that these property protections would be afforded to American inventors. And that is what America is all about. Every one of us has that kind of opportunity. Does anyone think that in World War II and in the Cold War that it wasn't our technological genius as well as our commitment to freedom that carried the day? We didn't fight the Germans and the Japanese man to man, just as in the Cold War, we didn't fight the Russians and the Chinese man to man in great battles. No. What happened is, if we would have tried to match them in pure muscle power, we would have lost. Instead, our aerospace workers, our scientists, our inventors, our computer specialists, our missile technicians, our rocket builders, and, yes, those scientists who came up with and are currently about to deploy a strategic missile defense system for the United States, all of these technological workers helped make the difference in those challenges to our national security, whether against the Nazis and the Japanese militarists or the communists. And, yes, perhaps even against radical Islam, should some regime there or in North Korea send a missile in our direction, our technologists may well be providing us a defense. Yes, we won the Cold War without having to suffer a massive conflagration because we relied not only just on the courage and the faith and the freedom but also in the superior technology that was flowing from our people. And that was because our American inventors were matched by no one in the world. Today it is my sad duty to inform my fellow colleagues and the American people that we face a great historic threat. This threat comes at exactly the time when our country faces economic challenges from abroad as never before. We must prevail over our economic competitors because they are at war with the well-being of the American people. We must win or our country's people will lose. If we lose this battle, our people will suffer, their standard of living will suffer, their freedom will suffer. Future generations will see their standard of living decline as well as the safety and strength of our country. If we do not remain the technologically superior power on this planet, we will face new challenges and we will be defeated and our people will no longer have the prosperity and the rights that were the dream of those founders who came here 300 years ago to inaugurate this wonderful country, the United States of America. Our adversaries have identified technology as our strong point. They see it right away. Americans are innovative, just like that Japanese minister that I was talking about. Americans are innovative. We have the new ideas, the new concepts. We have the ways of coming up with a different twist. We have the can-do spirit. There is nothing that can't be done with freedom and technology. Well, they have identified this as our strong point. But it is also a weak point in that many Americans have no idea what legal structure was established that has protected this part of the American character, this legal establishment, this legal foundation that has permitted us to have creative people and build this type of genius within our society. What I have been talking about is the fundamental patent law of our country. Our economic adversaries and their allies are engaged in a systematic attack on the patent rights of the American people. These adversaries, of course, among them are the leaders of multinational corporations, some of whom are based right here in the United States. These multinational corporations are run by an elite whose allegiance is to no country. Most significantly, we do not know if their allegiance is to the United States of America. These are the same people who will take the product of research and development grants provided by the taxpayers of the United States and build factories in China based on those technologies. These are the same people who would eliminate jobs in the United States and create factories in China in order to make a 15- to 20-percent profit as compared to a 5- or 10-percent profit here. But over here they would be dealing with American citizens; over there they are dealing with slaves. The corporate elite that does this is behind and is pushing for the changes in our patent law that I am talking about today. And these multinationals and the elite that run them are not watching out for us. If the globalists are successful, 20 years from now our citizens will wonder what hit them. Pearl Harbor happened in one moment. Our people woke up to the threat and mobilized. Today it is happening slowly. The attack is less evident, but our rights are being robbed and eroded, and changes in our law are being made that will decrease our standard of living and damage our way of life and will be devastating to the American people, and they will not know what hit them. This attack is being conducted not by the bombers on Pearl Harbor, but the bombs that are being planted are being planted by lobbyists in our nation's capital who are working for multinational corporations, who believe, perhaps, that we can make everything better with a globalist strategy. But they are willing to pillage the wealth of our country and transfer that wealth and transfer power overseas in order to succeed in building a new global strategy, a new global concept. One of the steps necessary for this great global vision to succeed is the destruction of the American patent system. As I say, lobbyists have been hired by well-heeled multinational corporations and by companies who no longer have any desire to pay for the use of technology that has been developed by American citizens. They, of course, are not saying, well, we are going to destroy the patent system. Nobody is just coming up and saying we want to destroy the patent system. We want to steal all of America's technology. They are not saying that because we might be a little upset because we would notice that they are the same people who are setting up factories in China using slave labor and putting our people out of work. They wouldn't be that upfront. Instead, they are suggesting our patent system is broken and needs to be fixed. We have heard it before: The immigration system is broken. We need a comprehensive bill. And in the end, the comprehensive bill that was coming over here that was being voted on would have made the situation a lot worse. This is exactly what this elite is trying to do right now in terms of American technology and the patent system. They are using a system that needs to be fixed, the patent system, which has some flaws, organizational flaws, and they are saying we are going to fix it; yet the fixes they are proposing would destroy the system as we know it. No. Instead, we need to correct the flaws in the system. And, again, if it sounds like a replay of immigration, it is exactly right. It is the same strategy. But they failed then, and if the American people are mobilized, they will fail again. We hear about widespread problems in terms of the Patent Office. This is what we are going to hear from the elite, from the people involved in this globalist attempt to destroy America's patent protections. We are going to hear about patent lawsuits, about horror stories concerning companies that are tied up for years in court and then eventually have to give up and relent to trial laws because there are so many delays inside the patent system. And we are going to hear about examiners who are overworked, underpaid, and without proper education and training. Well, in reality the patent lawsuits are no more of a major problem than they ever were. Between 1993 and the year 2005, the number of patent lawsuits versus the number of patents granted has held steady at about 1.5 percent. In fact, in 2006 there were only 102 patent cases that actually went to trial. But there are some very real changes that are needed and problems that need to be solved in the patent system. Unfortunately, the legislation making its way through the system does not correct these problems. The problems are being used as an excuse to act, but the proposed changes are aimed at other than the more significant goals. So let's understand that we need patent legislation. We need patent legislation that speeds up the patent process and provides training and compensation for patent examiners and helps us protect our inventors against foreign theft. We need to make sure that the people who are the inventors of our country can use this system. But the bill that is being presented to us and these maladies that are being used to justify this new bill do not correlate. The fact is the bill will not solve the problems but will obliterate the fundamental rights that have been granted since our country's founding. Just like the immigration bill, as I say. The problems created by our current policymakers, of course, they could have corrected any of these problems with the patent system over the past 10 years, but those problems that are still around are being used as an excuse to destroy the system within a cloud of smoke. Well, the people have been trying to do this, as I said, for over a decade, the power elite in this country, and they were thwarted. Now they are back. We can all understand what this is all about when we just remember the word ``comprehensive.'' That was being used as a cover not to reform and strengthen our control and management of immigration but to destroy our ability to stop the massive flow of illegal immigration into our country. That is the same thing that is happening in terms of patent legislation. There are some problems with the way our patent system is operating. It can be much more effective. But instead of correcting those problems, it is being used as a smokescreen. H.R. 1908 is designed not to correct the problems but to destroy the patent protections our people have enjoyed. So, first, H.R. 1908 creates a post-grant review process. What does it do? The first thing is a post-grant review process, which means that after someone is granted their patent, people can still come back and challenge them after the patent has been granted. For the little guy, this is a disaster because the little guy doesn't have the money for all the lawyers. Once the patent is granted, that should be a situation when the patent is granted. Instead, H.R. 1908 attempts to create an endless process of challenges to a small inventor. Second, H.R. 1908 changes our patent system to award patents based on first-to-file rather than first-to-invent. This is a little hard to understand, but since our country's founding, if an inventor could prove that he has invented something, he would then be protected. His rights to own that would be protected. In other countries, if big corporations immediately just file patent after patent after patent every time they come to a small step forward, they can protect themselves, but the small inventor will never be able to do so. Third, the most egregious of all the items in H.R. 1908, and people should pay attention to what I am saying here because this is fundamentally different than every patent system in the world, up until now the American citizen, if he has filed for a patent, until that patent is granted, the patent is kept totally secret. In fact, patent examiners can go to jail for felonies if they disclose that information. And then, when the patent is granted, no matter how long it takes, even if it takes 10 years to do so, the inventor gets to have 17 years of patent protection where he owns that technology. That has been our tradition. What do we want to do? This bill, H.R. 1908, the ``Steal American Technologies Act,'' the sequel, what does it do? It wants to make sure that anybody who files for a patent, any inventor, if he has not been granted his patent within 18 months, perhaps because of bureaucratic snafus or whatever, that patent is going to be put on the Internet, that patent is going to published for every thief in the world, every Chinese manufacturer, every Japanese manufacturer, every Korean manufacturer, anybody in the world who wants to steal it will be able to have it and be in production before our inventors get their patents even granted to them. So, let's take a look at these three proposals of this H.R. 1908. The proposed grant review process is a gift to the large corporations and the powerful elites, which they wish to destroy the small inventor. As I say, they are going to be able to grind the small inventor down. For the invalidation of a patent, a company, if they can show they've been economically disadvantaged by the patent, they can force a review of the Patent Office of that patent. So if somebody invents something that's going to be wonderful for a lot of people in the country but will put another business out of work because they don't need buggy whips anymore, then the buggy whip manufacturer, who now has a lot of money because over the years, under the old system, everybody needed a buggy whip, they're going to use that wealth to tie up and destroy those innovators who would bring us forward. Because now, even once the patent is issued, they can keep filing complaint after complaint, challenge after challenge. The little guys will never be able to cope with that. Second of all, this legislation doesn't stop just there. As I said, it lowers the bar for providing a patent's invalidity to current standards of clear and convincing evidence. It basically lowers, for some of the standards that we have operated on, from clear and convincing evidence to the preponderance of evidence, which of course erodes the confidence an inventor has that his patent won't later be just revoked by the Patent Office. So it's changing the standards and allowing them to have future challenges. The small inventor is going to be ground down. But, of course, the worst part, what's this? H.R. 1908 also, of course, does not limit the number of times that a patent can be challenged, so time after time grounds these down. So it's not just one challenge after a patent has been granted, but a continual challenge to the small inventor. This proposed change from first-to-invent to first-to-file is yet another attack on the small inventor. The United States is unique in using the first-to-invent system. All the rest of the countries have first-to-file. And this has ensured that the true inventors will receive the benefit of their invention instead of a thief who happens on some information. Changing it to first-to-file will create a massive problem for the small inventor. Inventors will have to rush to the Patent Office, hurriedly scrambling to file the necessary documents every time they've made one small step forward. This will cause less thorough applications. So we're going to have people who are applying, because they have to apply for so many, the applications will not be as well thought out and not as thorough. And this will add to the burden of the Patent Office, which will mean there will be even more work for the Patent Office and even more delays. So this will benefit, yes, large corporations who can afford patent after patent after patent after patent application, but for the small inventor who only has a little bit of money, he will be totally rolled over. Now, the thieves in China and elsewhere are waiting for the day when we change this patent law to what this last suggestion is under H.R. 1908. Because this is very similar to the immigration bill. The only purpose of the immigration bill was to give amnesty, was to grant legal status to those people who are here legally. The only reason for the patent bill is this particular provision, and that is, American inventors have had a protection that their applications will be secret, if they file in the United States, that their patent will be secret up until that patent is granted to them, but this bill changes it. After 18 months, all patent applications will be made public. Now get into that: Under this bill, after 18 months, even if a patent hasn't been granted, everybody in the world is going to be able to know all of the secrets in the patent application. Thieves around the world will be counting down the days until America's best ideas are put on display and in great detail for everyone to examine, even though the inventor has no protection at that point. How do we know that this piracy will happen? We know because Japan, which I have mentioned has a different patent system, already publishes patent applications, and it is suffering from a withering attack from China and elsewhere. The Japanese actually take their patent applications and, after 18 months, put them on the Web. Well, what happens? The Japanese patent applications on the Web, that Web site receives 17,000 hits a day from China, and 55,000 hits a day from Korea. The people viewing the Web site are not simply curious about some gizmo or gadget; they're interested in one thing: They want to steal someone else's creative ideas. H.R. 1908 would give every thief in the world an opportunity to take America's technology and use it even before our people are granted a patent. Why would anybody want to do this? Well, the same people who want to do this are the same people who are building factories in China and use slave labor. I can tell you that right now. This is basically coming out of the high electronics industry. You know what some of those people are doing right now? Some of those people are over there helping the Chinese Government track down religious dissidents, people who want democracy or believe in God, but want to use the Internet, our technology companies are over there helping them track these people down and throwing them in jail. And you know what they want to do here? They want to steal all the technology from every American inventor and not pay them a royalty. That's what's going on here. And of course, they're in alliance with the other global elitists from other countries. This is not the type of force in our society that we should permit to make the rules on how this country functions. We would be giving, if this bill passes, our economic competitors, even our enemies, access to our Nation's technological breakthroughs and scientific achievements. H.R. 1908 does that by demanding that all patent applications be put on the Internet to view and to steal even before the patent is issued. If it's hard to believe, people need to hear it again: We have an elite in the electronics industry that is so intent on taking the technologies that are being developed by our inventors and not giving them royalties, that they want to change this fundamental part of our patent law that has protected our individual inventors, protected them by saying, what you invent is yours for 17 years and that no one will know about your patent application until your patent is issued; they want to change this fundamental nature of our system. This provision is not only a bad idea and not only will it harm the American inventor, it will hurt the American people by putting us at risk to our enemies. Already we are seeing a flow of technology and of capital assets to China, which is a major adversary, maybe not an enemy now, but perhaps someday an enemy. Our schools are filled with graduate students from China and elsewhere, and they are learning the secrets that cost us billions of dollars of research to come up with. We are not watching out for the American people. And H.R. 1908 would, again, be a dagger in the heart of the American standard of living and our ability to secure our country. What is really going on here is an effort. Of course, they will claim that we have to do this because Japan does it, and Europe does it. They want to harmonize America's laws, our patent laws, with the rest of the world. Well, why don't they try that with the rest of the Constitution? If we wanted to harmonize the freedom of speech and religion with everybody else in the world, would the American people stand for that? We have the strongest patent protection of any country in this planet, just like we have the protection for other rights. If people want to harmonize with American law, we want a globalist approach to patents or to technology and to freedoms and rights, people can harmonize with us. Let them come up to our standards. If the American people were out to harmonize the law, that's one thing, but we wouldn't even dream of doing that. The American people would never go along with having our religious freedom or freedom of speech and other freedoms that we have that are guaranteed by our Constitution; we would never permit them to say, well, we have to have the same level of freedom as they have in Singapore or Vietnam or, let's say, Ukraine or Belarus. No. The fact is, the American people are proud that we have guaranteed rights and that our Constitution protects these rights. And I know that many people do not understand the part that has been played by the rights that were granted in our Constitution to our inventors specifically, but they are vitally important to America's safety and well-being. If we move to harmonize patent law, no, things will not go more smoothly for our country and for the world, what will emerge is a global elite which wants to mandate upon the American people the same things they mandate on the surfs and the servants and the people of other countries who they feel that they are naturally endowed with the right to tell them what to do. No, no. We believe that every individual has rights in this country, and we are not going to harmonize our laws, whether they're patent laws, and we are proud that we have a standard of living that has flowed from our patent laws and our technology laws. We are proud of that, and we are not going to bring down our standard of living in order to harmonize it with the rest of the world. And yes, those businesses that are flowing over to China to use slave labor, yes, we do not want the elite of those companies making policy in the United States, especially if it's policy that would allow them to steal innovative and creative technology ideas from America's inventors, from the little guy. The fact is, we have had the strongest protection of patent rights of any place in the world, and thus we have had more innovation and a higher standard of living than the other people of the world. The common man here has the opportunity that common people in other parts of the world do not have because America has had technological superiority. And if our rights to our patent protection are diminished in order to harmonize those rights with the rest of the world, it should be no great surprise when we will end up with the same type of country that they have in those countries, that our people will have the same type of opportunity and standard of living and freedom that they have in third world countries. Is that what we want? Well, the corporate elite doesn't care what we want because they don't care about us. They were the ones that wanted to bring in tens of millions of more immigrants into our society illegally because they knew that if we legalized the status of those 15 to 20 illegals that are already here, that would bring in 50 million more. They don't care enough about us to want to stop that, and they don't care enough about us to want us to have a high standard of living. This is another inherent conflict between the globalists and the patriots. If we do not win this battle, if we are not vigilant, America will lose and future Americans will not enjoy the freedom and prosperity and safety that we Americans enjoy today. This destruction of our fundamental patent system is an abomination, a long-term threat to the well-being of the American people, and it will benefit basically wealthy and powerful interests, an elite that has no loyalty to the United States or to our people. Our people have got to know that this is a threat to all of us. Our people need to unite, as we did on the fight against this immigration bill that would have been a disaster for our country and a disaster for ordinary Americans, we need to unite and we need to organize and we need to make sure that people in this body, in the House of Representatives, know that H.R. 1908 is something that is contrary to the interests of our country and is contrary to the interests of working people. And anyone voting for it, it won't be tolerated if that's the way people feel about it. Those advocating the ``sledge hammer'' approach to patent reform, allegedly addressing just small problems, but using a sledge hammer to fix those small problems, are, in reality, advocating a complete reconstruction, and I would suggest destruction, of our patent laws. If they really want to address specific problems, just like it was in the bill with the immigration, let them target those solutions instead of using a bulldozer in the name of knocking down a mole hill. Yes, we can make our patent system more efficient. We can make sure that those patent examiners are trained and well educated and that they know the system and that the system works faster and more efficiently. One thing we could do is make sure everyone who pays for a patent that that money stays in the patent system. Another thing is we can make sure that there are plenty of scholarships available for people who can get their PhDs in their scientific endeavors in these areas so they can come back and work in the patent office. We can correct our problem. But destroying and rearranging the rights of our inventors would be a catastrophe. Think about it. If you have a hangnail, and it is painful, and you go to a doctor, and the doctor goes to great lengths and says, oh, what a horrible hangnail you have there, you must be in pain, and, look, it has a little bit of infection, well, you might listen to your doctor. But what happens when the doctor says, well, I think we are going to get rid of that hangnail problem. We are going to amputate your leg. This is what this is about. Those people are trying to amputate our legs in the name of getting rid of a hangnail because the Patent Office isn't working efficiently. Well, I would suggest that that doctor, if he suggests to you that he is going to amputate your leg, either he isn't incompetent or he doesn't like you. And you better check and find out. But either way, you don't want to follow his advice. We are told by those people who want to totally change the patent system that these evil inventors, people like Thomas Edison and Cyrus McCormick, all of these inventors, the people who invented the drugs that have cured polio, these evil inventors, they actually abuse the system because they own it for 17 years. No. It has been that profitability, it has been that spur, that incentive to create that has come up with these miracle cures, that has come up with these machines that have made us more competitive. Our workers cannot be more competitive with the Chinese or the Indians unless we have the technology. If our technologists are going to have all of the product of their genius stolen by the Chinese and Indians even before the patent is issued, how are we going to compete in the future against China and India? No. These people who are inventors, they are not abusing our law. They are the heroes. They are American heroes, just like the Wright brothers were American heroes. They lead to a better way of life. These large corporations who exploit people and have no loyalty to us, who have armies of lawyers who will steal anything and smash anyone who gets in their way, those are the people we have to watch out for. Those are the people who are behind this proposed change in our patent law. Property rights for the little guy is a good thing. And I don't care if the guys in the corporate board rooms don't agree with me on that. I know that as a Republican people think, oh, well, he must be for business. No, I am for Americans. And I know that today the American people are being abused. If it weren't for the American people, there wouldn't be any freedom anywhere in the world. Any hope for anyone, for mankind and humankind is tied to the willingness of the American people, because we care about them. Why should we harmonize our laws with the rest of the world off of some global vision that some egghead in some university thought up and taught to his students 20 years ago who now are out trying to implement this global vision? Our people are not fighting for a new world order. Our people, when they defend this country, are defending our rights and our liberties. If we ever lose that, if we ever lose the allegiance of the little guy to our country, we have lost everything. Because what it seems like here is what we have got going in this country, whether it is patent law or whether it is immigration law, is that the elite no longer have the allegiance to America's little guys. You know, there is a story that goes with this whole issue. It deals with a little guy who invented the picture tube, Philo Farnsworth. There is a statue to him right down the hallway, a statue here in our Nation's Capital to a country hick named Philo Farnsworth. It shows him there holding a TV picture tube. You know what? Philo Farnsworth was a hick. He had a little training in engineering. He actually figured it out. RCA, the most powerful company in the United States at that time, spent what is the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars to try to find the secret of a picture wave that you could have so you can have a television set and a tube that would capture that. Philo Farnsworth figured it out. He wrote RCA. He said, hey, I figured it out. Come on over and we will discuss it. Sure enough, the head researcher from the labs at RCA showed up at Philo Farnsworth's home. Philo Farnsworth went out to the barn and showed him everything and how he had done it and how he figured it out. He had his notes. The guy took extensive notes and said, We will get back to you. Do you know what? RCA spent 20 years trying to steal Philo Farnsworth's invention. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. Thank God for the United States of America, the little guy, Farnsworth, beat RCA, the big corporation. That is why we have a statue to him here. That is what America is all about, protecting the rights of the little guy to make this a better world.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, it was a great victory for the American people when the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill was withdrawn from consideration in the Senate 2 weeks ago with such a stinging rebuke from the voters, because we understand that the voters had contacted their elected Representatives in such number that the bill was no longer tenable. After that rebuke from the voters, one would think that the White House and the congressional leadership would have listened to the American people and concentrated on securing our borders and moving forward with those activities to secure our country, and forget about legalizing the status of 15 to 20 million people who are in our country illegally. Well, how wrong we were. Like a bad horror movie, the monster you thought had been killed is somehow being brought back to life. It's rearing its ugly head again in the sequel. Well, here it is, Nightmare on North Capitol Street, part two, starring the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill. This time we need to drive a stake into the heart of this monstrous threat to the American people. And what threat am I talking about? It is about time that the Washington elite and the elite of America's business community understand what impact this massive flow of immigration into our society has had on the life of the American people. What we face in California and now throughout the country is a disintegration of our education system. Our schools, for which our children are dependent on their education and the future of their lives, are being diminished in terms of their capability of educating our children because there is a massive influx of children into our school systems, children who should not even be in this country. We have a health care system that is in crisis. Today, we see in California and we see in other States as well the closing of emergency rooms. So American citizens whose children are out on the highways, if there is an accident, may now not be able to go to emergency rooms to get treated, to have their lives saved, where only a few short years ago, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, there was an emergency room to service that. Why are these emergency rooms closing? Why is the health care system in our country breaking down? This massive influx of immigrants, illegal immigrants, into our society. In fact, many people today are not able to pay for their health care insurance. And why is health care so high? One of the major reasons health care insurance is so high is when American citizens go to hospitals in order to be treated, their health care policy, which is massively expensive, also has to take care of those people who have no health care insurance, many of whom, a large number of whom are of course illegal immigrants. And what about our criminal justice system? Our criminal justice system in California is breaking down. It's being crowded to the point where if someone does commit a misdemeanor or a crime, even a violent crime at times, they are let out on bond or sometimes they are let out on their own recognizance because there is no place to put them. These criminals, many of whom have come here illegally into our country, end up coming here because they know the punishment here is nothing as compared to the countries from which they are coming from. Our criminal justice system is not protecting our citizens. If someone in your family is raped or murdered or robbed or run down by a drunk driver, well, now it is highly likely that, or I should say that the chances are very good that the person who is victimizing our family is here illegally and should never be in the country in the first place. And what about the wages of ordinary Americans? Ordinary Americans now find that, yes, when they get out of school, they expect to get good jobs and good paying jobs. But, no. What we have is, with the massive influx of people into our country who will work far below the wages that Americans will work for, they have bid down the wages of our people. Now, that may not mean too much to the top 10 percent or the elite of the business community, but that means everything, everything, to ordinary Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. Our elite has not been hurt, our elite has not been victimized, but ordinary Americans find themselves not being able to get the paying jobs that will help them pay what is necessary to be in a middle-class existence in this country. At the same time, unfortunately, we see an unfortunate trend among corporate executives, especially among the CEOs of companies, in paying themselves 10, 20, 30, even $100 million in compensation at the same time that the wage level of average Americans is under attack by a massive influx of illegals which is supported by the business elite. Whose side is our government on? Is it on the side of the business elite that is willing to lay their own workers off, giving themselves huge salaries, and then bringing on illegals or sending their manufacturing to China so that slave labor can do the job and then giving themselves huge corporate salaries? Are we on the side of people who are coming here from other countries who, yes, they are benefited by coming here at the expense of ordinary Americans? It is no mistake that this is happening. All of these dire consequences that are going on is not something that just happened. It was not something that was unavoidable. What is happening is a product of bad policy, policy that is not something that has been a mistake in policy, but an intentional policy that has been in place for 20 years. We now have 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants in our country. And that is not just something that happened. It happened because it was planned by those people who are making the policy in the last 20 years, people who were paying attention to the corporate elite, who want to bid down wages, and also to the liberal left wing of the Democratic Party which controls the Democratic Party who think that with huge numbers of immigrants coming into our country, they can change America. Neither one of those two groups of people who have such enormous influence in the Capitol of the United States are representing or watching out for the American people. Well, what we have done is given rewards to those people who have come here illegally. And then we wonder why they come here. They say, ``Give it and they will come.'' Well, there is no doubt about it; we give a reward to people who live in poverty, abject poverty, in different countries. If we let them know they can have education benefits that should be going to Americans, but they now can get them for their children; if they know their children and their families will be given health care and health treatment with money that should be going to Americans; if they know that if they break the law that the penalties they face here are actually much lower than in the countries they are in; and if they know even if they are caught crossing our border and caught here illegally, they will not be punished, why wouldn't they come here? This is not something that was unpredictable. We have 15 to 20 million people bidding down our wages, destroying our education system, destroying our health care system, making our streets and our communities not safe for our own families; and their presence here was not a mistake. It was planned out. Because people knew that if we give the benefits of jobs, good jobs, and the benefits that I just described that should be going to Americans, that people will come here from other countries. No border protection will stop the massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country if we continue to give huge rewards, a treasure house of rewards, to those people who are coming here. Don't say that you want to strengthen the border because you really are serious about trying to stop illegal immigration if you are unwilling to cut off the benefits that are the lure, which are the magnet that bring people here. Of course, there are those who claim that, who would like to say, well, yes, we really are concerned about this, and we're going to strengthen the Border Patrol. Let's just note that the Kennedy-Bush amnesty bill that was in the Senate suggested that they were going to strengthen the Border Patrol enforcement and enforcement mechanisms. Yet, everything in that bill that dealt with enforcement; strengthening the Border Patrol, strengthening the fence, strengthening the ability of employers to be held accountable if they hire illegals; all of those things are already law but have not been enforced. In fact, it is even worse that they haven't been enforced. This administration has actually undermined the effort to try to enforce the laws against illegal immigration, and they have done everything they can. While the bill suggests they want to strengthen them, and the President has had his picture taken many times on the border with Border Patrol agents saying how important they are, yet there has been no other administration that has so demoralized and attacks our Border Patrol agents in doing their duty. By now, most Americans understand that there are two Border Patrol agents that are languishing in prison as I give this speech. But there are many such Border Patrol agents, there are many such law enforcement officers, who this administration has thrown the book at in order to send a message to those law enforcement officers and those Border Patrol agents who are there on the border trying to deflect this massive invasion from our southern border, and this administration has thrown the book at them if they make any mistake. A police officer who makes a mistake, a Border Patrol officer who makes a mistake, now understands that he or she will be prosecuted to the extent of the law, and the benefit of the doubt will be given to the illegal alien, even if the illegal alien is a criminal involved in such things as drug smuggling. What of course is brought to mind is the case of Ramos and Compean. As I speak today, Ramos and Compean languish in Federal penitentiaries, where they have been held for 133 days in solitary confinement. Mr. and Mrs. America, do you understand that the people who went out there to protect our families have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, while a drug dealer who they were trying to stop was given immunity in order to convict them of mistakes? And those mistakes were turned into what? Into felonies by this administration. Johnny Sutton, who is the U.S. attorney, has a long-time relationship with our President. One might even call him a crony, or some might call him a member of the Bush family in that sense, that he has been with him for a long time. He is a protege of our President. This man determined that Ramos and Compean would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that the drug dealer that they stopped on the Mexican-American border would be granted immunity and that his word would be taken over the word of the Border Patrol agents. What happened was that 2 years ago, these two Border Patrol agents who have unblemished records, these two Border Patrol agents who have 15 years of experience at the Border Patrol between them and a pristine on-the-job record, both of them U.S. military veterans, one of them a 10-year veteran of the Naval Reserves, these men were on the job and they saw a truck that had clearly come across the border. They tried to stop it. The man in the truck ran out. They intercepted him. A scuffle ensued. The man then, after being involved in a physical altercation with a police officer, began to run toward the border. His version is they immediately shot him in the back. Of course, the U.S. attorney has repeated over and over again the lie that two U.S. Border Patrol agents shot a man in the back as he was running away. How many times have we heard Mr. Sutton say that? And then he also insinuated that the two Border Patrol agents are corrupt, using the word ``corrupt.'' This administration has backed up their prosecutor who used that rhetoric, who threw the book at the Border Patrol agents, even though the Border Patrol agents suggested there had been a physical altercation; that the man who was actually involved with them at that moment trying to smuggle $1 million worth of drugs into our country was turning, and the two Border Patrol agents suggested they thought they saw him turning with an object in his hand. The seconds were passing just like this. What do you think when you see someone who is trying to smuggle things across the border? You assume they are armed. The Border Patrol agents, Ramos and Compean, shot at him, thinking that he was armed, and he got away. They didn't know if they had hit him or not. Well, the U.S. attorney took the word of the drug dealer that he didn't have a gun. Now, first of all, how do we know that the drug dealer didn't have a gun? He had $1 million worth of drugs. Was he thus trying to smuggle all those very expensive drugs, was he trying to do this unarmed? Is that what the drug cartel does? No. If you have got a valuable shipment, generally the Border Patrol agents understand that people who are smuggling drugs are armed because they have something of great value. Their drugs were worth $1 million in this case. Should we assume that this man had a gun? I think that was a logical assumption. What is more important is the only word that we have that he didn't have a gun was that the drug smuggler himself made that claim. Should we believe the drug smuggler over the two Border Patrol agents? That is what our prosecutor did. That is the policy of this administration. This administration gave total immunity to the drug dealer and threw the book at the Border Patrol agents, who have risked their lives to protect our families. If they had been stopping a terrorist who had a truckload of nuclear material, a dirty bomb aimed at El Paso or some other city, these two Border Patrol agents would have been heralded as heroes. Instead, it was a Mexican, instead of an Arab terrorist, and the Mexican drug dealer was given immunity, and the Border Patrol agents are now languishing in prison, having been charged with attempted murder. The jury in that trial, by the way, was lied to. They were told that the drug dealer had never done this before, even though newspaper accounts suggest that his family said he had been hauling drugs for a long time, since he was 14 years old, and that he indeed carried a gun many times when he was smuggling drugs. This administration decided that they were going to prosecute not only the Border Patrol agents, but they were going to lie to the jury and portray the drug dealer as this is the only time he ever did it, and, guess what? He only did it because he needed to make money for his sick mother's medicine. That type of tripe was allowed to be told to the jury. And let us note that three of the jurors after this was over broke down in tears when they were told that they could have actually voted not guilty, the foreman of their jury told them that if the majority voted guilty, they had to vote guilty. Johnny Sutton, our U.S. Attorney, claims that he didn't have a choice. He did have a choice, and it reflects on this administration, and that choice was to prosecute our defenders and give the benefit of the doubt and immunity to a Mexican drug dealer. He had a choice of who to prosecute. They also had a choice of whether they were going to tell the jury that this same drug dealer had been fingered for a second drug shipment, even after the Ramos-Compean incident, before they went to trial. But that was kept from the jury as well. The U.S. attorney claims that Ramos and Compean were corrupt. Now he defends that saying, well, anybody who would shoot an unarmed man is corrupt. Well, let me tell you this, another bit of lawyer-like legalese that the American people can understand: The Border Patrol agents have no corruption in their background whatsoever. Yet the U.S. attorney is calling them corrupt. Department of Homeland Security briefers who briefed Members of Congress on these two Border Patrol agents claimed they said ``we are going to go out today and shoot some Mexicans.'' And kept that up for months and then had to admit it was a total lie. Something is dreadfully wrong here. What is dreadfully wrong is we have a President who is trying to send a message to the Border Patrol agents that they should not use their weapons or they are going to be prosecuted. Well, if you can't use your weapons on the border, how are we going to protect the border? No drug dealer or smuggler or terrorist is going to stop. If a Border Patrol agent says stop, but I can't use my weapon, you have lost control of the borders over a nonsensical policy and it has resulted in two of our heroes languishing in solitary confinement. This administration is so mean-spirited and so nasty that when one of the Border Patrol agents was beaten up by a Mexican gang in prison, they refused to even consider asking the judge to let them out on appeal, which even common criminals are let out on appeal. No, they went into solitary confinement, quote, ``for their own protection.'' My staff visited Agent Ramos who has been in solitary confinement for 133 days. He has lost 25-35 pounds. They are not giving him proper medical care. This man, who was part of the Naval Reserve for 10 years, who risked his life for us, put his life on the border trying to stop drug dealers from bringing drugs into our communities, and this President refused to even consider asking the judge to let them out on bond until their appeal is heard. Why is that? My guess is the President has made an agreement with the Mexican Government that there will be no use of weapons on our border, and this is part of a bigger picture, bigger understanding, bigger vision of our President, that we should have an open border with Mexico so we can have a country sort of like the border between Belgium and France in the future. How do we know that the President has bigger visions that he doesn't let us know about? He made an agreement with the Mexican Government to provide Social Security benefits to illegals who have worked here if we indeed ever legalize the status of those people who are illegally working in our country. So yes, we are going to provide Social Security. That is part of the totalization agreement. And for 2 years we couldn't get that information about that secret understanding between our President and Mexico until Freedom of Information Act lawsuits forced them to disclose that. What other agreements do we have? One must be that we are not going to use our weapons on the border unless our people are shot at first. What does that do to control of the border? That means we have lost total control. The Border Patrol agents understand this. They have never been more demoralized. And you tell me that we should believe that the President is serious about this issue and that Senator Kennedy and President Bush will indeed strengthen the Border Patrol when they have done everything in their power to demoralize the Border Patrol? The bill that was being proposed in the Senate, that was withdrawn, had one purpose and one purpose only. It was not to strengthen enforcement or strengthen the Border Patrol or increase the number of beds for detention for illegal immigrants. All of those things were already done by law. And the bill that was being proposed actually decreased the amount of enforcement already mandated by law. There was one purpose and that purpose was to legalize the status of 15-20 million people who are in our country illegally. The enhancement provisions of that bill were fraudulent because those provisions were already mandated by laws that have already passed and are not being enforced by this administration. So the American people when they heard this and understood what was being presented to them, and we kept hearing we have to have a comprehensive bill. A ``comprehensive bill'' only means legalization. Enhancement is there to cover up the fact that legalization is what is going on. The American people when they finally understood that, and thank God we have people on talk radio shows around this country who alerted the American people to the legislative threat that was coming down the pike, the American people rose up in a righteous rage and made sure that their Members of Congress and Members of the Senate were alerted to the fact they would not put up with this betrayal of their interests. But the American people are up against an incredibly powerful adversary in Washington. It is an unholy alliance between business and the liberal left that controls the Democratic Party. The business community wants lower wages. The business community wants to bid down not only the wages of the illegal immigrants that are coming over, and not only will they pay fewer wages to them, but they actually can pay lower wages to the American people because having the presence of 20 million people here actually brings down the wage level that they have to pay to get the job done. So you have the business community pushing for policies that will not inhibit the massive flow of immigrants into our society, and you have the liberal left who really believe that they want to change the fundamentals of America and that a massive flow of illegals into our country, or at least a presence of a large number of immigrants, is going to help them change America. Well, the businessmen of course don't say that. That is not what officially is the reason. That is not officially how they can claim that they want to bring in people from other countries. They are claiming that they can't find Americans to do jobs. Before it was there are no Americans who will work at these jobs, and now they have changed the word that there aren't Americans who are working at these jobs. Let me note that I believe the American people will work on any job as long as the pay is right. We have 60 million Americans of working age who are not working in this country. But we are being told by the business community we can't find anybody to do these jobs. The hotel industry, for example, tells us they can't find people to change the sheets and clean up the rooms at hotels. What we need to do is take a picture in our mind of these big hotels and how many people they employ and realize where these hotels are located. They are located mainly in urban areas. There are millions upon millions of American women, and also men, I might add, who would love to have a job that would permit them to drop their kids off at school at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning and come back at 3:00 in the afternoon and pick them up. That just happens to be the time when you need people to work in those hotels. But you know what, those American people who would love to take care of their children and increase the take-home pay of their family, they are not going to work for a pittance. What happens with the illegals that come in, they work for a pittance. The hotels don't have to give them health insurance, and the American people are taxed or their health insurance has to pay for those illegals and they won't take the jobs because the jobs are paying so little. Yes, I believe we have plenty of people to clean those hotel rooms. Let's pay them a decent wage. There is nothing wrong in believing that people who clean hotel rooms should have a middle-class income. We are told that we can't find people to work on the farms. The farmers say there is not enough labor. There is a large number of people who labor on farms, but there is, yes, a component of people that we have brought in from other countries. We don't need to bring in these people from other countries. But every time I mention there is an alternative, people scream and yell. There is a big smoke screen that comes up because everybody refuses to look at an idea honestly. Instead, they want to negate the argument without actually confronting the idea because there are millions of young men in particular who are able to work on the farms; and millions, by the way, are in prison. I look to see where the prisons are located in this country, and they are almost all in farm areas. Is there any reason in the world that we should just have prisoners beefing up at the gymnasium and watching TV, that we can't also have them earning money that otherwise would be going to foreigners, let them earn the money. Let them pay half of it to pay for their keep so it brings down the cost to the taxpayers, and let them walk out of prison 5 years later with half of the money that they have made being paid a market value for helping pick fruits and vegetables. I have talked to prisoners and people who work in the prisons. They all love this idea, but every time you bring it up in the Congress, no, you don't hear a logical argument against it. You just hear no, no, no, we can't do that. I'm sorry, just raising your voice and saying that can't be considered is not good enough. The American people understand that prisoners can work. And we don't have to bring in millions of people from overseas to take those jobs. Also, we, of course, understand that it is not just low-level jobs with massive numbers of immigrants coming into our society. The business community also tells us these are the jobs people won't take, supposedly. We need to bring in hundreds of thousands of people with H- 1B visas to run computer systems and to be technical people. What's the matter, Americans won't do those jobs? I went to a function a few years ago and I will never forget it. A middle-aged person stopped me, and said, Congressman, I came here because I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to thank you because you were the only one who really stood up and argued against the H-1B visas which brought in hundreds of thousands of people from the Indian subcontinent to do these computer jobs. He said, you said it is going to bring down the wages of the American people, and I have the newspaper quote. And he said, you know what, I was a computer operator in Orange County earning $80,000 a year. They laid me off and a year later when they called me back to the company, they said they were going to pay me $50,000. He said, I had the same job and I was earning $80,000. And they said take the job because we can get an H-1B visa person from India to take this job for $40,000 if you won't take it for $50,000. He said, I took the job. And he said, Do you know, Congressman, what the difference between earning $50,000 and $80,000 is? When you earn $50,000 a year in Orange County, you never dream of owning your own home. Why are we betraying people like this? Why are we bringing in hundreds of thousands of people from overseas rather than have the industry pay more money? No, no, they are keeping the wages down, bringing in people who will work for a pittance while the CEOs of these companies are paying themselves tens of millions of dollars a year. There is nothing wrong with paying a CEO a good salary, but you are doing that by destroying the middle class of our country by taking it out of the mouths of working people, honest Americans who are willing to work, but now you want them to work as if they are peons and people of lower income are coming from all over the world? Well, I was just confronted by this again in the health care industry. People want me to agree to bring in 100,000 Filipino nurses or 100,000 Indian or Pakistani nurses into our country. Nurses make $65,000-$70,000 a year. Our junior college system in California, you know, how many nurses are we graduating from there? No, in my own city we have a junior college that has 25,000 students and they graduate 185 people from their nursing program a year, and they think that is a great thing. What about those other thousands of kids? They are getting prepared to do what, sell clothes at Nordstrom's, so they can be an assistant manager at a 7-Eleven store and earn $35,000? We need to remold our educational efforts to make sure that our kids are equipped to do these jobs, whether it is in computers or whether it is health care, rather than bringing in hundreds of thousands of people from overseas. It is our kids who should be getting the jobs for $65,000 a year when they start. But no, our system would prefer, because the people in our system are lazy. They don't want to go through the heartache of trying to reform the structure because a lot of college professors, by the way, who teach sociology in junior colleges, refuse to let the people who are teaching health care to our nurses to make more money than they make, and of course a nurse makes more money than a sociology professor, but they can't do it in our schools. So instead of reforming our education system so we can have more nursing people, rather than going overseas, instead we are just going to go overseas and bring hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and Pakistanis and Indians in. This is horrible. H-1B visas are nothing more than an excuse by big business to keep wages down and give these opportunities to foreigners rather than our own American people. Our American people, especially the young people, are being betrayed by this type of policy and this type of thinking. There is a war that is being waged on the middle class in this country. It's a war that's being waged, yes, by people on the liberal left who have a radical agenda, never believed in the American way of life in the first place, and yes, in the business community that has no loyalty to their American workers whatsoever. We see it in the China policy, where businesses will go overseas and basically participate in slave labor in order to make a 20 percent profit rather than a 5 or 6 percent profit here in the United States paying people decent wages. We end up having a government policy that subsidizes these businessmen to go overseas, especially in China. There are loan guarantee programs for people who invest in manufacturing facilities in China. This is outrageous. We transfer our technology and our skills to the Chinese people when their government is a dictatorship that is opposed to everything we believe in and represses their own people, especially the religious people. But yet, we let our American business community ship our jobs and our technology over there at what? The businessmen make a lot of money. The business elite make their money for a few years, and in the end, the American people suffer. Their high-paying manufacturing jobs are gone, again, subsidized by the American taxpayer. We can see it in the China policy. We can see it in our immigration policy. There is a war being conducted on the American middle class. And what do we have here? Our people work hard, and they have fought the battles for freedom, and they have fought the battles to make sure that the businessmen in this country have a right to private property. Yet, those people who send the jobs to China are bringing illegal immigrants to bring down wages. They do not care about the American people. It is our job, supposedly our job, to watch out for the American people. However, we have various powerful interests at play right here in the Congress that are stirring us away from watching out for their interests. As I've said, we've got our health care system and our education system and our legal system are all under attack. Our Social Security system is under attack, and we are called bigots and hate mongers because we want to watch out for the American people. There was some suggestions by very high government officials and high political people here that those of us who were opposed to this comprehensive amnesty bill that, in some way, we're not for doing right for America or that our hearts are filled with hate. Well, let me note this. It is not selfish for the American people to demand that the resources that we have in our country be used for their benefit and the benefit of their families. That's not selfishness. If being an American citizen means nothing, it means nothing, how can we ever expect the people to go and defend our country? How can we expect the American people to think that there's something special about being an American if we give every benefit that belongs to them to someone who's come here illegally? And let us note this. We don't hate the people who come here illegally. In fact, we have to note, yes, there are criminals that come here illegally. There are drug dealers, but 90 percent of the people who come here are probably very wonderful people. We would come here, too, but it is the job of the United States Government not to help good people who need help and would come here from all over the world. Our job is to watch out for the interests of the American people, and if that doesn't mean anything, why should the American people be loyal to us if we're not being loyal to them? We're not saying that illegals are bad people. We just know that if they drain the education system, the health care system, if they come in and they're poor, they're going to take $100,000 in their lifetime more out of Social Security than they put in. It's going to bankrupt Social Security. Is there anything wrong with saying that we're going to watch out for our people first, our people being the people who are citizens of the United States and people who have come here legally? And again, let me note this. Not only do we not think poorly of illegals, because we have to protect ourselves against diseases that are coming in, criminals that are coming in, yes, but by and large, illegal immigrants are trying to come here to better their families, but they're doing it at the expense of the American people. However, let us note that the people who are the worst hurt on this are the legal immigrants. I had a telephonic town hall meeting last night, and the number of the people who called in to complain about illegal immigration are the people who came here legally, who are in this country legally, most of whom have become citizens. This flood of illegals into our society is the worst threat to people who have come here legally, and once we legalize the status of the 15 to 20 million who have come here illegally, it is an insult and a slap at the legal people, also the people who are waiting overseas by the tens of millions to come here legally. Now, we are not being bigoted. We're not being selfish. We're watching out for the interests of the American people, and there's nothing wrong with that, and the legal immigrants who are here fully understand, and we are not in any way anti-legal immigrant. Well, what's happening, of course, the Americans who are worst hit are at the bottom end of the scale. Those people who are struggling in the black community to get these jobs and would like good paying jobs are being edged out by illegals. American citizens who happen to be black should pay attention to how their elected officials are voting on this illegal immigration issue. There's nothing more damaging to the black community than illegal immigration that denies benefits and jobs to our own citizens. Also, the Mexican American community, proud Americans who happen to be of Mexican descent, they are being hurt because they're being stigmatized by a massive influx of illegals into our country from Mexico. It is wrong and they know that. Americans of Mexican descent are proud and patriotic people. They have earned more medals in defending our country than any other ethnic group in the United States. They are being hard hit. These are the people who would be the hardest hit by the Bush-Kennedy so-called comprehensive immigration reform bill. What it is, of course, again is an immigration bill that the enforcement part is just a facade and a fraud, but the real purpose is to immediately legalize the status of 15 to 20 million people who are in our country illegally. Let's note, in that bill what was proposed, and we have no idea what they're going to bring back at us, a Z visa would have had to have been issued to any illegal immigrant who was applying to get this visa that would give them a temporary status, but the temporary status would be a legal status, and they could renew that visa as many times as they want. There's no limit on how long they could stay here on a ``temporary'' visa, but the legal status permitted them to get all these benefits that legal citizens would get except for voting. And what would happen? The people of our government were going to give only 24 hours to give a person who had applied to give them Z visas. How many tens of thousands of criminals, of people who are ill with communicable diseases, of terrorists would have been allowed to come into our country on a temporary status but renewably forever, had that happened, thank God that bill was held back. But that bill will come back again and is coming back again unless we rise up again and make our voices heard, because they are trying to bring back the illegal immigration bill that would have given amnesty to those 15 to 20 million illegals. Now, let me note that there has been a bill that has been submitted by Lamar Smith, Brian Bilbray and others that is a bill here in the House that is an example of the type of immigration reform that is real reform, which is aimed at enforcement, which is aimed at trying to make sure that employers can verify whether or not someone who's applying for a job is an illegal immigrant or not, and strengthening the border patrol and the agents and building a fence. This is in Lamar Smith's bill. That is a real bill. That is a bill we need. And I would hope that the American people say we don't need a comprehensive bill, we need an enforcement bill. As I say, unless the American people are paying attention, and becoming involved in the process, those powerful interest works that are at play here, working against their well-being, will carry the day. That bill will come back. Unless we express our anger and our outrage over this betrayal of the interests of average Americans, it will pass, just as it was on line to pass before. Yet another attempt to try to get a bill through without the American people understanding what is in that bill and how threatening it is. There is, of course, a lot of examples where the interests of our people are not being watched here in this Congress, and there's no doubt that there are interests at work. Unless the American people pay attention, those special interests will succeed. One of the powerful influences in Washington right now is based on the concept of globalism. That's why we're trying to build up the economy of China, because this strategy is that we're going to have a global system of government and of trade and of economics. And that global system is a dream that is a driving force behind many of the policies that are so detrimental to our American people. Because if you watch out for the globe, that means that you're going to be taking from the American people. By definition, our people, being in the richest country of the world, are going to be the targets that are selected to try to extract benefits from them and the wealth from them in order to have a better globe, a better world. Well, I want there to be a better world, but I'm not going to do it by taking away from the rights and the well-being of the American people. What we've got here in the immigration bill and our China policies is a fight between those with a globalist approach versus a patriotic approach. It's the patriots versus the globalists. Now, we care about the other people in the world. Because we want to protect the interests of the American people doesn't mean that we are nasty and that we hate people. But the people of the United States of America have a very special role to play in this world. We're people who come here from every race and every religion, every part of the world, and we have come here. We are living together, trying to live together in peace and harmony, trying to say to the world, as our Founding Fathers meant us to say in the Declaration of Independence, that people have rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that we are here to show a better way. If we diminish the well-being of the people of the United States of America, we take away from their opportunity in order to build up others. In order to build a vision of the globe, it will be a great disservice not only to the American people but to the people of the world. It has been the American people that set the standard. It's been the American people who stepped out and defeated Japanese militarism and Nazism when it threatened the world. It's been the American people who have stepped out and defeated communism and deterred the communist expansion until that evil atheistic system had a chance to disintegrate. It is the American people now who bear the brunt of the war on radical Islam that would create Islamic dictatorships and treat women all over the world as cattle. We are the ones who are protecting the world against these evils, and if the American people ever come to the point where they lose faith in our system because we have not been watching out for their interests, yes, it will be a horrible, a horrible outcome, not only for the people, not only for our country, but for the entire planet because the planet, the good and decent people of this planet, depend on us to show the way. We cannot just forget that the Social Security benefits of our people will be damaged and be put in jeopardy if we allow poverty stricken people to flood into our country. We can't forget what it's going to do to the American people, what it will do to the United States. What is the United States? The United States is us, U.S. In 1986, we, us, the United States, the people of the United States, were told that by granting amnesty to 3 million illegals, that would end the problem because there would be enforcement on employers and that would then stop this problem, and there was an irritation of having 3 million people here illegally. Well, today, we are told there are 11 million. Most of us believe it is more like 15 to 20 million illegals who live among us. What that means is that if we end up now, giving them legal status, we will have 50 million to 60 million illegals here win 10 years. We will have lost our country. America will be lost to people who have come here illegally from other countries. Wake up, America. We are losing our country, and it is not just a mistake. There have been policies that have encouraged this invasion. Now, we are told that those who are opposing this invasion of illegals into this country have no alternative. Oh, you are saying, well, you were opposed to legalization status. Well, what's your option? There is an option. The most dishonest argument that has been presented is that we have to either legalize the status with amnesty, or we have to have massive deportation. That was the most dishonest approach that I have heard, except for someone who is trying to claim that the word ``amnesty'' doesn't mean what amnesty means. Well, there is an alternative to mass deportation or just giving amnesty or legalization. It's called attrition. It means that when people come here, we should not provide them free education, free health care, free services. If their child is born here, they shouldn't become a U.S. citizen automatically, because, by the way when they do, automatically they get housing subsidies and everything else based on the idea that they have got a U.S. citizen in their household. No, if you deny them those things and you deny them jobs, first of all, people will hear that overseas and they will quit coming. Those who are already here illegally will find it hard to get by, and eventually, slowly but surely they will eventually go home. It's called attrition. There is nothing wrong with that approach. It is not massive deportation, it is not legalization. It is the one thing that will work. It is an alternative. Those people who present the so-called comprehensive plan have only one thing in mind, legalizing the status of those who are already here illegally, and that will result in 50 to 100 million more illegals coming to work for our country. Thus, what is the alternative? The only alternative is to strengthen our border, yes, strengthen our border, strengthen our visa system. Most people don't understand that 40 percent of all illegals don't come from our southern border, 40 percent of them are coming in with visa ands just overstaying their visa. Again it was a conscious decision not to reform our visa system so we would know if someone who had come in has left. Our system, right now, we don't know if they have left and gone home or not. We could have reformed that. But, instead, we did not because it was policy to bring in these illegals. Those who are talking about comprehensive approach, they are the ones who back that policy. Now, we have an alternative. The alternative, attrition, the alternative is making sure that we strengthen the border, but then we deny benefits and jobs to those who are here. We can do this. This is a job that is not beyond our ability in this Congress to do. We could certainly build a fence, and we can certainly have enforcement mechanisms done right away, which is what the bill Lamar Smith has recently placed in the hopper. Now, Americans need to pay attention to what's going on. They need to know the arguments. They need to know people, the arguments that people are making, who are trying to fool them, and they need to speak up. There needs to be the same kind of outcry that we heard about a month ago, because that's when the powers that be were back down on the Senate side with that amnesty, with the Bush-Kennedy amnesty legalization bill. It's time to step up. We cannot count on the government to protect our interest, the elected officials. We all have to participate. This is the United States of America versus those people who do not have the interests of the American people at heart. It's time for the patriots to be heard. We will lose this fight unless the patriots are heard. I would now like to thank the Chair for permitting me this time and would call on the American people to be active, be patriots, and I am proud to serve them here in the United States Congress.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I have defended President Bush throughout most of his administration: From the war in Iraq; to those tragic mistakes that were made at Abu Ghraib, realizing they were just mistakes, but not at the heart of the policy; from the tax cuts to the preparation of the prescription drug bill. I feel that I have been a loyal soldier to this administration, to the President, and, yes, to the country, especially on the country's war on terror. I have been four-square behind the President's successful efforts in that war and some of these efforts that we have been talking about today that are straining the public morale. I have been very supportive of the President's tax efforts, fundamental economic efforts in the tax area to keep our economy humming. So after all of this support, last week it was personally offensive to me to hear that I and millions of people like me were being described by the President as not wanting to do what is right for America because we refused to support the Kennedy-Bush immigration bill currently being examined and going through the Senate. The President also suggested that those of us who oppose the type of legalization of status and those of us who are opposed to the type of legislation that we believe will promote more illegal immigration into our country, that we are just trying to frighten people by using the word ``amnesty.'' The President, of course, insists on defining amnesty in a way that is independent and contrary to the way everyone else defines that word, and every time he does that, he loses credibility. Every time he follows his inclination to try to obfuscate this issue of illegal immigration, rather than to deal with it and to debate it four-square, he loses credibility. The President also suggests if we know the details of the bill, the legislation, I call it, the Bush-Kennedy legislation, that we will support it. Well, the more we find out about that legislation going through the Senate, the more vigorously we should oppose that bill. There are literally hundreds of loopholes in that legislation. I believe the very basis of the legislation is flawed in its intent. The fact there are so many terrible aspects of this bill, one has to suggest that the bill's intent was not the right intent to begin with. It was not a bill aimed at stemming illegal immigration, but instead this bill has some other intent, obviously. The American people, however, can decide for themselves. The President says we need to get to know what is in the bill. Well, let's take a look at what is in the bill. Problem number one: This legislation is an amnesty bill. I am sorry if that doesn't go by the definition that is handed down by the White House, which obviously has the ability to define or redefine words, but it is an amnesty bill. This bill grants immediate legal status to illegal aliens, and that legal status happens immediately, before any of the enhancements. They will have what they call ``enforcement enhancements'' in the bill that will help us ``enforce our immigration laws.'' But before any of those enhancements are activated, and they are called the triggers, before they are activated, every person who is here illegally will be able to be granted legal status, a temporary visa. It is called a Z visa. So 24 hours after an illegal immigrant files an application, they will be granted a probationary visa, the so-called Z visa. It will be issued, and with that legal status, that visa, comes the right to live and work in the United States: Immediate legalization for everyone who is here. The President tries to suggests it is not amnesty because we are not granting citizenship. And then a big cloud of smoke comes up for people to try to understand what's going on here. Amnesty doesn't mean granting citizenship; amnesty means somebody is doing something illegal and you have now made it legal. All of them get this amnesty, this legalization, within 24 hours of applying the minute this legislation passes. That is whether or not the triggers, the enforcement mechanisms that are also in the bill, if they are never activated, these so-called probationary visas will never expire. They will continue on. Every 8 years or so they will have to be reapplied for, but they can be reapplied for and granted further extensions forever. And the Social Security cards which come with that can be issued. These people when they have Z visas, these probationary visas, they are now eligible for all of our government programs with the Social Security cards and all of the other things that people who are here legally, people who immigrated to this country legally, people who waited for years to come here, who obeyed our rules, these other people are going to get it immediately. Of course, U.S. citizens, what does U.S. citizenship get? The only difference is a right to vote. So how is this not amnesty? Obviously it is. Word games aside, the Senate bill not only grants amnesty, but it also provides things that will do great damage other than just the amnesty to our country. The much-touted fines of this bill, and there are fines that are required, and we have heard this, another cloud of smoke comes in during that discussion on this bill. We hear this idea there is going to be a $5,000 fine for those people who want to be serviced by this legislation. No, that $5,000 fine is not required before someone gets a legal status. That is what happens before someone becomes a citizen. This legislation that is passing through the Senate does not require $5,000 to legalize status. You cannot buy a used car in this country for $1,000; but $1,000 will give you the right to live in the United States and obtain government benefits, including Social Security, that goes with that legalization. The Z visa fine, which is a requirement, it is just a payoff, that $1,000, is not the $5,000 that everybody hears about. It is about $1,000. Unfortunately, ignorant and lazy mainstream media people have been using the $5,000 figure, and even that I think would be a very questionable thing to give all of these benefits and rights to people here illegally for $5,000. No, we are going to give it to them for $1,000. And by the way, it can be paid on the installment plan. You can buy the right to live, work and receive benefits in the United States of America for $1,000. And it can be renewed every few years, it can be renewed every few years forever. If a government official misuses information, according to this legislation, if there is information on an illegal amnesty application, and that information is misused by a government employee, there is a $10,000 fine for that government employee who would misuse information on an illegal immigrant's amnesty application. So breaking into our country, entering the United States illegally, using false documents, which almost all of them have, identity theft to hold a job, and they are holding of course jobs that they are not entitled to have in the first place, this is somehow less onerous, we are only going to charge them $1,000 to legalize their entire status, but we are charging $10,000 for a paperwork mistake by a government official who might misuse the information or get it wrong on the application. It should be noted that the amnesty of the Senate bill treats illegal immigrants better than they treat legal immigrants into the United States. Illegal aliens who snuck into the United States 5 months ago are given immediate legal status while legal immigrants who applied to come to the United States after May 1, 2005, must start the application process all over again. Now these are people who have been waiting overseas. They applied after May 2005. They are overseas waiting. Those people who are not the law breakers, they must start the process over again. So the illegals can cut in line, go around everybody around the world where there are millions and millions of people who are waiting to come here legally, who respect our laws, those people who cut in line in front of those who would be U.S. citizens and come here legally are the ones given the benefit. Those waiting in line have to, in fact, go to the end of the line, in some cases, according to this legislation, while the others scoot ahead. This, of course, is a serious blow to those waiting in line who would like to come here legally, and that has not escaped the notice of the foreign press. People overseas are taking very close note of this. The foreign press is making it very clear what this legislation is doing to people who respect the laws of the United States. This legislation is now being touted overseas by people suggesting that anyone who stands in line and waits and respects our laws is a fool. And, of course, we are making them fools by rewarding those who don't obey the rules and punishing those who do. By the way, in the Senate bill a note from a friend, a note, a letter from a friend, is considered evidence that one has lived in the United States before. When an illegal alien applies to live in the United States, if this legislation passes, he can literally provide a sworn declaration from someone, as long as it is not a relative, as proof that he lived in the United States and now is eligible for this legalization of his status. Is there anyone outside the White House who does not understand that this will cause a massive influx of new illegal immigrants into our country? Because if they want to get legal status, all they have to do is find someone to write a letter for them, and as far as they are concerned, that is a get-into-America-free card that one of their friends will write for them. Does anyone think that we are not going to have a massive flow of people? That all of the people waiting in line will not hear about this? And what about all of the people not waiting in line hearing about this? Between 12 and 15 million people are expected to apply for amnesty if the legislation now going through the Senate passes. Now how can the Department of Homeland Security possibly verify the letters that are going to be presented by people to prove that they have immigrated to this country or lived in this country for a given period of time; and thus, then they have legal status if they have lived here. Even if it is illegally being here, they still will be legalized if they have a note from their friend. Does anyone not understand the jeopardy that this rule puts us in in America? Yet it is in the bill. I mean, it is bizarre but it is in the bill. Who wrote this bill? Whoever did let this provision be in the bill. And as for the much-publicized background checks that amnesty seekers are supposed to have, the background checks are going to happen on those people applying for citizenship. The background checks are going to happen after legal status has already been granted as a temporary status, a legal status that can be again renewed. Background checks are not required before the probationary visas are issued. And yes, you heard it correctly, legal status must be granted to an illegal alien within 24 hours of that illegal alien making application. Even if the alien has not passed all of the appropriate background checks, within 24 hours, the Department of Homeland Security has to grant him legal status, a ``probationary visa'' which can go on forever. Can you imagine the criminals, the carriers of communicable diseases, the dregs of other societies, who will obtain a legal right to live and work in the United States because of this loophole? How about the gang who flew planes into the World Trade Center? How about the terrorists, would they have been granted legal status immediately by this bill? Many of them of course were here illegally. They had overstayed their visas. The answer is yes, they would have made legal status almost immediately. It is insanity. And a final burst of insanity, illegals who have been ordered deported by a United States court already, and the court has ordered them to be deported because they are not here legally, those people already under court order to be deported, will be eligible for this amnesty, for this legalization of their status. Now listen to this carefully. Illegals who have been through the courts and are under court order to leave the United States, can apply for amnesty. Almost 636,000 aliens are in this country in defiance of a court order to leave. All of them can now apply to stay here under this bill. They will be given a temporary visa, a ``probationary visa,'' that can be renewed. Talk about teaching a disrespect for law. Does a court order mean nothing? How can we simply allow people who have openly defied our laws; and, yes, also defied a court order from a judge in the United States of America, how can we simply ignore that? That is what the Senate legislation would have us do. That is the Bush-Kennedy legislation making its way through the Senate. Problem number two with the bill, the enforcement triggers in the bill are actually weaker than the current law. What is a trigger? What we have are the enforcement mechanisms that are in this bill that are supposed to be activated. They will supposedly help us enforce the laws, like fences and more beds in detention centers and stronger border patrol. The provisions of this bill, these triggers, these enforcement mechanisms, are actually weaker than current law. This bill does not require, for example, one more detention center bed. It does not require one more mile of fence. It does not require one more agent than is currently required by law. In fact, the bill cuts the fencing requirements in half so the bill actually, when they talk about to get the fence, we have to have this bill, although there is already legislation requiring the fence, this bill requires actually one-half the fencing that is already required by law. It requires 11,500 fewer detention spaces and fewer border patrol agents than the Congress has already authorized in other legislation. So we are supposed to support the legalization of status for illegals in order to get the trigger mechanisms to work, in order to get the enhancement of enforcement when this bill weakens the enforcement that is already in place. To think you can weaken an enforcement provision and then pretend that legislation somehow strengthens border enforcement is an insult to the American people. Wake up, America. Our country is being stolen from us. Our country is being invaded, and the Senate legislation will accelerate this invasion. And it is not just Mexican Americans who are crossing the border, nor South Americans and others who are crossing the border from Mexico. We also, of course, have a huge problem with illegal immigration of people who are coming into our country and overstaying their visas. They're just as much a part of the illegal immigration problem as those people crossing our Canadian and our Mexican border. Yet this bill does nothing, absolutely nothing, to strengthen the system to try to reform the U.S. visa system. They call it the U.S. visit exit system which, right now, when someone comes into our country with a visa, we don't know if they have left. It was mandated back in 1996 that that system would be fixed and that we would track visitors to our country so we would know if they had come and if they'd gone home, and so then we would know at least who is here illegally. That hasn't even been fixed by this legislation. Of course, not knowing who is left or who stays in the United States, it makes it impossible for us to track who has overstayed their visa. May I remind you that somewhere between a third and half of our illegal alien population, that's between 4 and 5 million people, are people who are here who have overstayed their visas. So I think it's misportrayed when we only look to our southern border, and too many people, too many people talk about this as something to do with Mexico. Well, it has something to do with Mexico, because a large number of illegals are from Mexico, but this problem is way beyond that, and there are many, many other illegals in this country, from Asia and elsewhere, that need to be brought to justice and to be returned to their country. Now why is this such an important component of this bill? Because it's already been mandated by Congress, and what is important, in actually looking at the legislation going through the Senate, is that legislation doesn't even touch on this provision of trying to get control of this huge wedge into our system, this road on which people are invading like bacteria into our country. The Bush-Kennedy legislation in the Senate, of course, does not touch on it, because that legislation is not aimed at stemming the flow of illegals into our country. It is, indeed, pro-invasion legislation. Problem number three, a great many criminals are eligible for amnesty under the bill going through the Senate. Again, this is a simple statement of fact, and this is very bizarre. Under the bill going through the Senate, some child molesters are eligible for legal status. I'm not making this up. A child molester in this legislation, a child molester who committed his crime before the bill was enacted, is not barred from amnesty if their conviction omitted the age of their victim. This is a bizarre loophole. Who wrote this bill? Who included that in this bill? This is a nutty provision. The people who put that provision in the bill are working with those people who wrote the legislation. Also, we have gang members who are eligible for amnesty. As long as a gang member signs a piece of paper renouncing their gang membership, they can apply for the probationary status and must be granted it within 24 hours. Now, I'm certain that signing a piece of paper will mean that the gang members will change their drug dealing and violent ways and become positive members of our society. This bill will cost American taxpayers billions and billions, yes, trillions of dollars. Just one example. The earned income tax credit which now provides help for financially low-income Americans, we actually are providing them through this tax credit some stipend, some money, it is currently done at a cost of $20 billion. It's a $20 billion expenditure that we're trying to help out low-income Americans. Illegal aliens on Z visas and guest workers will be eligible to apply for the earned income tax credit immediately. They are now legally in this country, so they can have that income tax credit. The Congressional Budget Office says this will cost $20 billion more of our money. Now the 1996 welfare reform bill demanded that persons be a legal resident of the United States for 5 years before they can receive any benefits that are eligible to people in the United States. Why are we granting illegal aliens and guest workers benefits that we do not give to legal aliens? How can this possibly be right that we treat illegal aliens better than law-abiding immigrants, much less treating them better than the poor people who are waiting in line, trying to emigrate to this country legally, who respect us and want to become U.S. citizens the right way? Well, also in the Senate legislation is, of course, the old issue of State tuition and loans. Yes, in this legislation, State tuition and loans will be granted to illegal immigrants once they get their probationary visa. That means anybody who's come here illegally will automatically be eligible for all these educational benefits that our children are eligible for. Actually, it's worse. Our children can't get in-State tuition. If we're 100 miles away over your State's border, we can't go to the other State and go in that facility, but someone who has snuck into this country from thousands of miles away or from the other side of the world can get a tuition break, and it is paid for by us, the taxpayers. They get in-State tuition, even though they come from a far-off country and have come here illegally, while if we try to go to another State we have to pay higher rates. Now the legislation does ban some illegal aliens from being able to collect Social Security, and that's true. But we know that the President of the United States, for example, has actually already made an agreement with Mexico, although it was a secret agreement in order to provide what they call a totalization agreement, which will permit illegals from Mexico who have been working in the United States to obtain Social Security benefits for the work that they did here illegally, but that's just for the people from Mexico. Now this bill says that others outside of the totalization agreement won't get Social Security benefits for the work they did while they were here illegally, but there's a big loophole in the bill. Any illegal who overstayed a visa but was issued a Social Security number will be allowed to obtain credit for the work they did illegally. In other words, if someone was here illegally, overstayed a visa, while they were here on the visa, if they got their Social Security number, they will then be permitted to get credit for what they did when they were working here illegally because they then had their Social Security card. We know that between, as I said, 4 and 5 million illegal aliens are people who entered here on a visa and then did not go home. This loophole would allow these millions of people who broke the law to work in this country to collect Social Security. At the very time when we are rightfully worried about the future solvency of Social Security, we will allow those who violated their visas to obtain the fruit of their illegal labors. They will be permitted to have Social Security. This is an incredible injustice to our seniors who depend on that system and should not worry about what amounts to basically this theft of Social Security benefits. Now, let us note that there are many people trying to suggest that illegal immigrants actually help Social Security. People actually said this here in Washington. Well, let's note this. More than half of the illegal immigrants in our country work for cash under the table. Now, of those people who are working for cash, are they helping our Social Security system? We're being told that illegals working here help our Social Security system. So these illegal immigrants, because they're being paid under the table, half of them are paid under the table, they do not pay into the Social Security system. And since they are paid cash, the employers do not pay. Not only does the worker not pay his contributions to the Social Security system, but the employer isn't paying his portion into the Social Security system. So a negative effect is this job, if you look at it even beyond that, is that this job is a job that could be filled by an American citizen or a legal immigrant, but now that job's been taken by an illegal who is not doing anything to pay into the Social Security system. The legal immigrant or the American citizen, whose job that would be if that person wasn't there, would be paying into the system. So Americans are losing jobs to illegals who aren't paying their fair share into the Social Security system. How does that help the Social Security system? Corresponding to this, a flow of illegal labor into our country brings down wages in general. So employers might have paid $10 to $12 an hour, they're now paying much lower wages which then results, of course, in lower contributions to the Social Security system. Don't tell me that illegal immigration or that huge amounts of immigration to our country will help the Social Security system. It's a grave threat to the Social Security system. Of course, there are those who say, well, actually the way to make this right is to legalize all those immigrants who are here illegally and then they will be paying Social Security. Well, let me note this. Legalizing the status of those who are here illegally will make the Social Security challenge we now face dramatically worse in the future than it is now. Any plan that specifically gives Social Security to those who have been working in this country is an invitation to fraud on a massive scale. What would stop anyone from claiming that they worked here under a false Social Security number? Hundreds of thousands of people pay into Social Security under various numbers. Hundreds of thousands, millions work here under false Social Security numbers. So how can you prove who used those fraudulent numbers? Who were they? You can't prove who they were. If they make that claim, how are we going to prove that that's not them? We already have a huge problem with identity theft and fraudulent identification. Allowing those who work here illegally, who have worked here illegally to participate in Social Security, exponentially increases the incentive for fraud. Because now they were using false papers to begin with, now they will claim that they were here and they could claim they worked for any number of people, even if they didn't. Another overlooked consequence is the survivor's benefits and disability benefits of the Social Security system. What would stop anyone from claiming my spouse worked in the United States under this false number, I am his widow, these are his children, please start sending me survivor's benefits now that we are entitled to them? Remember, billions of people around the world have no retirement whatsoever. Why assume that only younger immigrants will come to the United States? Why wouldn't someone in their 50s think, gee, if I come to the United States and work for a few years, maybe 10 years, the Social Security that I will get will let me live very well at home; I'll get it sent to me at home. Why wouldn't they think that? If you had no retirement benefits and you knew that we were legalizing the status of millions upon millions of people who have come here, why wouldn't you do anything, including commit fraud, which they already do to get jobs anyway with their fraudulent documents, why wouldn't they do anything to get their hands on that Social Security? The bill going through the Senate would facilitate that. Furthermore, many people who would be legalized under the several different proposals that are going around, including these ones that we are hearing in the Senate, the people that are coming here already and will come here under the system because it will attract many more illegals, these are mainly poor and unskilled workers. The fact is over half the illegal immigrants in this country do not have a high school education. The inconvenient fact is that Social Security pays out more benefits proportionately to lower-wage workers than to higher-wage workers. A projection I've seen from Social Security assumes that immigrants have the same general earning potential as native-born Americans. Well, that's obviously not true. So to bring in people with low education or little education, what we're going to do in the long run is place the burden of about $100,000 per person in the long term on our Social Security system because they will collect that much more than they put in, especially if they come here when they are in their 50s, in the late 40s or 50s. In the long run, this will be a catastrophe for the Social Security system. And last and foremost in terms of Social Security, in 1986, after being told that it would only legalize about 1 million people, 3 million people were actually legalized. Three million illegal immigrants ended up being given amnesty. That's back in 1986. It is now 20 years later. The current illegal immigrant estimate ranges from 12 to 20 million people. I keep hearing the lowball, 11 million. Let me note the 20 million figure that I just suggested, that we have up to 20 to 25 million illegals in this country, this didn't come from a government source, it was from a private study that was conducted on the monies that were sent back as remittances to other countries. They studied that and figured out how many people it would take to supply those kinds of remittances, and they came up with about 20 million people could be here illegally. Well, what's going to happen when those people are legalized? Last time, 1 million people became 3 million, and now we have maybe 15 to 20 million. Well, if we legalize those people who are already here, and then we permit them into the Social Security system, this will turbocharge the flood of illegals into our country. So, what does that mean? We are going to end up, not with the 20 million that we had, 3 million before, and it became 12 to 20 million, now, with 20 million, 12 to 20 million, we could expect that by legalizing their status we will have between 45 and 60 million illegals here by 2027. Wake up, America, 45 to 60 million people from other countries pouring into the United States? What is that going to do to our society? No fence, no wall, no minefield, no system will keep illegal immigratios out of this country. If we give them a reasonable hope that generous government benefits, including retirement benefits like Social Security can be theirs, if they can just get across the border and wait us out. Because that's exactly what we are doing right now. If we pass this bill that's going through the Senate, we are telling the people throughout the world that they will be able, if they wait us out and get here, they can expect to get pension benefits, health benefits, education benefits, beyond their imagination. Who would not come, when they come, by the tens of millions, oh, much to the surprise of the people who were passing this legislation. After all, Senator Kennedy didn't predict this massive jump that we have now when they passed the bill in 1986. Well, what's going to happen when they get here? The Social Security system will collapse, as will most of our government infrastructure. Listen, being irrationally benevolent to illegals is a crime against our own people. The bill that's going through the Senate would bring about such a calamity in the United States of America. It would be a calamity for average Americans. Illegal immigrants are not, despite what you have heard, required to even pay back taxes in the legislation going through the Senate. The bill originally did not require any back taxes to be paid however. However, there was an amendment to the bill, I understand, that was passed, asking that illegals pay back taxes. All right, we are going to treat our illegals better than we treat our own people, because that provision in the bill is weak. It only requires that illegal immigrants show proof that they have paid taxes for 1 year under subparagraph DI, that's according to the bill. Unfortunately, the bill was written in such haste that there is no subparagraph DI in the legislation. So there are certain to be court cases arguing whether or not the provision that requires a certain amount of back taxes to be paid, whether or not that is a legal requirement or not. Because there is no section DI in the bill. Remember, you do not have to show that you worked in the past in order to obtain a legal status. So the actual effect of the full amendment on taxes will be that you will have to show that you will pay taxes in the future if you come, and, frankly, how do I become an illegal immigrant with this type of lax attitude towards taxation? I would love not to have to pay my taxes if I had back taxes that I owed. If people are paid under the table for years, we are just going to give them, issue them a waiver. You have paid up, made all this money in the United States. U.S. citizens will go to jail if they make a $1,000 mistake. You could have earned, $10-, $20,000, paid taxes, and you are forgiven. The final insult, our tax dollars will go to lawyers that are helping illegal immigrants become legal. That's right, the bill gives money so that those people who are here working in agriculture will have other people who come to them and offer them free legal services to legalize their status. Well, another problem, problem number 4. The authors of the bill say that this bill will end chain migration. But the bill that is going through the Senate does not end chain migration. Chain migration, just so people will understand, is when we allow relatives of immigrants who are already here to come to the country for family unification. They will do that and get in line before those other people who have been waiting long, long periods of time to emigrate to the United States. Well, chain immigration is actually dramatically increased by the legislation going through the Senate. Now, they claim they have ended it, but look at what the bill actually does. The bill, right now, there are 138,000 people who come into our country legally through what they call this chain migration, you know, family reunification. For 8 years, they are going to increase that number to 440,000 a year. You get that? So they say we are not going to change migration, but we are increasing it. We are tripling it for at least 8 years. Does anyone really believe that 8 years from now they are going to then end this? We have tripled chain migration. The point system, which supposedly will take the place of this chain migration, is a joke. The merit system will not even kick in until 2016. What year is this? That's 9 years from now. So what you have to do is you have to take it on faith that the future Congresses won't scrap this system altogether. But, of course, the merit points are here, we are talking about, are granted for high demand occupations. Now, what we are talking about here, of course, is the fact that the bill over there provides for a guest worker program and for us to restructure, supposedly restructure the legal immigration coming into our country, even though, by the way, we all know that by granting amnesty that will bring tens of millions of more illegals into the country anyway. But the legal system, we are going to have a merit system, and we are going to have people coming into our country to fill jobs like janitors, maids, gardeners and other low-skilled occupations. Well, you know, I can see that instead of bringing people in from overseas by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, perhaps we should let the market work and let the pay level of our low-skilled workers increase so that our own people can get the job. In this country there are 69 million people of working age who are not working. People say, well, how are you going to get the people to pick the fruit and the vegetables? Some jobs they won't do. The President, of course, has stopped saying they won't do, he says jobs that they aren't doing. Well, first of all, we have millions upon millions of prisoners. We have more prisoners who are healthy young men, by and large, 18- to 40 years old, who are sitting in prison doing nothing but pumping up, watching TV. Let's let them pick the fruits and vegetables. Let's let them make some money on it. Let's let them help pay for their incarceration. No, there are people in our country to do the jobs, but they are not going to do it for free, and they are not going to do it for a pittance. I used to work as a janitor, yet the janitors make about the same as I made when I was a janitor. What's different, the GDP has tripled. The janitors are making about the same amount of money. Why? Because a flood of illegals have come into this country and bid down wages. Every middle class American working person has had his income brought down by illegals. Oh, yes, it's helped the employers, all right. It's helped the bosses. It's helped the rich people who want to hire illegal nannies. It's helped the people who want their lawns mowed because they would have to pay more wages. They would have to pay the children of the neighborhood perhaps more than they would pay the illegal immigrant who comes around to mow the lawn. It's better for our country to have these people who are not working paid more money and have the people in our middle class pay more money than bring in millions and millions and millions of people into this country legally or illegally. Of course, this country, this system would suggest that we bring them in illegally. That's what the Senate, the Kennedy bill, wants to do. We currently have a 15 percent unemployment rate among those in America with less than a high school education. Why shouldn't we let them get those jobs? Yes, they might have to pay them more money, because they would have to attract them to work. That makes more sense to me than bringing in these people from overseas. In my own district, I was contacted by people in the health care industry begging me, say we need nurses and health care people. Well, officially, they can't find the nurses and the people to work. They wanted me to support bringing in 100,000 Filipino nurses, 100 now from Pakistan and India. But these are high-paying jobs, even the high-paying jobs, they want to bring in foreigners to do the jobs. No, this $50- to $75,000 health care job should go to a young American or middle-class American who is working their way through school. It could be a middle-aged American person who just wants to upgrade their skills. It should go to that person. We went to junior colleges last week during break. I brought all the junior colleges and the hospital people together to find out why we didn't have enough people, trained health care people to work. Why was it a pressure for us to bring people from the outside? We found out that in our junior colleges where we should be training these people, that they weren't permitted to pay the instructors of the people being trained for these health care programs more than they paid the other instructors who were teaching sociology and political science. That just means that these nurses, who can earn more money on the outside, won't come to be teachers at junior colleges. They have 185 students at Golden West College who are taking nursing, and yet 24,000 students are taking classes that will enable them to get a job selling clothing at Nordstrom's or being the assistant manager of a 7-Eleven at $35,000 a year when there are $60,000-a-year jobs that are going begging in the health care industry, and they want us to bring in people from the Philippines. This is wrong. This is a betrayal of the American people to bring people in from outside our country to bring down wages and take the jobs away from the American people who need those jobs. This is wrong. But people say, no, no, we need a comprehensive bill, there is all this talk about a comprehensive bill. All this talk about a comprehensive bill is a cover, because every part of the legislation going through the Senate actually, that will be implemented, that will be different than the law that exists today, actually encourages the invasion of our country by illegals and by a massive flow of people coming into the country even through the legal system. Do we need a comprehensive bill in order to try to set up those protections that will protect our border? No. It's already mandated. That bill actually weakens it. Do we need something to help us with our visa system? No. You know, this isn't helped at all by the legislation going through the Senate. Do we need it in order to have more Border Patrol agents? No we have already mandated more Border Patrol agents that is required by that bill. All of those aspects of that legislation are covered for the real purpose of the bill, which is to legalize the status of 15 to 20 million illegals who are here, which will then create a massive flow of illegals into this country, which will result in 20 to 30 to 40 million new illegals in this country within 10 years. We will have lost our country. Wake up, America. We already have a flood of illegals sweeping into our country, crowding our classrooms, closing our hospital emergency rooms, up leashing violent crime, driving down wages. None of this is theory. It is a harsh reality that faces the American people and is borne not out of academic studies but is being borne out by the life experiences of American people, the American people across our country. Middle class America is being destroyed. Our communities are not safe, our Social Service infrastructure is collapsing, and, yes, it has everything to do with illegal immigration, immigration that is out of control. And the bill going through the Senate, once they legalize the status of all those who are here illegally, there will be five and six times more illegals, ten times more illegals in our country. And what will happen then? It'll be lost. Year after year, while our schools have deteriorated, our jails filled and our hospitals and emergency rooms shut down, the elite in this country have turned a blind eye to this disaster that is befalling the rest of us, their fellow Americans. The elites obscure the issues and try to maneuver, to keep in place the policies that reward illegal immigrants with jobs and benefits, just like the bill that's going through the Senate will reward the illegals who have come into our country. This country, the upper class says, can't function without cheap labor. And it may be cheap to the captains of industry. It may be cheap to the political elite. But it's painfully expensive to the American middle class. It's our kids whose education is being diminished, our families who are paying thousands more in health insurance to make up for the hospital costs of those who are giving free services to illegals. It's our neighborhoods that are suffering from crime, perpetuated by criminals who have been transported here from other countries. People who should not be here, criminals who should not be here are raping and murdering American citizens. More Americans have been murdered by illegals over the last 5 years than American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Yet we hear a cry of pain and agony coming from the Congress for soldiers who volunteered to go overseas and take their chances. And what do we hear for the victimized Americans who are being raped and murdered in greater numbers than those being, the Americans being killed in Iraq? We don't hear anything except, well, let's, we need a comprehensive bill, a bill that somehow is going to be fair to the illegal immigrants who are already here. Our job is not to be fair with people who have come here illegally, not to watch out for the benefit of people who are overseas. Our job as elected officials here, as Members of Congress, is to watch out for the United States of America and the people of the United States of America. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not being selfish. And what do we hear from some of the Senators backing that legislation, even Republican Senators, as if we're being hateful by expecting our government to watch out for the benefit of Americans, rather than giving benefits away, draining our treasuries and giving it to people who have come here illegally or people in other societies? This is wrong. It's morally wrong. It's a dereliction of our duty as people who were elected to watch out for our people. It's in our neighborhoods that are suffering from crime that's perpetuated by criminals who are here, as I say, from other countries. It's our livelihood that's being dragged down as wages are depressed and anchored down by a constant influx of immigrants, mostly illegal, some with H1-B visas, who will work for a pittance. The American people have every right to expect that we're not going to let masses of people come in and bid down their wages; that we're not going to let people come into this country and give them, like that bill does, immediate legal status when some of them have communicable diseases, diseases which are coming into our schools which we licked years ago, threatening our children. It is not hateful to say that we have to watch out for our children. It is not wrong for us to put that as a priority and say, yes, we care about those overseas, we care about others. But it is not wrong and hateful and it is not some sort of a selfishness to say we've got to take care of our own people with our limited resources. Of course, big business has a hold on the GOP. There's no doubt about it. I've been in the party for a long time to see the undue influence that big business has on the party. It's very clear. Yet big business is in an unholy alliance and the GOP is in an unholy alliance with the liberal left, the liberal left coalition that controls the Democratic party. It is this unholy coalition between the big business element of the Republican party and the liberal left coalition which dominates the Democratic party that is responsible for this invasion of our country, this attack to the well-being of our people. The coalition gives the jobs and passes out the benefits that have lured tens of millions of illegals into our country. And it's no accident. This predicament was predictable. Big business wants to depress wages. The liberal left that controls the Democratic party wants to have political pawns. They believe that large numbers of illegals will help them change America, or even large numbers of newcomers will help them change America. Well, if you give the jobs and benefits, as this coalition in our Congress has done for the last 10 years, if you give away the policies that created the jobs and the benefits that have gone to people who've come here illegally from overseas, well, if you give them the jobs and benefits, the masses of the people over there, if you told them that they are eligible for these benefits and these jobs, they will do anything to get here. And that's exactly what they've been doing. As you say, give it, and they will come. Surprise, surprise. And now, the out-of-touch elite claim this new piece of legislation, the so-called comprehensive bill will, in some way, fix the immigration crisis. That's what you hear. Well, everybody wants a comprehensive bill because we've got to do something. Doing nothing is better than doing something wrong. Doing nothing is better than doing something that'll make a problem worse. And of course the people who say you've got to do something are the ones who created the problem in the first place. And, as I said, all of these things that they're trumpeting in the bill, the new enforcement measures, the security measures, the fence, the new agents, the employer sanctions, all of these things are already in place in the law. But we have to give amnesty to illegals and actually encourage tens of millions more to come here in order to get that? It's like Lucy holding out the football for Charlie Brown. This bill is yet another attempt to trick us as Lucy tricked Charlie every time. It is an illusion, a scam that will make things worse. The Senate legislation being touted by Senator Kennedy and the few Republican senators and our President, as I say, the purpose of that bill is to legalize the status of 15 to 20 million illegals, which will then bring tens of millions more. It is a pro-invasion bill. It behooves all of us, all of us to oppose that legislation because we love America. The President has it all wrong. We want to do what's right for America. That's why we're opposing what he's suggesting. In that bill, of course, is a provision that would increase the Border Patrol. And, as I say, the legislation going through the Senate actually increases the Border Patrol by fewer agents than is already required that the Border Patrol expand. A great deal has been made out of that. But let's take a look at what that really means. Do we really believe that President Bush and this administration and, yes, those supporting this bill, are supportive of a strong border control of the fence and strengthening the Border Patrol? This is an administration that has backed up U.S. attorneys who have taken Border Patrol agents who have stopped drug smugglers at our border and thrown the Border Patrol agents in jail for not following the proper procedures, giving immunity to the drug dealer, and throwing the book at the people, the law enforcement agents who are trying to protect us. As we speak, Ramos and Compeon, two Border Patrol agents who, for 15 years combined in their lives, were risking their lives every day to protect us. One of them is a 10-year veteran of the Naval Reserve. The other served in the military before joining the Border Patrol. These people have clean records. Yet the U.S. attorney has thrown the book at these folks, these two brave men, men whose records are clean. And yet he has, the U.S. attorney claims they are corrupt again by playing word games, just like his boss. And today, as we debate this bill, these two Border Patrol agents languish in solitary confinement in Federal prison. How can anyone claim that they are in favor of the Border Patrol, strengthening the Border Patrol agents, when this administration has done so much to demoralize those people in the Border Patrol and to attack the well-being of those who are protecting us? The demoralization of our Border Patrol is a grave threat to our national security and the safety of people. We need to back our Border Patrol agents. They do not support this legislation. We need to be strong. We need to make sure that we are doing what is right for the American people. That is what this battle is all about. Let's remember those two Border Patrol agents because they symbolize everything that's wrong with that legislation, everything that's wrong with the position of the elite in this country. These are just ordinary men, Ramos and Compeon, who were out trying to protect us, just like our military people overseas, risking their life. Yet they were told not to use their weapons on the border, and they did, and they did not follow the proper procedures, and they were thrown in jail. Remembering them, remembering what we do right for our own people, let us oppose this effort to change the immigration laws that would bring more illegals into our country.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, a tsunami of illegal aliens is sweeping into our country, crowding our classrooms, closing our hospital emergency rooms, unleashing violent crime, and driving down wages. This is not theory. It is a harsh, threatening reality borne out not by numerous academic studies, but by the life experiences of the American families from California to Georgia and from Iowa to New Jersey. Our middle class is being destroyed. Our communities are not safe. Our social service infrastructure is collapsing. And, yes, it has everything to do with illegal immigration, illegal immigration which is out of control. And year after year, while our schools deteriorate and our jails fill and our hospital emergency rooms shut down, the elite in this country turns a blind eye to the disaster that is befalling the rest of us, their fellow Americans. The elites obscure the issue and maneuver to keep in place policies that reward illegal immigrants with jobs and benefits, and now, of course, being rewarded with citizenship. This country, the upper class says, can't function without cheap labor. Well, cheap to the captains of industry and the political elite, but painfully expensive to America's middle class. It's our kids whose education is being diminished, our families who are paying thousands more in health insurance to make up for the hospital costs of giving free service to illegals. It's our neighborhoods who suffer from crime perpetuated by criminals transported here from other countries. And, yes, our livelihoods are being dragged down as wages are depressed and anchored down by a constant influx of immigrants, mostly illegal, some with H1B visas, willing to work at a pittance. Big business, with its hold on the GOP, in an unholy alliance with the liberal left coalition that controls the Democratic Party, have been responsible for this invasion of our country, this attack on the well-being of our people. This coalition gives the jobs and passes out the benefits that lured tens of millions of illegals to our country. It's no accident. This predicament was predictable. It's been over 20 years of bad policy in the making. If you give jobs and benefits, the masses of people over there will do anything to get over here. And that's what we've been doing. Give it and they will come. Surprise, surprise. Now the out-of-touch elite has introduced yet another piece of legislation, this so-called comprehensive reform bill that they claim will fix our illegal immigration crisis once and for all. Of course, this is a crisis they created. They are trumpeting the supposedly new enforcement measures and security measures that will be initiated in this bill, the border fence, new agents, new employer sanctions, if only we will swallow hard and give amnesty to those law-breakers who are already here. Like Lucy holding out the football for Charlie Brown to kick, the bill is yet another effort to trick us. It's an illusion, a scam that will make things worse, not better. The Senate legislation now being touted by Senator Kennedy and a few Republican Senators immediately legalizes the status of 15 to 20 million illegals, while offering more border control, yes, fences and Border Patrol agents and such, as sweeteners aimed at getting us to accept this deal. But we've already passed legislation addressing border security. It's already into law. It's already against the law, for example, to hire illegals. We've already mandated a stronger fence and more Border Patrol agents. So, in reality, this legislation isn't about those other things which they're trying to get us to support the legislation about; this is only about legalizing the status of 15 to 20 million illegals and then finding new ways to get more immigrants into our country. It has nothing to do with controlling the flow of illegals and controlling the flow of immigrants into our country, as much as it is expanding the number of immigrants, legal and illegal, coming into our country. In such situations as we find ourselves in today with this legislation, it's fashionable on Capitol Hill to say ``the devil is in the details''. And this bill has enough demons to open up a whole new level of hell. Let's start, first and foremost, with the most obvious lie, the claim that this bill does not give amnesty to illegal aliens. President Bush has done great damage to his credibility by playing such word games. My friends, the first thing this bill does is legalize 15 to 20 million people who now illegally reside in our country. I don't care what the President calls it, it immediately legalizes the status of millions who are here illegally. Under the proposed legislation, this amnesty, and that's exactly what it is, is now called a probationary Z visa. Upon passage of this bill, every illegal alien who can claim they were here in the United States by January 1 of 2007 can apply for a probationary Z visa that grants them immediate legal status to be in the United States. Listen carefully. Immediately upon this bill's passage, there is no waiting for triggers or clarification or bureaucratic benchmarks, their status is immediately legalized. It is very straightforward. These probationary visas are available immediately upon the passage of this bill, 15 or 20 million illegals immediately legalized in their status here. What message does this send to the 100 million or so people who are waiting overseas? The 15 to 20 million newly legalized immigrants will be quickly followed by 50 to 100 million more illegals flooding our system beyond the point of return. If we let that happen, this will be a catastrophic event of historic proportions. More importantly, for the American people, it will be a calamity for their communities and for their families. According to this so-called immigration reform bill, how does an illegal become legal? Well, first of all, he temporarily, right off the bat, becomes legal once this bill passes. Very simple, if he wants to make himself legal, then beyond that, he or she walks in and applies. Or he or she just, they don't have to pay back taxes; they don't have to do anything else. If this bill passes, he or she doesn't have to go through health checks. They don't have to have any other process. They will be granted, immediately after the passage of this bill, legal status to be here, legal status that is supposedly temporary. Supposedly. The illegal pays a fine of $1,000 for this probationary visa, not the $5,000 that we've all heard about. It's $1,000. And for $1,000, one can obtain the legal right to work in this country, to participate in our Social Security system, to be protected by our laws, and given benefits from our government, a plenty good bargain for them. But for the taxpayers it's worse than a raw deal. Yes, out of the shadows will come 15 to 20 million people who will now be demanding equal rights to live here freely, to get jobs, to consume resources that they are not now entitled to consume because they are now here illegally. There is another detail that makes this process dangerous and unworkable. The government, according to this legislation, has only 1 business day to act once an application has been submitted, and that is just 1 day to look over that application and to approve it. After 1 business day, that's 24 hours, the government must issue the amnesty to that applicant. Is there anyone who doesn't understand that this means huge numbers of criminals and, yes, terrorists, who will obtain the legal right to live and work here in the United States under this rule because of this legislation? One day to oversee this applicant? One needs to ask, who is writing such obvious insanity into Federal legislation? Obviously, whoever is insisting on a 1-day review, that must be followed by an approval if one doesn't object; 1-day review, obviously, the person who's advocating this doesn't care about us at all. He's looking to make sure that we treat those people who are in this country illegally better. This person obviously doesn't care, who's written this into our Federal law, or is trying to, doesn't care if Americans are victimized by criminals who should never have been permitted to come here, but will come here because we're only requiring 1 day to determine if they can be approved or not. Now, you think that criminals throughout the world and even terrorists don't see this as a vulnerability? Who's trying to foist this off on us? Who's trying to write this into Federal law? They're not watching out for the interests of the American people. This Z visa gives illegal aliens exactly what they want, the legal right to work in the United States, and the Z visa is renewable every 4 years, without limits. The way this bill is written, you can live in the United States until you die by renewing your Z visa every 4 years. Fellow Americans, who love this country, word games aside, this is amnesty of the worst possible sort. Millions of illegals who broke the law will be granted legal status and can stay in this country as long as they please. In fact, I predict millions of people who are currently holding valid student and tourist visas will immediately apply for the Z visa. And why not? Student and tourist visas expire. The Z visa won't expire; every 4 years you can just renew it. Only if the alien wishes to become a citizen do the increased fines, that $5,000 we've heard about, only if they want to become a citizen do these fines and other requirements come into play. No serious person in the immigration reform movement has ever said that it is citizenship that defines amnesty. Amnesty is not being held to account for breaking the law. This Z visa goes beyond not punishing law breakers. It actually rewards law breakers. Wake up, America. Someone is giving away our country. Someone is betraying the interests of the American people. The perpetrators of this crime want low wages for the benefit of business and they want political pawns for the benefit of the liberal left. This legislation will make a bad situation that we all know exists in this country, it'll make it dramatically worse. Is this what the American people are calling for when they want comprehensive immigration reform? They want something that will make it worse than we have it today? I don't understand how we can stand and let this happen to our country. It is up to us to make sure that it doesn't. This legislation is a declaration of war on the American middle class. And not only will this legislation increase illegal immigration, a clause in the bill will create a rush to the border. Section 601H5 states that anyone arrested trying to cross into our country, who then claims to have formerly lived in the United States will be allowed to apply for a Z visa; which means they can be approved in 1 day. This is a mind-boggling incentive for fraud. Who wouldn't want to come across the border on the chance that they could bluff their way into getting amnesty and becoming eligible for all our government programs and eligible for the jobs that should be going to Americans? Expect to hear ballyhoo about the tough enforcement mechanisms and the ``triggers'' built into this bill. But don't believe it; it's just so much more fraud, more flim-flam. The triggers and other schemes in this bill are a farce. There is no reason these safeguards against illegal immigration have not already been implemented. They are now simply being used as a ruse to disguise the one goal of the elite, and that is to legalize the status of those millions who are already here illegally and leading tens of millions more to come here. The bill calls for 18,000 Border Patrol agents. That's one of the claims of why we have to support the bill. We're going to get 18,000 Border Patrol agents. But we already have 15,000 Border Patrol agents. And in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, it's required that there be 2,000 new Border Patrol agents each year through 2010. So this is simply smoke and mirrors. What this new legislation does is simply reiterate hiring mandates that are already in the system, already mandated by law. This bill simply takes credit for the hard work that's already been done. Of course, they're doing that because, again, it's a cover for their attempt to legalize the status of 15 to 20 million illegals and, yes, to unleash a flood of millions more to come into our country. On another level, how does anyone expect to actually meet the goal of increasing the ranks of the Border Patrol when this administration throws Border Patrol agents into prison and gives immunity to alien drug smugglers? This administration has lost the confidence of the Border Patrol. And I submit at this time a statement by the Border Patrol Agents Council opposing this legislation. I would like to put this into the Record at this point, Mr. Speaker. [From the National Border Patrol Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, May 17, 2007] Senate Immigration Reform Compromise is a Raw Deal for America More than a century ago, the philosopher George Santayana sagely observed that ``those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'' The United States Senate would do well to heed that advice as it once again debates immigration reform. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. At that time, it was estimated that between three and four million illegal aliens were living in the United States. The bill promised to crack down on the businesses that hired illegal aliens and step up border enforcement efforts. Since those measures would finally solve the problem of illegal immigration, Congress reasoned, there would be no harm in establishing a pathway to citizenship for those who had been working in this country for a minimum period of time. It was assumed that about one-half million people would qualify for that benefit under those terms. In the final analysis, however, nearly three million illegal aliens became citizens, many of them through fraud. A large number of criminals and even a handful of terrorists were among the beneficiaries of that program. Twenty-one years later, it is estimated that at least 12 million, and perhaps as many as 20 million, illegal aliens reside in the United States. Quite obviously, the promise of enforcement never materialized. Now, some elected officials are desperately trying to convince the American public that they are finally serious about keeping that promise, and to prove it, claim that they will add about 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 370 miles of border fencing, as well as an electronic employment verification system. While this represents a slight improvement over the current untenable situation, it will by no means stop, or even substantially slow, the current rate of illegal immigration. As long as impoverished people can find work in this country at wages that far exceed those available to them in their native countries, millions of illegal aliens will continue to cross our borders every year. The only way to stop this influx is to eliminate the employment magnet by means of a fool-proof employment verification system. While the plan unveiled by the Senate takes a few small steps in that direction, it would do very little to actually hold employers accountable. In order to achieve that goal, every prospective worker must be required to present a single type of secure biometric employment-verification document whenever applying for a job, and every prospective employer must be required to electronically verify its authenticity. The logical choice for this document is the Social Security card, which every legal worker is already required to possess. Those who claim that it would be impossible to arrest and deport millions of people ignore economic reality. If illegal aliens can no longer find work in this country because employers are afraid of the consequences for hiring them, they will go home of their own accord. Unless Congress gets serious about worksite enforcement, it will be impossible to secure our borders. The Border Patrol is totally overwhelmed by the high volume of illegal traffic that streams across our borders every day. Front-line agents estimate that for every person they apprehend, two or three slip by them. At the same time, Border Patrol agents need to be provided with the necessary tools and support in order to be able to intercept the criminals and terrorists who will continue to attempt to breach our borders. T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, issued the following statement today: ``Every person who has ever risked their life securing our borders is extremely disheartened to see some of our elected representatives once again waving the white flag on the issues of illegal immigration and border security. Rewarding criminal behavior has never induced anyone to abide by the law, and there is no reason to believe that the outcome will be any different in this case.'' ``The passage of time has proven the 1986 amnesty to be a mistake of colossal proportions. Instead of `wiping the slate clean,' it spurred a dramatic increase in illegal immigration. With the ever-present threat of terrorism, it is critical to take the steps necessary to immediately and completely secure our borders. Piecemeal measures will prolong our vulnerability, and are an open invitation to further terrorist attacks.'' ``Rather than the meaningless `triggers' of additional personnel and barriers outlined in the compromise, Americans must insist that border security be measured in absolute terms. As long as any people or contraband can enter our country illegally, our borders are not secure. Sadly, the plan that the Senate is proposing falls woefully short by that yardstick, and needlessly jeopardizes the security of this Nation.'' As we deliberate on this bill, it behooves us to remember that Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean are at this very moment languishing in solitary confinement in a Federal prison. These heroic border guards, one a 10-year veteran who was up to be Border Patrol Agent of the Year, another 5-year veteran, these people who were putting their lives on the line for us on a daily basis for years, interdicted a drug smuggler one day. This drug smuggler was transporting over $1 million worth of narcotics into our country. Yet when all was said and done, and the drug smuggler had escaped, but his drugs were interdicted and seized, this administration turned what may have been just administrative paperwork and literally things not reported right on paper, mistakes that may or may not have been made by the agents, and I think that after looking at this, there weren't mistakes, but if there were, it was procedural mistakes, policy issues there that were being dealt with on paper, they turned that into criminal activity, charging our Border Patrol agents with felonies, putting them away for 10 to 11 years, while siding with the drug smuggler, giving the drug smuggler immunity to testify against the Border Patrol agents as they turned what would be minor mistakes into felonies rather than trying to say, well, you made some mistakes in this, but we will give you immunity, however, so we can get the drug smuggler who is trying to smuggle drugs in to our children and into our communities. And then there are the cases of Gilmer Hernandez and Gary Brugman, two more law enforcement officers, jailed for stopping human traffickers. Again, the book was thrown at them, the maximum penalties sought, but no prosecution of illegal criminal aliens. This indefensible inclination of the administration, of President Bush's leadership of the administration, has demoralized our protectors at the border. According to the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 12,000 frontline Border Patrol agents, we are losing 12 percent of our Border Patrol agents a year right now. That amounts to 1,500 officers quitting their job every year. And we cannot replace the ones that we are losing. Why? Because this administration is not backing them up; because they feel that they are being abused by the people, by the government that they are serving. This is the administration that claims to be doing things in this legislation to help increase border security. This administration, this President, has a miserable record of providing border security. Our defenders have been undercut and abused by a personal protege of the President of the United States. This isn't as if President Bush doesn't know this. Attorney General Johnny Sutton, a young man who has tagged his career to the President for the last 20 years, he personally decided to prosecute these people, these law enforcement people, to the fullest extent of the law. And he has demonstrated that he will show no mercy for these Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officers like Ramos and Compean. The White House and Johnny Sutton will not permit these Border Patrol agents to even go out on bond until their appeal is heard. And it was Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney, and prosecutors that decided to prosecute them and let the drug smugglers go, decided to throw the book at them, decided to give gun charges against these people even though it is their job to carry a gun in order to protect us. Well, are we expected to believe that the legislation now pursued by the President, who is behind such nonsensical policies at the border, will help make our borders more secure, help stem the out-of-control flow of illegals into our country? How can we believe that that is what the purpose of this legislation is when at this time the administration is taking steps and has taken steps for the last 6 years to ensure that we would have a massive flow of illegals into our country? These people didn't just materialize into our country. They have come especially from across the southern border, but across our other borders as well, and there has been no attempt by this administration to get control of the people who are entering via airports from other parts of the world, people who then just overstay their visa. Well, this administration has not done this and has attacked our Border Patrol agents instead. So much for the idea that this legislation, backed by Senator Kennedy and the President, will somehow strengthen the Border Patrol. The next trigger that we are told about is similarly fraudulent. The bill requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to have the resources to detain up to 27,000 illegal aliens. How about that? But the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004 already requires almost double that number, 43,000 beds. Again, the bill is simply taking credit for legislation and for mandates that have already been passed into law. They are doing this to confuse the American people because they are using this as a cover to legalize the status of 15- to 20-million people who are here illegally, which will attract tens of millions more. And what this bill doesn't do and what it doesn't require may be just as significant as what it does. It does not require worksite enforcement. In an amazing loophole. It only requires the Department of Homeland Security to have the tools to conduct worksite enforcement, but nowhere in the bill does it mandate the Department of Homeland Security to actually conduct worksite enforcement. Since millions of illegal aliens come here looking for work, worksite enforcement is imperative if we are to discourage illegal immigration. If the Department of Homeland Security has the tools, but this so- called comprehensive package does not require them to use the tools, then we are right back in the situation that we are now. The law isn't being enforced. If it was, then the situation would not have gotten out of hand, as it is today. One of the triggers in this legislation actually reduces border security. It cuts in half the border fence that Congress required to build on our southern borders. Now, remember we already passed the legislation requiring a fence. Everybody remembers that. Now those who ignored that mandate, the President and others who ignored that mandate, are telling us we must legalize the status of millions of illegals who are in this country in order for us to get what is already required by law. Now, what makes us think they are now going to obey the law, the agreement that they made? What this bill doesn't do, as I said, speaks as loud as it what it does. It does not require the U.S. to have a verifiable exit system so we know that when visiting foreigners come into the U.S., then we have no idea if they have left. Someone who is coming into the United States on a visa can overstay their visa, and we don't know if they have left. How can we seek out and deport someone who has violated their visa if we don't even know if that person is in the country or not? There has been no effort on the part of this administration to try to fix that problem, and this bill does not mandate that. Furthermore, it does not mandate checks on legal status in order for people who are here to get benefits. So those who oversee the limited resources that we have for our own people aren't expected to verify the legal status of those seeking to obtain services or benefits that are paid by the taxpayers. Our own people are going to suffer because of this. This is the comprehensive bill that is supposed to help our people; yet it leaves us vulnerable. Illegals are waved right through the system. Let me give you an example. What I have learned is that there are hundreds of thousands of illegals throughout this country who are in Federal housing. Why? Because one member of their family, perhaps a child that was born here once they came to this country illegally, one child becomes a U.S. citizen, and if they have one child as a U.S. citizen, the whole family then gets to have housing benefits from the Federal Government. Now, tell me this: The American people who are paying the bills, shouldn't they be getting this benefit rather than a family from overseas who has one child in this country who then supposedly becomes a citizen? What about our people who are barely making it, who can barely afford to pay their rent? They don't get the housing subsidy. What about our seniors who lose their income or they can't make it on what their retirement income is? They don't get the help. But illegals are being herded right through the system and given this help because they have a child that was born here. We shouldn't even permit an illegal who has a child here to think that that child is going to be a legal citizen. That itself should be taken care of in this legislation, and that isn't being taken care of. And by letting anyone who is born here become a U.S. citizen, we have again opened up all these benefits to illegals, millions of them, and we have also invited millions to come here to make sure their children become citizens by being born here. And, by the way, the triggers that we have heard about will unleash forces that they claim will make things better, but what about these triggers? How are these triggers going to be met? Well, the Secretary of Homeland Security, all he has to do to say that the triggers have been met is simply submit a written piece of paper that claims the triggers have been met. There is no actual reduction in illegal immigration required before there is a trigger which brings in all of these new immigrants and opens up the rest of the legislation. There is no decrease in, for example, those people who are involved in trying to get jobs through the match file system of Social Security. No, that would be measurable. Perhaps if we had a reduction in the number of illegal aliens in our prisons that could be noted, maybe that would be a good trigger, or anything else that can be objectively measured. No. That might mean that we are actually making progress, and that is the real reason why you have triggers. No, the triggers are there to provide cover. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, all he has to do is simply sign a letter saying that the trigger elements are funded, in place, and in operation. So these supposed triggers, these supposed safeguards, they just have to be in place. They don't have to have any results, and at that point, that is when the rest of the safeguards don't make any difference at that point. That is when the meat of the bill goes into effect. The immigration spigot will be turned on by a simple piece of paper saying that something is in place, not necessarily working. And as we have seen, several of these triggers that I have already mentioned have already been put in place by prior legislation. The wall, building the wall, and expanding the Border Patrol agents, they have already been mandated. So one can expect the trigger letters that we are talking about that they are saying we are going to hold off until this situation is under control, they will be issued almost immediately, and that is predictable. And what happens when a letter certifying that we have gotten tough with border security is issued? Well, once that letter is issued, this legislation provides that a massive, and I mean a massive, guest worker program is then launched. You get that? Expanding the Border Patrol agents and the fence and these things, when they just say they are in place, all of a sudden the new guest worker program is brought out and launched into service. The deep pool of illegals currently here is going to be boosted by a flood of new illegals who know that if they get here, they will likely be given amnesty just like we did in 1986 and just like people are trying to do right now. The lies of the past are almost as blatant as the fraud we are now confronting. The unspoken truth is Senator Kennedy wants extremely high levels of immigration. The truth is, President Bush wants extremely high levels of immigration. It hurts the well-being of the American people, but if it does, so be it. That's what Senator Kennedy and President Bush want. It isn't enough that we have a 15 percent unemployment rate among high school dropouts in this country, and millions of lower-income Americans who are seeing their wages buy less and less. It isn't enough that immigration has reduced the wages of low-skilled Americans by about $2,000 a year. Apparently, we need to push them into abject poverty by importing 400,000 guest workers a year to compete directly with Americans. Yes, 400,000, and again, now, details matter. While Y visas, which are designated for those who are in this new temporary guest workers program, while they are supposed to be only temporary and only good for 2 years, a Y visa holder can eventually apply and get U.S. citizenship. They can also bring their spouse and children. They can stay for 2 years to work. Then they return home, and then they reapply for another 2-year visa. They can renew the Y visa this way up to three times. Now, who in their right mind actually believes that these people, once they've uprooted their families and they brought all this and met these other requirements, that once they are here, that they are just going to go back? When we have millions of people swarming into this country because we've already given amnesty to everybody else, why won't these people in the guest worker program just melt right into the crowds, just go right there? And, of course, they might go in and ask for green cards, which they can do, or they will just melt into the system, melt into our country. Why not? Well, does this sound like it is a temporary guest worker's program, that 400,000 people are going to be here temporarily? Well, who gets hurt by this nonsense? This bill allows employers to lay off American workers and replace them with Y visa holders as long as the Americans were fired 90 days before the petition of the foreign worker is filed. This is a huge subsidy to corporate America. It is both corporate welfare and an attack on the paycheck of hardworking Americans who are struggling to keep afloat. We are told we must have these guest workers because Americans won't take the jobs, like in agriculture. Well, there are Americans who will pick fruit and vegetables. Don't tell me there aren't Americans who will go out and do this kind of labor in the fields. In fact, I've visited compounds where you have thousands of Americans, men, healthy men, between 18 and 40 years old, who would love to get out and earn some money. These are men in prison. These are prisoners who, after serving their time, 5 to 10 years, they get out with no work ethic, no money, $50 in their pocket and a new suit; and people are surprised when they come back to prison after committing more crime. Well, let's put these people to work, rather than wasting all of their time, not developing any work ethic, let's let them earn $10,000, $20,000, so when they get out, they will have some money in their hand and they will have a work ethic. And half of the money can be used to pay for their own incarceration. When somebody like me says this in Washington, D.C., they make fun of that. They make fun of me for suggesting that prisoners should pick the fruits and vegetables. The people making fun of me, are they watching out for the American people? These prisoners, they will be given a chance if we let them earn a living, come out of prison with $10,000 or $20,000 that they've earned, and they've paid some restitution in the meantime. So there are people who will do these jobs, even the agricultural jobs. We are told we must have guest workers because Americans won't take the jobs, like agriculture and other jobs, because the guest worker program isn't just agricultural work. Look real close, Mr. and Mrs. America. This guest worker program includes a lot of other jobs rather than just agricultural work, cleaning hotel rooms and construction workers, for example. Now, is it really true that Americans won't do that, or Americans won't be nannies for other people's children? No. Americans will do those jobs as long as they get pay commensurate for their work. No, they won't work like slave labor, like illegals who are pouring over the borders into our country to fill these jobs. There are millions of American women who would love to drop off their children at school at 9 o'clock in the morning and go to work at these various hotels, cleaning the rooms and changing the sheets and then get off by 3 o'clock in order to pick up their kids at school. Yes, millions of American women would like to do that, but they're not going to work for a pittance, they're not going to work as slaves. They want benefits if they're going to work for the job. But with illegals pouring across the border, these millions of American women are left out. There are millions of American women who would love to be a nanny for some rich people who would like to have a nanny for their children, or even some people who aren't so rich who would like to have some help with their children, but they're not going to work for a pittance. And all these rich people who have nannies from overseas and are paying them half as much as they would have to pay an American woman to help them, who is being helped? The rich lady or the rich woman who has the children are being helped. Yes, those rich people are being helped. Maybe the immigrant, the illegal immigrant, probably woman, who is helping out as a nanny, she has helped a little bit. Who is the big loser are the American women, who could be earning a decent living to help their families by serving as nannies, because they are women who are mothers and they know about taking care of children. We have frozen them out of the market. We are hurting the American family. We are making sure that families don't have the extra money, and that these hotel chains can pay people a pittance. The guest worker program starts at 400,000, but it can be increased. This bill allows for adjustments every 6 months based on market fluctuation. Is there a doubt in anyone's mind that simply allowing the number of guest workers to go up and down will not result in the number of workers going up and up and up? H1B visas and Y visa holders will be taking the jobs that Americans are willing to do, but they will be driving down wages. In Orange County, I went to a function a few years ago and a fellow grabbed me by the arm and he said, Congressman, I am here to thank you. He had a newspaper clipping when we were debating H1B visas here on the floor of the House. He said Congressman, I read your quote. You said if we bring in these hundreds of thousands of people on H1B visas from India and Pakistan to work at our high-tech jobs, we are going to do nothing but depress the wages of the people in the electronics industry. He said, I was laid off, and do you know what happened? I went back to get my old job back. They paid me $80,000, and now they were offering the same job to me for $50,000. And they looked at me and said, if you don't take this, we can get somebody with an H1B visa to take it, some Indian or Pakistani, so you'd better take it. And he said, I did. He said, you know the difference, Congressman, between earning $50,000 and $80,000 is? I said, what is it? He said, you never dream of owning your own home if you make $50,000 a year. We are destroying the dreams of the American people in order to what? To bring down wages so that our business elite can prosper, and yes, so that we can bring millions of illegals into this country, millions of immigrants into this country, which the liberal left of the political spectrum thinks that they are going to use these people as pawns in their own political game. They are being exploited by the business community and exploited by the liberal left who control the Democratic party. This is obscene. Who loses? Yeah, the immigrants are kind of losers, even though they're a little bit better off. The American people are the losers. What happens to particular Americans isn't the worst of it. Not only do we greatly expand our guest worker program, we are actually increasing chain migration, even though they are telling us this bill will take care of that. Chain migration allows an immigrant to bring his spouse and children and the sisters and brothers and in-laws, grandparents, aunts and uncles. One of the reasons the wait to migrate to America is so long for many people overseas is that the open slots that could become open to immigrate here legally are going to people who are bringing their relatives over, people who may immediately be on the dole, people who can't even support themselves, but they are family members. The Senate claims this bill will move away from that, that it will point the system to a merit system, to those who have skills that America needs and will be able to come into the country before the relatives of those people are already here. Sounds pretty good in theory, doesn't it? Once again, there are so many loopholes in this bill that the reality of this legislation is just the opposite for which it portends. The bill, as written, for most of the next decade will dramatically increase chain migration. Well, how is that? How? Right now, chain migration is limited to 112,000 per year. This bill increases that. Get this: Chain migration is 112,000 a year; this bill would increase that number to 440,000 per year until the current backlog of applications is filled. That backlog will take 8 years, get that, 8 years to fix, 8 years before the point system we are being told about will come into play, 8 years at a fourfold increase in chain migration during those 8 years. Does anyone here really think that 8 years from now we will implement a merit system for chain migration? By then we will have 50 to 100 million new illegal immigrants here who have swarmed into our country, and we will be in the midst of chaos and confusion. One might reasonably hope, after granting amnesty, establishing a new guest worker program, increasing chain migration and requiring trigger mechanisms that already are in place and aren't needed, that this bill might at least crack down on illegal immigrant criminals. Well, don't hold your breath. This bill imposes significant obstacles to removing dangerous alien gang members from our country. This bill also narrowly defines criminal gangs so that many small gangs will be excluded from the bill. Further, the government must prove bad intent on the part of the alien gang member in order to remove the alien gang member. All a gang member has to do is sign a piece of paper saying he has renounced his gang affiliation and he can then get a Z visa. He is then getting a visa that will permit him legal status here, even though he's illegal and part of a criminal gang. Of course a gang member would never lie to us about that, would he? I guess not. Why are we putting out this welcome mat for criminals? This is madness. Further, the bill weakens the law involving passport fraud and misuse. It actually reduces the punishment for illegal reentry by criminals into this country. The so-called comprehensive bill weakens restrictions that are already in place. And shockingly enough, this bill does not make engaging in a terrorist activity proof that an immigrant is not of good moral character, the good moral character, of course, being a requirement to get a visa. And the final insult, let's look at the highly touted electronic employment eligibility verification, the system allowing employers to make sure that the employees they hire are eligible for employment. It's a fraud. Why? First, because the bill permits the entire system to be changed by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary and the Social Security Administrator. Second, while an illegal alien is appealing a finding of noneligibility for employment, so if he is found not to be eligible for employment, while he is appealing that, he can appeal it administratively, and then he can appeal it in the courts. The illegal can't be fired while he is appealing that decision. That could go on for years, and so the mechanism is irrelevant. In real-life scenarios, this bill would make that mechanism to check irrelevant. Forget whatever requirements are in the bill. There are over 40 pages of such requirements, such as, in section 302 of the bill, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary and the Social Security Administrator are given authority to change any requirement. Any of the supposed tough mandates can be administratively done and deleted simply by publishing these changes in the Federal Register. What is the purpose of defining a system for page after page in this legislation and then saying, by the way, if you don't like it or get too much heat from greedy employers or a confused press, don't worry, you can change it? It can be changed easily without having to go back to the Congress. This is not laying the foundation for meeting serious challenges. This is creating a phony facade to make people think that something else is happening. The final slap? This bill legalizes in-state tuition for illegal aliens. If your child goes 100 miles to the next State, he or she must pay for out-of-state tuition. But an illegal alien who is smuggled 2,000 miles by their parents into this country can go to school cheaply and on your tax dollar. This much vaunted compromise that we are talking about, this comprehensive bill, is in reality an amnesty for everyone; a new guest worker program so your employer can throw you out of work. It vastly expands chain migration. It guts enforcement provisions and makes it easier for illegal alien criminals to stay. If this is a compromise, I shudder to think what the other bill will look like. It would be more honest for the Senate to draft up a bill declaring war on the American people. Robert Rector from the Heritage Foundation estimates the cost for the out-of-control flow of illegal immigration will be over $2.5 trillion. That is trillion dollars with a ``T.'' Baby-boomers retiring and the looming crisis in Medicare and Social Security are upon us. What rational person thinks that we can take on another $2.5 trillion in obligations and not see the utter bankruptcy of our country? And what rational person thinks we can absorb tens of millions of new illegals who will be attracted to America once we legalize the status of this bunch who are here now? This goes deeper than economics. Why are we officially endorsing the existence of a permanent class of illegal residents, because when those 50 to 100 million people get here, it will be over. A group of people who are not citizens, who have neither obligation nor benefits of being citizens, will be in our country forever. It will change the nature of the United States. It is changing the nature of the United States. I strongly support legal immigration. Legal immigrants are the bulwark of our economy and our society. They are the most patriotic of Americans. But they have come here to be Americans. They have come here, legal immigrants have come here, to make sure they are healthy, yes, and they can work and they can actually take care of themselves, rather than be wards of the state. They have met these obligations. They want to speak English. But they have come here with the premise, everyone comes here who comes to our country, they know, these legal immigrants, that they have to give up their allegiance to their old country and to truly become Americans, and they want to become Americans. I am proud of those legal immigrants who support me in my district. They deserve the rights and their families deserve the rights of every American, and no one should ever interpret this battle against illegal immigration with any attack on those wonderful American citizens who are here by choice and who have come here legally and come here through the process. We have a huge group of illegal immigrants here now, and a growing number, who refuse to renounce their allegiance to their old country and to their old ways, but loudly insist on being granted the economic benefits of living in this country. This is a prescription for disaster. For disaster. Legal immigration is a controlled process. We take in more than all the rest of the world combined. We have more legal immigrants into our country than all the other countries of the world combined, and we can be proud of that. But it hasn't been enough for those who rake in higher profits when wages go down or for those in the liberal left who want to fundamentally change America and believe a mass of new immigrants will help them do it. America is a wondrous dream. We are letting an elite clique of capitalists and leftists, as unholy an alliance as that is, to turn this dream into a nightmare. The American people need to step forward with a righteous rage. They are being betrayed. President Bush and Senator Kennedy have an agenda that will destroy America's middle- class. Those who sign onto this legislation are not, not, representing the interests of the American people. If we do not speak up, the Americans, the patriots, both legal immigrants and people who are born here, if we do not step up there will be another 50 to 100 million people here from abroad and they will live here a decade from now and it will be a different country. We will have lost our country. Yet those supporting this invasion of America posture themselves as morally superior. Cities declare ``sanctuary'' for illegals, these illegals who have broken our laws. These cities who are declaring sanctuary are never asked who is being hurt. They think they are helping people. It is not just the American people being hurt, it is those people waiting in line overseas. Why should the person who has come here illegally, the people who have come here illegally, get the benefits? Why should the people who run the sanctuaries be on the side of those people who cheated and cut in line in front of all of those hundreds of millions of people waiting overseas? The sanctuary cities are treating the good people who would immigrate here legally and are waiting to do so as a bunch of saps. Any time that we reward illegal conduct and these people who have come here illegally and we say we are reaching out to them, we are going to try to help them, what you are really doing is hurting the people overseas. You are hurting someone else who is a decent, hard-working person who would come here. So anybody who offers sanctuary and is reaching out to illegals is doing nothing but hurting other people overseas. Of course, they are hurting the American people. It is not enough to tell them that. They are also hurting these poor people overseas. These sanctuary cities are contributing to the breakdown of our society. This ``holier-than-thou'' attitude is not humanitarian. It is phony. Those posers are rarely willing to sacrifice their own resources. They want to spend taxpayer dollars to take care of their humanitarian instincts. The Catholic Church, for example, demands that illegals be given healthcare and education benefits. Let the Catholic Church, if they are serious, pay the bill for the illegals. They can do it. They can provide schools and healthcare. There are a lot of Catholic properties that could be sold to pay for their healthcare. No, they want the American people, other people, to pay for it. The taxpayers. That is not humanitarianism. That is not Christian charity. Then what happens when the next wave gets here, 50 to 100 million illegals? First and foremost, the American people should be loyal to each other. We must care for each other. This is not hate mongering. This is not being against people. Americans of every race, every religion, every ethnic background, we need to be compassionate to each other and each other's families. We must not drain the limited resources that we have for the Americans in order to give it to the other people who have come here illegally, because we must first care for our own people. That is not hate. That is the right kind of love you have in your heart for your family and your neighbors. This is not humanitarianism, when we give this away to others and encourage millions more to come here. It will cause the collapse of our system and all of us will be worse off. The immigration legislation being foisted upon us will create a different America with a permanent alien underclass, people who may or may not share our Democratic values and may or may not be loyal to America's ideals. It is time for patriots to act, to stand up and be heard. Be angry. Call on elected officials to be held accountable. This supposed comprehensive immigration bill must be defeated, and I would call on my fellow Members of Congress and the American people to join in this fight. We need every patriot to be activated now to save America.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today was May Day, and there were demonstrations across America in favor of a more open immigration policy, an immigration policy that I might add has already resulted in 15 to 20 million illegals being present in our society. The American people need to pay very close attention to this issue. Several weeks ago, the President of the United States took advantage with Congress being out of session to give a major immigration policy speech down along the border in Arizona. Flanked by dozens of border patrol officers, President Bush stuck to the usual script, securing the border, yes, but first a guest worker program must be set up that includes giving Social Security benefits to illegals, to those people who have been working here illegally, and of course, part of the program must be to legalize the status of those millions of illegal immigrants who already reside in our country. I have observed in my 30 years in Washington that when a President initiates a major policy speech on a controversial issue while Congress is in recess, it usually is because what he is advocating is indefensible and that he is seeking to minimize criticism. While the President was posturing with the border patrol, we Members were back in our districts listening to the pleas of our constituents. The American people are begging their government to save their families from the onslaught of illegal immigration. Instead of meeting with America's elite who live behind gates and work at corporate boardrooms and whose kids attend private schools, President Bush should be talking to people who are watching their children's public schools, their community hospitals and the security of their own neighborhoods being brought down by a massive flow of foreigners, illegally establishing themselves in our country. If this President pushes through his so-called comprehensive immigration plan, which will legalize the status of those who have broken our laws and are in this country illegally, America's current 15 to 20 million illegal residents within a decade will mushroom to another 40 to 50 million. Wake up, America. We are about to lose our country. Wake up, America. The President and Congress are not watching out for you. The comprehensive immigration legislation that is being bandied around town by this President and by Members of Congress will be a green light to 100 million people throughout the world to do anything they can do to get to our country because we do not have the will to stop them. No matter how impenetrable the defense, no matter how diligent the border patrol, there will be no stopping them. Give them benefits, give them jobs, give them health care, give them every right to the treasures that belong to the citizens and legal immigrants who are in our country and they will come from overseas, and there will be nothing that we can do to stop them because we have given them the greatest incentive to come here, even though they are breaking our laws in doing so. Tens of millions of new illegals are bringing down the wages of our middle class, some carrying disease right into our schools and communities, some criminals, many in need of Social Security, education and health benefits, all to be taken, of course, from the resources that are dedicated to Americans so that our American people and legal immigrants will have these resources available to them. That is where all of that is going to come from. Who is going to pay the price? The American people will pay the price, not the American elite, the American people. Wake up, America. You are about to be assaulted, and your elected representatives are not on your side. No one will stop the horde if this so-called comprehensive bill goes through. Who is going to stop them? Not the border patrol. And what about the border patrol, America's most important defense in this battle against such an invasion? While the President stood with border patrol agents down in the Yuma sector in Arizona, praising them for their hard work, saying how proud he was of them, the border patrol agents were painfully aware that two of their fellow officers languish in Federal prisons. They are being held in solitary confinement for doing their job, the job that the President claims he wants the border patrol agents to do. It is the President's appointees who have perpetrated upon this border patrol the worst miscarriage of justice that I have ever witnessed. Ignoring pleas for mercy and pleas for justice, ignoring the clear misconduct of his protege, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, the President has backed up his employees at the expense of border patrol agents, especially these two, Ramos and Compeon. The President has permitted his Justice Department to throw the book at these two border patrol agents for stopping a drug dealer, and perhaps, just perhaps, maybe there was some procedural errors that they were involved in. This administration turned what is, at worst, procedural violations, that they did not file the reports, even though there are questions as to whether their supervisors should have filed the reports or not; in fact, the rule states that the supervisors will file such reports, that this administration has turned that lack of proper paperwork into felonies that have put Ramos and Compeon, two border patrol agents who have well-served our country, defended our families with their lives, they are now languishing in prison for 11 years of hard time. President Bush backs up his appointees who either incompetently or maliciously chose to prosecute our law enforcement officers, while at the same time, I might add, chose to grant immunity to the drug smuggler who they stopped. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton claims that he had no choice in this matter, the biggest lie of all. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton had plenty of choices to make, and as a prosecutor, that is what prosecutors do. They make mistakes on who to prosecute. That is one of the fundamental decisions they have to make. He was faced with a decision, either prosecute the drug dealer who had $1 million worth of drugs that he was smuggling into our country, or prosecute the border patrol agents by turning their procedural mistakes into breaking the law, and thus, into felonies for supposedly covering up the breaking of the law. Our U.S. Attorney chose to give immunity to the drug smuggler who was, of course, smuggling $1 million worth of drugs into our country, but not to give immunity to the border patrol agents for procedural missteps. That was his decision. He decided, our U.S. Attorney decided to back the drug smuggler and destroy the Border Patrol agents, and he knew exactly how that decision would affect the lives of Ramos and Compeon. Agents Ramos and Compeon should have been commended for their courageous service in stopping an illegal drug smuggler from bringing in over $1 million worth of drugs into our communities. If they had stopped a terrorist with a nuclear bomb, I am sure by now they would be national heroes. Instead, the President refuses to take a sober look at the facts of this case and issue pardons for these men, the pardons that justice demands and the American people are crying out for, and the Border Patrol, throughout this country, is looking at as a sign whether this President supports the job they are doing. But, of course, they won't issue any pardon. Even to let these men out on bond pending their appeal would require an admission that some loyal Bush appointee was wrong. Instead, the President continues to back his long-time buddy at the Justice Department, Johnny Sutton, even though the decision he made, instead of going after the drug dealer, to go after the Border Patrol agents and destroy their lives, was obviously a bad call. The President has ignored the rotten smell that is coming from this case. He has ignored the fact that the Department of Homeland Security operatives went to Congress and intentionally lied to Members of Congress on investigative subcommittees, claiming that Ramos and Compeon had joked about going out and shooting a Mexican the day they intercepted this drug dealer and the incident ensued. Ramos and Compeon are Mexican Americans. They are Americans of Mexican descent. Their wives are Americans of Mexican descent. Their children are Americans of Mexican descent. Yet we had members of the Department of Homeland Security from this administration lying to Congress saying these men wanted to go out and shoot Mexicans. They lied over and over again, and this administration has lied over and over again, dealing with the Ramos and Compean case. What we have here is a situation where the supervisors who were on the scene within minutes of them stopping this drug dealer, and when he escaped over the border, those supervisors did not ask Ramos and Compeon about the incident. Ramos and Compeon didn't comment, because they knew that procedures were that they would have had to do 5 or 6 hours worth of more work, filling out more paperwork, bringing in the FBI. Both the supervisors and Ramos and Compeon knew that this would have just created a lot more work for them on their own time. They decided not to do it, because the guy had gotten away, so why report that shots were fired, and they didn't even think they had hit him. Well, making it worse, of course, as we know, the supervisors, who were actually threatened by the U.S. attorneys, the prosecutors in this case, were threatened that if they did not testify against Ramos and Compeon, and claimed that, in fact, there was an attempt to cover up this incident, rather than just being a case of where they were trying not to have to put themselves in a position where they were going to have to do all this more paperwork, they threatened the supervisors to put them in jail. Of course, the supervisors buckled. They didn't want their lives to be destroyed. Well, let me put it this way. What we have got here, failure to report, to file a report, is a procedural violation. It is not a crime. This U.S. Attorney chose to go after the Border Patrol agents instead of the drug dealer. He chose to make a procedural violation into a crime, into a felony. Again, threats were made against the supervisors, so what do you have there? A witness being threatened by the prosecution. We have seen this across our country. We know when prosecutors try to get somebody and squeeze them to say what's the truth or not the truth in order to protect themselves. They will stretch the truth. So either they went along, the supervisors went along on the assault on Ramos or Compeon, or they too would be prosecuted. Everybody hears this, gets the picture. The whole thing stinks. Ramos and Compeon are taking a fall to demonstrate to all Border Patrol agents that if they use their guns to secure our borders, even from drug smugglers, they will be destroyed. They will be targeted and destroyed by this administration because that is this administration's policy. Yes. Now, what does that policy mean? Where did that come from? If Border Patrol agents can't use their guns at the border, how can we control our borders? Now, of course, the Border Patrol agents are afraid, and, rightfully so, to get out of their car if they see a potential drug dealer driving across. What a horrible message, what a horrible decision. Yet this President has to stick with his appointees. Clearly, border security is not a priority for this administration. There may be well some other priority at work, some other agenda that we don't know about. Granting immunity to this drug smuggler, granting immunity to the people who smuggle drugs, human traffickers, which happened in another case, I might add, where another law enforcement officer ended up in jail, doing this, while granting immunity to the human traffickers and the drug smugglers, suggests the bizarre nature of this administration's border and immigration policy. If anybody denies it or defies it who works for the Border Patrol or anyone else in the government, this administration, through Ramos and Compeon, through his prosecutors, have made it clear that anyone who defies their policies will be vilified and destroyed. Note, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney labeled Ramos and Compeon in the media as ``corrupt.'' There are quotes around corrupt. This is the U.S. Attorney himself, not the prosecutors who were filing or arguing the case. The U.S. Attorney labeled Ramos and Compeon corrupt, a clear lie. Neither of these two agents have ever been accused of corruption. Ramos, a 10-year veteran of the Border Patrol, an officer in the Naval Reserve, had been nominated Border Patrol agent of the year. He was nominated for that award. To be considered for that award, just prior to this incident, this is a corrupt officer? Ramos and Compeon are clean. They have never been accused of that. Yet the U.S. Attorney is on the radio calling them corrupt. Something stinks about that situation, doesn't it. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton lied and claimed that Ramos and Compeon were corrupt, and then he threw the book at them. At the same time, he gave a professional drug smuggler a ``get out of jail free'' card and had his prosecutors lie to the jury telling them that the drug smuggler was a novice who was only trying to raise money to buy medicine for his sick mother. That's what the jury was told when the prosecutors at that time knew, they made that argument to the jury, that this was a novice at one time to raise money for a sick mother, they knew that drug smuggler had already been involved in a second drug smuggling incident that they knew of. This is while he was under immunity for the load that he had been intercepted for bringing into the country by Ramos and Compeon. By the way, it's not just Ramos and Compeon, of course. We are talking about a border and immigration policy by this administration that is bizarre, that is incomprehensible, that is totally confused and leads to many, many questions. Why is, for example, why is this President, if, yes, Border Patrol and immigration control issues are important to him? Why is the President holding the security of our borders hostage to, basically, making sure that we can't proceed with defense and other border security measures unless we also pass a bill that includes the provision of legalizing the status of 15 to 20 million people who are already in this country illegally? What do those two issues have to do with one another? If he believes in the security of the border, why is he demanding also that in order to secure the border we have to legalize the status of 15 to 20 million illegals, by the way, which will lead to a massive hoard of new illegals, of course, that no fence will stop. No one is being fooled by this call for a comprehensive reform. It is a code word for amnesty, legalizing the status of those who are here illegally. The President has destroyed his own credibility by playing such word games as defining amnesty in a way such that nobody accepts the definition. It is a totally unacceptable and irrational definition of the word ``amnesty.'' Why the President has chosen over and over again to try to play that kind of word game, I don't know. The chaotic and confused picture of this comprehensive border policy, and the things that are going on in our border, suggests that there are other forces that are at play. What are those forces? There are certainly very powerful interest groups that play here in Washington, and there may well be a hidden agenda that is being foisted on the American people. The President's own words suggest this. During the February 14, 2007, press conference, President Bush said the following, ``I believe that in order to enforce the borders, we need a temporary worker program so that people don't try to sneak into the country to work, that they can come in an orderly fashion and take the pressure off the Border Patrol agents that we have got here so that the Border Patrol doesn't focus on workers that are doing their jobs that Americans won't do, but are focusing on terrorists and criminal elements, gun runners, et cetera, to keep the country, both of our countries, safe, Mexico and the United States, safe.'' Mr. Speaker, I am not really sure that it's the responsibility of the United States government, to have a high priority of keeping Mexico safe. Just what is being proposed, how will that affect Mexico at the expense of the American people? Just whose interest is our government representing? During his Yuma speech, the President proclaimed the border ``should be open to trade and lawful immigration and shut down to criminals and drug dealers and terrorists and coyotes and smugglers and people who prey upon innocent life.'' How does that square with the President's U.S. Attorney and long-time friend and protege, Johnny Sutton, who he backs to the hilt, throwing the book at our Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers over procedural errors, but at the same time letting drug smugglers go, letting people who are smuggling illegal immigrations into our country go? Of course, that is not the only thing, Ramos and Compeon and what's going on with our law enforcement. The policies themselves are incomprehensible. According to a recent AP story, 98 percent of all illegal border crossers are not even prosecuted, 98 percent. Between October 1 of 2000 and September 30 of 2006, nearly 5.3 million illegals were simply escorted back across the Rio Grande and turned loose. Well, no wonder they don't give up, and they end up coming back a second or third or fourth time. The Justice Department claims it has ``higher priorities than going after ordinary illegal immigrants.'' They said they elected to pursue a more elective strategy going after drug smugglers and criminals. Really? Tell that to Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compeon, who are languishing right now, right now as we speak, in solitary confinement in Federal prisons, all because U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, close friend and protege of the President, decided to grant immunity to the drug smuggler in order to testify against the Border Patrol agents. Not only did Sutton allow this criminal to get away with it once, as I stated, this very same drug smuggler was involved with a second shipment. He has probably been involved with many more shipments of drugs. But, they knew that he was involved with a second shipment even before Ramos and Compeon went to trial, and that information was kept from the jury. Let me repeat that, information that the very same drug smuggler that had been stopped by Ramos and Compeon, that very same man who now Ramos and Compeon are being tried for at that moment for violating procedures because he was just a novice, a man who had never done this before, this was his first attempt at drug smuggling. The fact that they knew of a second load that would have already happened by the time of the trial, that was kept from the jury. The jury was presented by the prosecutor, a lie, that this man was obviously a novice, and had never been involved in drug smuggling before. The jury was told the drug smuggler was, as I say, first-time novice, to pay for his mother's medicine. And the U.S. Attorney knew that he had already been involved in a second drug load, and that was kept from the jury. Something really stinks about this case. This is the same U.S. Attorney that has been claiming all along, along with the prosecutors, that the drug smuggler wasn't armed. Now, we know that both of the Border Patrol agents suggest that as the drug smuggler is running away from them to get across the border, he turned in a way that appeared to be aiming something in their direction, and they didn't have much time to think about it and they fired their weapons. Now, whether or not he had a gun is impossible to prove. He got away. He went across the border. We have only the word of the drug smuggler that he was not armed. And, again, the drug smuggler is not only believed, but his story is backed up by the U.S. prosecutors over the word of two veteran law enforcement officers, one who served this country for 10 years in the Border Patrol, the other 5 years, both of them veterans of our military. And they believed the drug dealer, in order to destroy the Border Patrol agents. And then, again, we hear over and over again, and presented in trial, that the drug smuggler was unarmed. Yet it is only his word that suggests that. And I might add this; the drug smuggler's family has stated to journalists that this drug smuggler had always been armed when smuggling drugs, and he had been doing so since he was 14 years old. Now, let's put that in perspective. Does anyone really believe that a drug smuggler in that area is going to be in possession of a $1 million asset, these drugs, and he won't have anything there to defend those assets on either side of the border? Our U.S. Attorney believes the drug smuggler when he says he is unarmed, and destroys the Border Patrol agents when they say they thought he was aiming something at them. To this day, the smuggler is free from prosecution. He has never been charged with a crime, and is awaiting a potential settlement in his $5 million lawsuit against the Border Patrol. Now, let's recap. Two Border Patrol agents are languishing in solitary confinement in Federal prisons for 11 years, while the illegal drug smuggler whose van was abandoned contained $1 million worth of narcotics, he was granted immunity; he has been given free medical care, and provided an unconditional border crossing card, which was more than likely used when he smuggled a second stash of drugs into the United States before Ramos and Compean went to prison. And we are supposed to believe that this President wants to free up our Border Patrol agents from just normal duties so they can go after the real criminals? By the way, at Ramos and Compean's trial the prosecutor belittled the Border Patrol agents for thinking that they should be out trying to stop drug smugglers. And that prosecutor, belittling them in front of the jury, said if they wanted to stop drug dealers, they should have joined the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency. This is our prosecutor that is supposed to be representing us belittling these two men for stopping a drug dealer with $1 million worth of drugs, saying that they should have gone and joined the DEA if they wanted to stop drug dealers. To suggest all of this represents a confused, chaotic, and contradictory border strategy and immigration policy is to put it mildly. During the Ramos and Compean trial, the lead prosecutor bragged how section 1325 cases are not even prosecuted. What are 1325 cases? Improper entry by an alien. It states any alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or any other than as designated by Immigration officers shall be fined under title XVIII or imprisoned for not more than 2 years, or both. The law is clear, but the law is not being enforced. The law isn't being enforced. Our Border Patrol agents are under attack even if they stop drug dealers, much less other people. The other people who are just coming across, we are not enforcing that. Millions have been returned without having to pay any penalty at all. So why not come back a second and third time until they succeed? And why isn't the law being enforced? And because the law hasn't been enforced, the situation at the border is out of control. Surprise, surprise. If you don't enforce the law at the border, it's out of control. Tens of millions of people are here who shouldn't be here. Now, who is to blame? Yes, I think the top person in our government and all the people in our government who have been supporting these policies are to blame. Whether it is President Bush, President Clinton, or Members of leadership in Congress, the law hasn't been enforced, and it has been very clear that it has not been enforced. This has not been an accident that we have 15 million to 20 million illegals in our country creating horrible situations for driving down wages, destroying education, et cetera, et cetera. More and more people are coming across our borders without any type of consequence because it has been a policy not to enforce that law, the policy of this administration for the last 6 years. Of course, who did they prosecute but the Border Patrol agents if they didn't do their paperwork right. Well, what is going, of course, we have more and more people crossing the border. Those who are here and get here illegally begin to realize that they are able to find work, and they are actually getting jobs that pay them more money than they would have in the countries from which they come, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, China, and elsewhere. So they realize they can get work here and get paid more. And they also realize that they are able to get free services from the Federal, State, and local government. The taxpayers of the United States are going to provide them services they could never get at home, health care, education, housing, et cetera. It is a bonanza for these people. Now, they are not bad people. Let me state for the record and be very emphatic about this. A huge proportion, maybe 90 percent of all illegal immigrants coming to this country are likely to be wonderful human beings. If we were in their spot, we would be coming across the border, too. They are not at fault for wanting to come here, and they are not at fault for coming here to better the lives of their families, to better their own lives. That's not their fault. We don't dislike them for that at all. The people to blame here, the people to be upset with are the policymakers who permitted this massive flow of people into our country; because, even though these are good people coming in, they are having a horrible impact on our society. A horrible impact. And it is up to us to represent the interests of the people of the United States, even though these good people who would like to come here by the tens of millions all around the world are good people. And my heart goes out to them. But my job and our job should be to protect the interests of the people of the United States. And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing selfish with that. There is nothing selfish with wanting to protect our children and make sure the health care and resources go to our children and our families. But the word has gone out all over the world that they can get jobs, they can get benefits. And I will tell you this. If the word goes out that we are going to legalize and we end up legalizing the status of those who are here illegally, the flow of illegals that is now coming into our country will turn into a tidal wave. We have trouble controlling our borders now. If we legalize the status of 10 million to 15 million illegals in our country as what is being advocated in this supposed comprehensive immigration plan, it will make the situation so much worse, so much more out of control, it will be a catastrophe for this country. Ten years from now, we will have lost our country to tens of millions of new people who are consuming all of the resources we put aside for our elderly, for our young people, for our children, for our families. Wake up, America. You are being betrayed. We are being told that our Border Patrol agents are going to secure our borders: Just pass the comprehensive bill, then we will secure the borders. Well, first of all, those are two unrelated issues. But then, on top of it, we know now that our government is prosecuting the Border Patrol agents or anyone else who gets in the way of the hordes of illegals that are now flooding into our country at this level. This is total insanity and is already doing, as I say, great harm to the people of our country. And no doubt, even though the President was there with our Border Patrol agents, our defenders in the Border Patrol and elsewhere are demoralized. And it is not just Ramos and Compean why our defenders are demoralized. What about the case of Edwards County, Texas? Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez, another American of Mexican descent. He too was prosecuted and imprisoned under the direction of Johnny Sutton. Anybody catch a pattern here? In this case, Deputy Hernandez tried to protect himself from a van full of illegals who tried to run him over after a routine traffic stop. He shot out the tires, and in the process, an illegal hiding behind the van's wheel well sustained a minor injury. Once again, our government chose to ignore the immigration crime there of human trafficking. You had human trafficking laws that were being violated by those illegals who were driving that van and taking those people in. And our U.S. attorney chose to go after the deputy. Not only did the coyotes get away, the injured illegals have already been rewarded with $100,000 and green cards to match. Deputy Hernandez now sits in prison. The illegals are now living in Austin, Texas, $100,000 richer. This is bizarre. This is twilight zone stuff. These aren't idiots that have designed this policy. These are people who have the wrong goals in mind, who are not representing the interests of the people of the United States, and are certainly not appreciative of our defenders. We're being told that the Justice Department's priority is to pursue criminals and human traffickers, yet we hear about that case that I just mentioned. Our defenders are afraid to defend us. And they're not afraid to defend us. That's not just a policy that just happened. It's not just happening that they are afraid to defend us. This administration and the powers that be have set out to intimidate the Border Patrol and to make them fearful to enforce the law. At the same time we are emboldening those who would break our laws. So it's been the policy, perhaps for a decade, perhaps more than a decade, but certainly during this entire administration, to intimidate those who are defending us at the border and embolden those who would cross the border illegally. By the way, in both of the aforementioned cases, our Justice Department determined that the illegal aliens coming across this country, one, a drug smuggler, the others coyotes smuggling illegals across the country, that their civil rights were violated. There's something wrong with this picture when our government is protecting the so-called civil rights of people who are smuggling drugs into our country and carrying loads of illegal immigrants into our country in violation of our law. Something is totally wrong with this picture. If controlling the borders is a priority, why is this President, again, using border security as a wedge to achieve other goals? And his other goals, of course, amnesty to those who are here illegally and setting up a guest workers program. Again, whose interest is our government representing? Economist Robert Samuels pointed out some of the horrible impact of this policy that we have had that has brought so many illegals into our country. He claims that what we are doing, you know, some people say we are bringing in cheap labor, but he suggests we are importing poverty, and that that importation of poverty is having a dramatically negative impact on our country. If this country continues to allow uneducated, unskilled workers to come here illegally, it will bankrupt America, and we are in the process of bankrupting America. According to a report released by the Heritage Foundation, 50 to 60 percent of illegal immigrants are high school dropouts. 4.6 million U.S. households are headed up by immigrant dropouts. The Pew Hispanic Institute Center estimates that 49 percent of high school dropouts are illegal immigrants. The Heritage report estimates that the cost to the American taxpayer over the lifetime of a high school dropout is $1.1 million per dropout. Because of the government benefits they receive versus what they pay back into the system in taxes, the net cost, per year, for all of these illegal alien dropouts that are coming here, high school dropouts, these poverty-stricken people, the net cost to us per year is $397 billion, almost $400 billion a year. Put that in perspective. Of all the things we try to finance in this Congress and can't find an extra $25 million for breast cancer research. Put it into the context with the millions of illegals who are working here in the United States off the books, who do not pay their share of the taxes, but will still reap the benefits of government programs, from welfare to health care to Social Security to public schools and housing. This is a catastrophe, a catastrophe not just in the making, but a catastrophe in reality that we are living right now. I see it happening in my own Southern California district every day. And what are those consequences? Let's just note. In my area, the schools, the quality of education is going down. For the ordinary people who depend on public schools, their kids are getting shortchanged. The emergency rooms in hospitals are closing up and health care's going down. Our criminal justice system is being inundated and, we have, I'm not sure the exact number. I think it's 50 percent of all the felons, it might be 75 percent of all the felons where there are warrants of felons that they are looking for are illegal immigrant felons. It's breaking down our criminal justice system. If you get raped or murdered or run over by a drunk in California in my area, it's likely it's been done by someone who should never have been there legally in the first place. Our government is betraying the interest of our people. It's not protecting our people. Yet, politically, our government is dominated by powerful forces who want these high levels of immigration, legal or illegal. This has been no mistake. People didn't just close their eyes and say, oh my gosh; there's 15 to 20 million people here illegally. No, it has been a policy decision made by people that we will support, that they will support the policies that have created this monstrous threat. It is not an accident. It is not something that just happened. The policy decisions were made by an elite, but the American people were kept in the dark about these decisions. Now, who was it? Who's behind this flow into our country? First of all, business wants cheap labor. When I say that, that doesn't mean that they just want cheap labor from people who are coming here illegally. That means they want the people who are coming here illegally to bid down the wages of our own people. So not only are the illegals working for less money, but now the American working people have to take less money, because their job will be given to an illegal. So big business wants cheap labor. They want the illegals to depress wages. That is a very powerful force. The liberal left coalition, which runs the Democratic party, wants more illegals as well. They want the political clout that a massive influx of low class and highly manipulated immigrants will provide their power structure. So you've got big business interests and business interests and the liberal left democratic establishment. Now, that is a one heck of a tough coalition. And it's about as tough as it gets. And yes, the political and economic elites have benefited from this. Yeah. The democratic elites have got their political tools. And the businessmen have the people who cut their lawns, be nannies to their children, change the sheets in their hotels, do everything that they need to have done at a much lower wage, and give them the opportunity to give themselves huge pay raises. They give themselves levels of pay that CEOs never would have gotten years ago. You know, CEOs used to get about 10 times as much as working people in their companies. Now they give themselves hundreds, if not thousands of times more than the people working in their company. But of course the people in their company can't really push too hard because they can be replaced, many of them, by people from overseas. We can get H1B visas and flood the market with Pakistanis or Indians to do computer work. If our people won't accept 50 or $60,000 we can flood the market with H1B visas and we can make sure that the computer people from our country, you know, that they are going to have to accept lower wages, or we'll give it to the Pakistani or the Indian. That is illegal. What about the legal people who come here who even work for less than that Pakistani or Indian who comes in with an H-B1 visa? These elites who, as I say, live behind closed gates and don't have their kids in public schools, they are doing things that destroy the well-being of their fellow citizens. We see cities that are not only turning a blind eye to illegals, but they are welcoming illegals into our country. Recently, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom vowed to maintain San Francisco as a ``sanctuary city'' for illegals, and he will do everything he can to provide sanctuary for those illegals. He is discouraging Federal authorities from conducting any immigration raids. Well, in whose interest is this mayor watching out for and the others who talk about these sanctuary cities? There are hundreds of these sanctuary cities across our country. The employers know it. Rental companies know it. The illegals know it. The word is going out all over the world. There are sanctuary cities. If you can make it there, you have got it made. And there will be a treasure of benefits for you as well, and the local government is going to protect you. Well, by proclaiming their moral superiority in protecting illegals, what are they doing? They are in reality committing a monstrous crime not just against the American people but against all those people overseas, perhaps 100 million people now waiting in line overseas to come here legally. They are waiting in line to come here legally, but yet we have got the mayor of San Francisco who is siding with the guys who cut in line in front of those people who are waiting to respect our laws and to come here to be Americans in the legal way. If the people who are here illegally have their status legalized and if we have people protecting those people who are here illegally, what does that tell the millions of people who are waiting overseas? It tells them they had better not wait. They are fools. This mayor of the city of San Francisco isn't protecting illegals. He is actually accosting, actually committing a crime against the people who are waiting in line overseas. He is favoring those people to break the law over those who stand in line and wait to obey the law. He is siding with the lawbreakers rather than siding with those immigrants from overseas who would like to come here and follow our laws. He is not just protecting the unfortunate people of the world. He is siding with that group of people over those unfortunate people who would obey our laws and come here. The prosecution of Ramos and Compean has not gone unnoticed, as well as the sanctuary cities I am talking about, the actions of the mayor of San Francisco. Yes, couple that with the prosecution of Ramos and Compean, and what we have got is there are good people all over the world as well as some bad people, but good people even who are saying that they can come here now. Let's get to the United States because the United States doesn't have the will to stop us. These are good people, but they will consume our resources that we should have for our own people, and they will depress the wages of the American worker, and they will bring diseases right into our schools that we have a long time ago conquered. And the breakdown of our borders will have been lost not only just to the good people who will flood across and be out of control but to drug dealers who have noticed Ramos and Compean and the Border Patrol agents and also to terrorists. You can bet that the terrorists around the world have noticed the chaos on our southern border. Mr. Speaker, in the coming weeks, Congress will begin debate on the Flake-Gutierrez bill. This flawed bill almost guarantees a legalization of the status from 12 to 15 million illegal immigrants already in the United States. The bill requires illegals to pay fines and sit through English classes in order to claim that it doesn't qualify as an amnesty. However, the 1986 Immigration Reform Act required the exact same thing: a waiting period, fines, mandatory English classes. And no one can deny that that was an amnesty bill. The bottom line is the Flake-Gutierrez bill, if it passes, you can skip the line, skip it totally, all those people waiting in line overseas, and buy your citizenship for a whopping $2,500. Under this legislation right now, illegals who seek amnesty do not have to pay back taxes nor do they have to wait the current 10-year period before re-entry into this country after they have been caught here illegally. Flake-Gutierrez will permit the newly minted residents, legal residents now because they have now been made legal residents, to apply for billions of dollars in public assistance. The Heritage Foundation estimates the fiscal cost to the taxpayers of such an amnesty will be $30 billion a year. Newly legitimized residents, legalized residents, will also receive Social Security benefits based on their work while they have been here illegally. Since most illegal immigrants worked under fake Social Security numbers or stolen ones, it will create unknown costs to the Social Security Administration. And, of course, President Bush has already made a secret agreement with Mexico that we had to dig out of the administration with Freedom of Information requests. That secret agreement was that any new legalization of status will include giving those illegal Mexicans who worked in the United States Social Security benefits for their time when they have worked in the United States, but that has been kept hush hush. By the way, Social Security isn't just a retirement plan. It is also a survivors' benefit. And you can imagine how many morticians from around the world are going to be sending their letter into Social Security, saying somebody worked in your country illegally for this year. He died and please start sending your thousand dollar checks to his children at this address. This is a catastrophe not only in the making. This is a catastrophe that is already before us. This bill could pass and destroy our Social Security system. Perhaps the worst element in this is that, contrary to claims otherwise, the bill does not send illegals back to the back of the line. Currently, there are over 3 million aliens who have already been approved for green cards but are still waiting overseas, waiting for sometimes up to 23 years, to come here legally. Under this bill millions of illegals who claim to have been here illegally since 2006 can keep working legally now in the U.S. and will be eligible for permanent residence. So they will be here legally, and then they can apply for permanent residence in 8 years. People who have played by the rules will still have to wait for their green cards oversees. So why should they wait in line at all? As I say, this is going to give us tens of millions of new illegals pouring into our country, destroying our social infrastructure, our schools, our hospitals, our retirement systems. The last amnesty in 1986 resulted in 15 to 20 million new illegals pouring into our country. This amnesty will give us 50 million or more. The Heritage Foundation estimates that 100 million new people will be here after 10 years as a result of this immigration reform. Wake up, America. We are losing our country. We are being betrayed. Who is representing the interest of the American people? The President has often mentioned the reason most illegals come here is to do work that most Americans won't do. However, Flake-Gutierrez specifically allows employers to lay off Americans and replace them with new foreign workers as long as those Americans were laid off 90 days before they decided to bring the new people in. Employers are also absolved of any form of civil or criminal liability related to the prior employment of illegals. And as long as the incentive to work and benefits exist, illegals will flood into our country. I have been a consistent advocate for tough employer sanctions. Yet Flake-Gutierrez prohibits State and local governments from punishing employers who have hired illegal immigrants or from requiring them to use an employment verification system or from requiring that that system be used to verify the legal status of renters or public benefits applicants or people who are undergoing background checks. It dramatically reduces the civil penalties for employers who knowingly hire or continue to employ illegals, or who fail to comply with the employment verification system already approved by the last Congress. As a matter of fact, section 301 of the bill, employers can avoid using the verification system altogether simply by saying they are hiring private contractors. This legislation is tantamount to the surrender of America's ability to control our territory from any foreigner who wants to come here. It is an immigration catastrophe, a nightmare for America's most vulnerable, our vulnerable middle class, a nightmare. Frighteningly, President Bush is supportive, as are many corporate-minded Republicans, and almost every Democrat that I know, although there are a few, hopefully, coming over to our side who understand how this is hurting their constituents. As I say, a handful of Democrats have signed on to the bill to pardon Ramos and Compean. But by and large, the Republican leadership, the President, the Democratic leadership, the Democratic Party and most Members of Congress are in favor of this type of ``comprehensive bill'' and have not been helpful in saving Ramos and Compean. Who is watching out for the American people? Well, it is up to us, the United States. And what we can do is make sure that everyone talks to their representative and talks to their Senator, and does so aggressively, not in a low voice, but in an aggressive voice because you're protecting your families and your children and you're protecting your country in the future. We are up against a powerful political coalition. They are using examples saying, oh, we need these illegal aliens to work; there are jobs Americans won't take. There are jobs that Americans won't take at the pay level that these big businessmen want to give them. And don't tell me that if we paid janitors more money, that we can't find people to be janitors. I was a janitor years ago. You go back, and janitors are making the same amount of money as I made when I was a janitor 40 years ago, yet the income of our country, the GNP, has quadrupled. They have been left out because a horde of illegals have come into this country and bid down their wages. Now, why is it that people who are janitors or people who work with their hands, people who work in regular middle-class jobs shouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of our country, that their wages should be depressed, they should be frozen out of having a better living for their family? Then they say, well, there are jobs they won't even do, like picking fruits and vegetables. We've got more people between the ages of 18 and 40, young, healthy men housed in prisons in the middle of our agricultural areas who could profit by working. They could earn enough money to pay for their own incarceration and pay for a little restitution. But those ideas are too creative. No, no, no. Instead, let's just bring the illegals across, that will keep everybody's wages down and we can control them and they will be off the chart. Well, let me suggest this; we've been given a false dichotomy saying that we have to offer a legalization status, an amnesty, or we have to have massive deportations. It's either legalization or deportation. That is the most serious of all of the lies that are being told today about immigration because that is not true. We do have an alternative; there is an alternative to just deporting. We don't want to have sweeps of law enforcement through foreign neighborhoods, but we can just make sure that we have ID cards, we have Social Security cards, that we have ID cards that can't be tampered with so we can prove who we are dealing with. We can have a verification system so that employers will know who they're employing and we can hold those employers accountable. And we can also make sure that illegals who don't have the benefits cards, these identities that show they are eligible, cannot get the health care, the education, the housing, the Social Security and retirement benefits that are due to American citizens and people who are here legally. If we do not give the jobs and the benefits to people who are here illegally, they will go home. Just as soon as you give it to them, they will come. If you don't give it to them and they find trouble earning a living, supporting their families, they will go home. It's called attrition. That is the decision we have to make. Creating a false dichotomy, saying it's either going to be legalization or deportation, that's the type of word game that is unfair in this debate. It's just like calling amnesty something that it isn't, saying that this is not an amnesty when it clearly is. We must be able to say no to people who are using the scarce resources that are meant for our people. These resources belong to the American people, whether it is our education establishment, our health care, job training, housing, retirement benefits, these are things that belong to the American people. We must protect the interests of our people and say no to people who would consume those things that are meant for our own people. This is not mean-spirited selfishness. And probably that is the greatest debate of all, because people are playing on it as if we're trying to push us into letting more and more illegals come in here and destroying our system, like just to say, if you try to stop it, you're being mean-spirited and nasty. Americans don't like that. Americans don't like it at all, of course they don't. We are as generous as any people in the world. But it is not selfish to take care of your own family. It is not selfish to take care of your own community. It is not selfish to take care of your own country before you expend the resources and take care of people elsewhere in the world. It is not selfish, it is being responsible. And we, as representatives of the people of the United States, owe it to the people of the United States to be watching out for them, watching out for their interests. If we don't do it, no one is going to watch out for the interests of our people. I am afraid that tonight it's up to us, the people. Either we will speak out; we will rise with a righteous rage and oppose this immigration travesty that is about to be foisted upon us or we will suffer grave consequences. Within 10 years, our country will have been lost. Ten, 20, 30, 40, 100 million new people here, some of them terrorists, some of them criminals, most of them good people, but still, people who don't deserve to be consuming those resources that we have built and saved and created for our own people. So with that, I close and ask the American people to wake up and pay attention.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 362. Let me first congratulate Chairman Gordon for the leadership that he is providing, along with Ranking Member Hall, and let us note that since the change of the guard here in the House of Representatives a few months ago, we have had an exemplary approach to bipartisanship and a positive spirit that we have seen in the Science Committee, and this legislation reflects that positive atmosphere and working environment that we have in the Science Committee. H.R. 362 seeks to address the lack of qualified teachers for math and science in K-12 throughout our country. I support H.R. 362 because it is not just a giving of something to someone, a scholarship, but it is actually providing young people who may not have the means to go to school and to get their education. It requires 5 years of service as a science and mathematics teacher in order for them to get this scholarship. I see that as a two-for, if not a three-for or a four-for, because the kids are going to benefit, the schools are going to benefit, the country is going to benefit. Trading service for education is an American tradition. I guess it goes back even further than the GI bill, but that is what brought it to mind. All of us had parents who were probably recipients of the GI bill. I know my father was. We should be beefing up education benefits through the GI bill and other things like that for our Reserves and our National Guard and Active Duty people, now that we are at war and now that we are thinking about this. But this particular scholarship program we are talking about today will fill a need for our country of finding math and science teachers in order to fill these positions throughout our country that now can't be filled. Let us note that 10,000 teachers provided these scholarships is certainly going to help. But the basic problem is not touched by this legislation, and that is that we would not need these scholarships if math and science teachers throughout the country were paid more than they are today. What is happening is today, math and science teachers are being forced to accept wages, and then they don't accept them and just go someplace else, at the same level as teachers who teach things that are not quite as necessary. Or, in fact, there are many, many more teachers available for these other courses, whether it be social sciences or whatever. So since we do not have a pay differential, it is very difficult to fill these positions, and at least this legislation today will help meet the immediate challenge. Instead, however, we should have worked on the fundamental problem throughout our country of making sure that people can go into math and science and be attracted to it. Fundamentally, what we need to do in America to address these types of shortages is to make sure that people who go into math and science and engineering make more money, whether they are teachers or anything else. Quite often, we do things that go contrary to this. Insisting that all teachers make the same money is one of those mistakes. H-1B visas that bring in hundreds of thousands of people from overseas and just depress the wages of people who are in math and science and engineering in our country is something else that is wrong, that ends up taking us in the wrong direction. We need our young people attracted to math, science and engineering, and to get that education because they know they can earn a good living for their family and earn a decent living if they get that type of training. So the legislation we pass today will help. It will provide scholarships. I support that. I salute the chairman and the ranking member for the leadership they provided in providing this help for our young people in exchange for what they will do teaching young people in our country. But again, that doesn't change the fact that there are some fundamental things we need to do in America to make sure that people go into math and science and don't have to subsidize our mistaken policies.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I lost two people who were very dear to me this last week, and one was my brother, who passed away Thursday morning, and Juanita, who just passed away on Sunday. It is really an amazing thing as I have thought about this, just about how similar these two people were, because my brother was very, very active in politics, but he was really non-ideological. He was someone who had a very good heart and was a very generous person, was always looking forward trying to help people get something done. Does that remind of you anybody else? That was Juanita. I mean, there wasn't an ornery bone in her body. And in politics, you know, we get kicked around and beat up a lot and people lie to us, and people say bad things about us, and I never saw Juanita ever get mean or vengeful at all towards anybody. And we used to travel back and forth in the airplane. I see some of my friends here who traveled on that same flight. And it was always such a joy to be with her and to spend 4 and 5 hours at a time going across the country. And you can't say that about everybody. Who else do you want to spend 4 or 5 hours with? She was a wonderful person. She had a wonderful heart. And my brother wasn't as successful as Juanita. When he passed away, he really didn't have a lot of professional success. Juanita, as we have heard today, had enormous professional and personal success in her life, being a woman who reached up to the height here of power and authority and influence here in Washington, DC and our Nation's Capital. But you know what? Whether it was that or whether it was my poor brother who passed away, both of them died of liver cancer, I might add. Both of them died of liver cancer, just so close to each other. But, you know, when they lay us down in our casket, no matter what we have accomplished in the material world, it is what we have done to try to help others, how good a heart we have, how generous we have been to other people, not just financially, but with our time and with our love and with our caring. Those are the things that we carry with us. I believe my brother, he was a very accomplished and successful person in that way. And we certainly know that today, Juanita was a wonderful success in her life. She cared about people. She never was captured by the meanness and orneriness that comes with politics sometimes. She always wanted to get things done. She worked with me. Our districts came together in Long Beach and we worked together on so many programs for the people of Long Beach, especially in the areas of transportation and water and health care, and she was always there trying to talk to me, saying what can we get done. I am a conservative Republican and she was a Democrat, but she always wanted to work together to try to do things to help other people. So I am very proud tonight to stand up and say that I will miss Juanita. I am going to miss my brother, obviously. But this world has lost two wonderful souls, two wonderful human beings. And I am pleased to add my voice tonight to say, goodbye, Juanita, and we are going to miss you. You had lots of love in your heart, and we love you. Bye-bye.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my grave concerns about a visit tomorrow by Cambodia's national Chief of Police, Hok Lundy, to the FBI's headquarters here in Washington. It is not an overstatement to say that Hok Lundy's involvement in human rights abuses, human and narcotics trafficking, and political violence should place him at the top of our list of people to keep out of the U.S., not at the top of our list of people with whom to try to cooperate. Indeed, it was the FBI itself that labelled the March 1997 grenade attack on an opposition rally in Phnom Penh, which killed more than a dozen and wounded many others, including an American, as a terrorist attack. In the days after the July 1997 coup d'etat, Hok Lundy led forces loyal to Prime Minister Hun Sen--forces who were implicated in the extrajudicial killings. Credible evidence suggests that Hok Lundy himself ordered the killing of a senior Ministry of Interior official shortly after the coup. Lundy was never investigated for the killing. Hok Lundy has been deeply implicated in those events and many other abuses, including drug trafficking allegations confirmed by our own DEA. But last year the FBI gave him an award for cooperating in counterterrorism efforts, the U.S. Ambassador praised him, and the FBI has now invited him here for discussions on bilateral cooperation. In a 2004 Proclamation, the President unambiguously stated that foreign officials suspected of involvement in corrupt activities should be barred from entry. This clearly should apply to Hok Lundy. In addition, in 2006, the Trafficking in Persons office of the State Department overruled other offices and agencies and denied Hok Lundy a visa based on credible allegations that he had helped free human traffickers. Madam Speaker, we are well aware that the war on terrorism entails dealing with some questionable characters. But it is my hope that should those characters prove to be guilty of abuses and crimes they at a minimum be barred from coming to the United States, and at a maximum be investigated by the FBI and other relevant agencies. But we should not be giving recognition to a man who has arguably done more to undermine American aspirations for Cambodia--to bring that battered country peace, justice, and a rights respecting government--than almost anyone else. It is counterproductive, hypocritical, and downright dumb to pursue such cooperation with someone with a demonstrated track record of terrorism, not someone who fights it. Neither the State Department nor the FBI has articulated why they think Hok Lundy is a credible, reliable partner. To fall back, as the State Department's spokesperson did yesterday, on lame procedural rhetoric--that there is ``no legal bar to denying him a visa''--or on some spurious administrative need--an unexplained ``policy need'' to attend ``some meetings''--is a gross insult not only to the people of Cambodia but also the people of America. I believe the State Department and FBI must explain themselves--and that the visa should be revoked immediately.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, my friend was very correct when she said we should all be concerned about the rights of the people who live here in the District of Columbia, the fact that they have taxation without representation and then lack the voting rights other people do. However, what is being offered today is clearly unconstitutional. If we just go through this whole procedure and it gets thrown out by the Court, what have we accomplished? There is an alternative. Unfortunately, that substitute was not made in order. There is an alternative which would give the people in this State not only the right to vote for a Representative in the House, but for a Senator and 11 congressional electors as well. The substitute, which would be constitutional, simply grants the citizens of the District of Columbia their State citizenship rights in Maryland, which is what happened in Virginia, of course, in the past, 100 years ago. My substitute would give the people of this city the right to vote for two Senators as well as a Representative as well as electors, and yet this was not permitted to come to the House here today. It is a substitute, and we were not allowed to vote on it here or to even consider it. I would say there are some political considerations that have limited this debate at the expense of the people of this city. I would like to place in the Record a further description of the substitute legislation that I have in mind. And I would suggest that what we do is get politics out of this. Let us give these people a right not only to vote for a Representative, here but for two Senators. We have it within our ability to do that. The Rohrabacher substitute, essentially the text of H.R. 492, restores the full House, Senate, and Electoral College voting rights enjoyed by residents of the District of Columbia as citizens of Maryland from creation of the District in 1790 to the enactment of the Organic Act of 1801. By restoring the state citizenship rights of D.C. residents to vote for, run for, and serve as U.S. Representatives and Senators, the Rohrabacher substitute complies with the literal reading of Sections 2 and 3 of Article I of the Constitution requiring that Representatives and Senators come from states. Like the base bill, the Rohrabacher substitute adds an additional Representative for the next state in line in the 2000 census (i.e., Utah), and permanently increases the membership of the House of Representatives to 437. The bill provides an additional Representative for Maryland, which for census purposes will include the population of the District of Columbia. Until redistricting is accomplished, D.C. would constitute the additional Maryland district by itself. When Maryland redistricts its congressional districts, its districts would have to be equal in population, but the District of Columbia could not be divided into more than one congressional district. Federal elections in D.C. would be conducted pursuant to Maryland election law, with the D.C. government treated as a local jurisdiction in Maryland for this purpose. To avoid double counting in the Electoral College, the substitute exercises Congress's powers in both sections of the 23rd Amendment to provide that the D.C.'s own presidential electors not be appointed or cast votes. The bill would take effect with the 2008 election, with the new Representatives from Maryland and Utah taking office at the beginning of the 111th Congress, at which point the offices of D.C. delegate and D.C.'s shadow Representative and Senators would be abolished. Utah would be required to hold its 2008 and 2010 congressional elections in accordance with the four-district plan the state adopted in 2006.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I discuss a black mark on this administration. And while I realize this is the fourth anniversary, and I have enjoyed the comments of colleagues, comments with which I may have some disagreement, I would like to discuss another issue. Because no matter what we do in Iraq, one way or the other, whether we succeed there or not, if our southern borders are not secure, if the southern borders are open to an invasion of illegal immigrants and open to an invasion of our country by terrorists and others who would do us harm and drug dealers and drug cartels, America is in great jeopardy. So no matter what is happening overseas, and I would grant you that the President may have made some mistakes and he may well have been well motivated, but his motives in determining the policy of what is happening at our southern borders is not what is in question. It is his actions. And what we have today is a dangerous threat to the safety of our people, the security of our country at our southern border. Today I discuss a black mark on this administration in terms of the security of our country, a vile crime which has been committed against two law enforcement officers whose job it has been to protect our families and our communities by keeping control of America's borders. The sad episode started back on February 17, 2005, just another routine day for Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Both were Border Patrol veterans with unblemished service records. Agent Ramos, in fact, had been nominated for Border Patrol Agent of the Year. As they made their rounds that day 2 years ago, they checked on a tripped sensor near the border. Agent Compean discovered footprints and drag marks, the usual indication of a drug load being smuggled across the river. He spotted a vehicle, then radioed in the description and followed the suspect. The suspect realized that he had been spotted and turned around to rush back towards Mexico. Agent Ramos then observed the van driving at a very high rate of speed, and, after the driver ignored commands to pull over, Ramos gave chase. By the way, according to the prosecuting attorney, pursuing a fleeing suspect without a supervisor's permission is against the Border Patrol policy. Now, get this. We are being told that just pursuing someone who has come across the border in a vehicle, without permission of a supervisor, is an illegal act, is against the rules for our Border Patrol agents. Whoever made that rule up? I wonder if the drug smugglers and the terrorists know about that rule? The drug smuggler, then, in this particular instance, abandoned his vehicle and fled towards Mexico on foot, but he was intercepted by one of the agents, Agent Compean. Once again, ignoring several commands by Agent Compean to stop, a physical altercation ensued, with Compean ending up in the ditch. Seeing his opportunity, the smuggler ran toward the border. According to Agent Compean's sworn statement, while running, the suspect turned and pointed something shiny with his left hand. Believing that his life was in danger, Agent Compean opens fire. Now, how long do you have to determine whether that is a gun in the man's hand as he runs away and aims something at you? Hearing the gunshots, Agent Ramos came to the aid of his fellow officer. He, too, shouted for the smuggler to stop, but instead of obeying his command, the illegal drug smuggler once again turned and ran and, as he was running, again turned and pointed something shiny at Ramos, who at that moment shot his weapon once. After disappearing into the banks of the Rio Grande, the smuggler reappeared on the Mexican side where he jumped into a waiting van, which was waiting for him. Obviously, an organized situation. Unbeknownst to Officers Ramos and Compean, a bullet hit the illegal drug smuggler in the left buttocks. Other agents, including two supervisors, were nearby and could not see what was going on, but we have every reason to understand they heard the shots because they were that close. When the abandoned van was examined, 743 pounds of marijuana were found. The payload was seized, and one would think that congratulations were in order. After all, Ramos and Compean were heroes, weren't they? They had been responsible for taking off the street $1 million worth of drugs bound for our communities. Good job, fellas, right? No. Wrong. Agents Ramos and Compean, not the illegal drug smuggler, are at this moment languishing in Federal prison, serving 11- to 12-year sentences, and, in fact, they are in solitary confinement. This is the worst miscarriage of justice that I have seen in my 25 years of public service. It is a nightmare for the two Border Patrol agents who willingly risked their lives protecting us for 5 and 10 years. For their families, this is a hellish and destructive nightmare. They are losing everything. And just today the Compean family was sent a letter signed by Attorney General Johnny Sutton, who prosecuted their loved one, their husband, asking for them to pay court costs of $2,800 while their husband has been sent away to prison and their family is being condemned to destitution, losing their health insurance, and then they get a letter asking for them to pay the court costs. I would offer this up for the Record. U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office, San Antonio, TX, March 14, 2007. Re $2,800.00 and penalties and costs; Court No. EP05CR856(2); Judgment Date: October 23, 2006, USAO #2007Z00182/001 Jose Alonso Compean, El Paso, TX. Dear Mr. Compean: On the date listed above, you were ordered to pay the Court. The Financial Litigation Unit of the United States Attorney's Office is in charge of collecting your criminal debt. With the following exceptions, the amount you owe is due now and will be delinquent after 30 days. Delinquency may result in certain penalties being added to the debt pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3612. Your cashier's check or money order, payable to the Clerk, U.S. District Court, should be mailed to the United States Clerk's Office, U.S. Courthouse, 511 E. San Antonio St., Room 350, El Paso, Texas 79901. Please note that personal checks are not accepted. The exceptions to immediate payment in full are as follows: The terms of your judgment provide otherwise, or You have made an agreement with the Court or your probation officer, or You have entered into a satisfactory repayment agreement with this office, or You are presently incarcerated. If you are presently incarcerated, you may begin paying on your debt through the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program. Regardless of the foregoing exceptions to immediate payment in full, please be advised that the United States may enforce the judgment for the full amount as provided by law. If you have paid the debt in full, then please disregard this notice and notify the United States Attorney's Office immediately by returning a copy of this letter with a copy of the receipt(s). Sincerely, Johnny Sutton, United States Attorney. To add insult to injury, a letter from U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office was sent on March 14 to the families, as I say, of both of these officers. And I have it right here, and let me read that to you, which I have just submitted for the Record. Final Litigation Unit of the United State's Attorney's Office is in charge of collecting your criminal debt. The amount you owe is due now and will be delinquent after 30 days. Delinquency may result in certain penalties being added. Please be advised that the United States may enforce the judgment for the full amount as provided by law. This is to a family of a law enforcement officer now who is languishing away in solitary confinement, and the family is being destroyed. Talk about cruelty. The Compean family has already lost their home, and they have no health insurance, and now they receive a letter like this from the U.S. attorney. I hope the American people are understanding the horror story that we are putting these two Border Patrol agents through. And our President knows about this. His protege, the U.S. attorney, knows about this, and I will tell you that, yes, Attorney General Gonzales knows about this. So how come the agents were prosecuted and not the drug smuggler? Why is it that the Border Patrol agents have been treated so ruthlessly and without mercy by the U.S. attorney and by the Justice Department, and, yes, by the President of the United States? The whole rotten episode has turned justice on its head. The book was thrown at heroes who protect us, while the drug smuggler got immunity. According to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, who was a longtime Bush appointee and protege, a friend of the President, Ramos and Compean are not heroes. In fact, he considers the two officers to be criminals, charging them with assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm while committing a crime of violence, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and a civil rights violation. Sutton claims he had no choice but to prosecute the two Border Patrol agents because, according to Sutton, they broke the law. And when they violated procedures for discharging their weapons, they discharged their weapons at a fleeing suspect. That was not permitted. The procedures were not followed, and that is true. They didn't know absolutely for sure he didn't have a gun. They thought he did. But where do we have rules saying that a Border Patrol agent has to be shot and wounded before he can use his weapon? Sutton could have granted immunity to law enforcement officers and thrown the book at the drug smuggler. That is what would have made sense. After all, these two law enforcement officers had a perfect, clean record. The drug smuggler was a drug smuggler. But, instead, Johnny Sutton, our U.S. attorney, protege of the President, chose to side with the drug smuggler, and threw the book at the Border Patrol agents. This was totally discretionary on the part of Johnny Sutton, who continues to say he had no choice but to bring charges against the Border Patrol agents. No, he could have given the immunity for a lack of procedure to the Border Patrol agents and thrown the book at the drug dealer. This was an indefensible decision, and now Sutton lies to us with the suggestion that he didn't have a choice to prosecute. So how does this incident then mushroom into this matter of the ultimate and utter destruction of the lives of these two Border Patrol agents and their families? After the incident, the drug smuggler, also known as Aldrete-Davila, contacted Rene Sanchez, a childhood friend, for advice. Why did he call Rene Sanchez? Because Sanchez is a current Border Patrol agent in Arizona. Now, instead of turning in this drug smuggler, even though he was a friend, an old, longtime friend, he didn't turn in the drug smuggler. He went to the authorities, and this law enforcement officer, who was sworn to uphold the laws of the United States, chose to intervene on the behalf of his childhood friend who was smuggling drugs, a mule for the drug cartel. He was also called as a character witness, this same man, on the drug smuggler's behalf during the trial in which he described how the drug smuggler actually was a very fine and decent man. Well, Mr. Sanchez contacted the Department of Homeland Security, who, in turn, decided to open an investigation into the conduct of Ramos and Compean. What? A drug smuggler with 750 pounds of narcotics is thwarted from making his delivery and then complains he was shot at, and our government decides to investigate the law enforcement officers? Something is really wrong with this picture. Mr. Sutton had every chance to focus his enormous prosecutorial powers on the drug dealer. He chose to target the enforcement officers because maybe they weren't following procedure. He chose to turn a possible procedural violation by the Border Patrol agents into a criminal act, rather than prosecuting a career drug smuggler. As part of their investigation, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General sent Special Agent Christopher Sanchez, which is no relation to the other fellow, into Mexico, and this fellow offered the drug smuggler immunity, an immunity deal in exchange for his testimony against the Border Patrol agents. The smuggler was then brought back into the United States, given free medical care for his injuries, all at taxpayer expense. One wonders at the outcome and what would have happened if Mr. Sutton would have spent one-tenth the effort trying to find this criminal and trying to demand his extradition and punishment for smuggling narcotics into our country, rather than focusing on our law enforcement officers who are there to protect us and trying to find a way to bring them down. The drug smuggler was portrayed by this U.S. attorney as the victim. He was portrayed that to the jury and to the public as the victim because the drug smuggler swears he wasn't armed, and, of course, the U.S. attorney took the word of the drug smuggler rather than the law enforcement agents that he wasn't armed. Sure, a drug smuggler has $1 million worth of drugs and he is not armed. The jury is told that Davila was just trying to raise money to buy medicine for his sick mother, and he had never smuggled drugs before. So the U.S. attorney made that claim to the jury and painted the worst possible picture of Ramos and Compean. Then our government takes the word of this nefarious drug-dealing character over two law enforcement officers, again portraying that to the jury as what they believed to be the case. In short, the initial decision to prosecute the two Border Patrol agents instead of the drug smuggler was indefensible. And then our U.S. attorney moved forward with a vigor to beat these two men down, perhaps just to protect a wrong decision. Well, Mr. Sutton's only defense of this wrong decision is to cover up the horrendous decision. And how did he do that? He has to demonize the two Border Patrol agents and has to make sure they get the maximum penalty. But this doesn't meet the smell test. Anyone who comes close to this case knows it stinks. According to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General's report, which includes Agent Compean's sworn statement that he repeatedly stated that he believed that the drug smuggler had a weapon, and that he felt threatened, the Border Patrol training allows for the use of deadly force when an agent fears imminent bodily injury or death. The two officers said that under oath. Both officers testified they saw Aldrete-Davila turn and point what they believed to be a weapon at them while he was running away. The wound created by the bullet in this man corroborates the agents' version of events. During the trial, an Army doctor, a prosecution witness, I might add, testified that the drug smuggler's body was bladed away from the bullet that struck him. That is consistent with the motion of a left-handed person running while pointing backwards, causing the body to twist, once again corroborating Ramos' and Compean's belief that the smuggler had a weapon in his hand. Later, the drug dealer's family, and this is really important; later the drug dealer's family verified to a news reporter that he always carried a gun and that he had been making deliveries of drugs for a long time. That, of course, never made it into the trial or to the jury. It is important to understand that only three individuals were eyewitnesses to the crucial events of that day: the two accused border agents and a self-admitted drug smuggler. The other Border Patrol agents who responded to the scene and perhaps heard some of the shots testified under immunity and contradicted themselves several times on the witness stand. And why did that happen? What was the problem there? Most importantly, when we are looking at this, we know that their view of events was completely obscured. They did not see what was going on, these other agents, the supervisors, because there was a 12-foot- high berm on the edge of a levee right across from an access road where all this was happening. None of the other agents could have seen what transpired on the other side of this berm. Well, they heard the shots; yet these agents, these same agents, two of them at least who were the supervisors of Ramos and Compean, were threatened that if they didn't testify against Ramos and Compean, they would be prosecuted themselves. Is this intimidation? The fact is these two supervisors didn't make a report on the incident. They didn't ask Ramos and Compean about the incident. It wasn't Ramos and Compean who falsified a report. They were never asked by their supervisors because no one wanted to fill out 5 hours' worth of paperwork. And then in comes the U.S. attorney making this a criminal offense. Well, it begs the question of why the two supervisors needed immunity before they could testify. Why is it that they needed immunity? If they weren't involved in the incident, why were they offered immunity? Well, they were given immunity by Johnny Sutton because he was threatening them. He was threatening, you either do this, or you are the one who is going to be prosecuted for not filing a report on this shooting incident. This calls into question what effect this all had on the truthfulness of their testimony. The U.S. attorney's version of what happened that day relies almost exclusively on the testimony of the drug smuggler. We are talking about what happened firsthand. The other people were across and didn't see it. They heard noises. According to the Department of Homeland Security investigation, the supervisors heard or knew about the shooting. That is in the report of the Department of Homeland Security investigation. So the supervisors heard or knew about the shooting; yet they did not ask Ramos and Compean about it because why? Because they were trying to cover something up? No. Because they didn't want to do 5 hours' worth of paperwork on their own time. And Johnny Sutton, our U.S. attorney, turned that into a felony, attacking our law enforcement officers and letting the drug dealer go, focusing on our law enforcement officers, trying to find anything he can do to get them and bring them down and anything he can do to protect the drug dealer. Well, it was their duty, meaning the supervisors who were threatened by Sutton, to change their testimony. It was their duty, not the field agents', to write a report about this incident. That is probably what he used to hang over their head: You were the ones who were supposed to write the report. If you didn't, they must have kept this information from you. It was never brought up even though they were right there. As a matter of fact, the agents that we are talking about, Ramos and Compean, and all agents that are on the border there, are prohibited by Border Patrol policy from filing a written report on a shooting. INS firearms policy section 12(b), 1(g) states: ``Ensure that supervisory personnel or investigative officers are aware that employees involved in a shooting incident shall not be required or allowed to submit a written statement of the circumstances surrounding the incident.'' So Ramos and Compean were not permitted to file a written report, and the supervisors didn't file it, and so Johnny Sutton went after the supervisors and threatened them in order to get them to testify against Ramos and Compean. After all, why then would he have to grant them immunity otherwise? ``All written statements regarding the incident,'' a shooting incident, ``shall be prepared by the local investigating officers and shall be based upon an interview of the employees.'' So here you have Ramos and Compean prohibited from writing their own report. Yet Johnny Sutton continues to claim that the officers filed a false report to cover up their crime; not to cover up that they were not following the right procedures, but to cover up a crime. The supervisors knew about the shooting. They didn't ask Ramos and Compean what had happened, because once they did, it would have required 5 hours of additional paperwork. And because the guy got away, they didn't know that he had been wounded. They just assumed that the incident was closed. So now because people who were just trying not to have to do 5 hours' worth of paperwork, officers who risk their lives for us every day are being brought down and their lives destroyed because of that, and the drug dealers go free. By no means did anyone's action raise to the level of criminality. What might be considered unauthorized discharge of a weapon, because, let us face it, Ramos and Compean, again, couldn't prove absolutely that they knew the drug dealer had a weapon, and, of course, if he did and they were wrong, they would be shot, and they would be dead, well, they can't prove it absolutely; so that has been turned into attempted murder by the U.S. attorney. Again, the agents thought the drug smuggler was pointing something at them. Their story has never changed. They testified to this in court. The drug smuggler had just been in a physical altercation with one of the officers. Of course, the U.S. attorney believed the drug dealer, who swears that Compean just fell down. He believes the drug dealer when he said, ``I didn't have a gun.'' You have to believe the drug dealer because he was the only one on the scene and he got away, although his family has told reporters that he always carried a gun. And it does make sense that someone who carries a million dollars' worth of drugs would be armed. So even though the Department of Homeland Security Office of Investigation determined that all seven officers on the scene knew about or had heard about the shooting, the U.S. attorney granted those officers immunity, which, now, why did he have to do that if they were just going to tell the truth? To testify against Ramos and Compean. There must have been a threat there: If you don't testify this way, well, I am not going to grant you immunity, which means I can charge you with a crime. So, remember, it is the supervisors' job, not the agents', Ramos and Compean, to fill out the written report. So this leads to the logical conclusion that these witnesses were intimidated into testifying. Our U.S. Attorney's Office intimidated witnesses. They were threatened and then given immunity if they went along. If this incident would have been kept in perspective, this whole shooting incident, and, yes, if the weapons were discharged without justification, and, still, when you think someone is aiming a gun at you, that is justification, but at the very worst, if all supervisors and agents were failing to report a shooting, that may or may not have been consistent with the regulations governing the discharge of weapons. Maybe that was a violation of procedure, that those supervisors, along with those two Border Patrol agents, should have worked those extra 5 hours and filed that report. And do you know what would have happened? They would have been disciplined, and that would have been the end of it. The penalty for not reporting a shooting is a 5-day suspension. This was an issue of procedural violation maybe, not criminality, and there is a serious question about the viability of those mandated procedures that we are talking about that you have got to really keep your gun holstered even when you are going up against drug dealers and you are going up against terrorists. Of course, we have an insane border policy which has resulted in an open border in which terrorists and drug dealers think they can just come across the border, and this was even before Ramos and Compean, and we have had an invasion of millions of illegal immigrants across the southern border, and that border policy now is destroying the lives of the only people who are there trying to defend us. Over 90 Members of Congress have expressed concern, if not outrage, at the many troubling aspects of this case. Our repeated attempts for Presidential intervention have gone ignored or rebuffed. Our pleas to keep the officers out on bond pending appeal fell on deaf ears. Instead, the President dug in his heels and sent Tony Snow out to chastise our efforts to save Ramos and Compean by suggesting, in the President's words, take a closer look at the facts in the case since these men were convicted by a jury. Johnny Sutton went on public airwaves and lied to the public to discredit the agents. How many times have we heard they shot an unarmed man in the back as he was running away? He wasn't shot in the back. He was shot in the side, in the buttocks, as he was aiming something at the officers. He wasn't just a man. He was a drug smuggler. He wasn't someone who happened across the border. It has been discovered that the Homeland Security Department lied to Congress and then covered up their lies because this was all part of the effort by this administration to demonize the two law enforcement officers, to cover up their horrendous mistake and decision in prosecuting them in the first place, but, of course, also trying to keep the lid on the fact that there is a disaster happening in American security to our southern border. And this case, of course, brings attention to the failure of this administration to protect our national security and leaving us totally vulnerable at our southern border. So even today the Department of Homeland Security released an official statement by IG Skinner, and this statement, which I will also add for the Record, is filled with misinformation and inaccuracies about the facts of this case. Statement of Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security Regarding the Investigation of Former Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean Remarks by certain Members of Congress as reported in the media have stated that members of my staff lied to Congress. At a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 8, 2007, I stated, in part, the following: The decision to prosecute former Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean was made by the Department of Justice, not by my Office. My Office conducted the investigation in coordination with the United States Attorneys' Office. I stand by the work of my Office. Our investigators did an outstanding job and I fully support their work. At no time did any member of my staff lie to Congress about the investigation of Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean or any other matter. My staff has acted honestly and in good faith. In a closed Members' briefing on September 26, 2006, my staff reported that Mr. Compean had said that he and Mr. Ramos had stated that they ``wanted to shoot a Mexican.'' My staff reported this statement to me, and then reported it to Representative Michael McCaul and other Members and their staff during the closed briefing. Representative McCaul was then serving as Chair of the Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Homeland Security Committee. At the time my staff made that statement, they believed it to be true, although we later learned it was inaccurate. In fact, Mr. Compean had stated in a sworn statement that ``my intent was to kill the alien. . .and I think Nacho [Ramos] was also trying to kill the alien.'' The alien Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos attempted to kill, Mr. Olsvaldo Aldrete-Davila, had come from Mexico and escaped back into Mexico. The statement that Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean supposedly ``wanted to shoot a Mexican'' never was reported in any document by my office or by the Department of Justice, and was not introduced at the trial of Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean, which had been completed on March 8, 2006, six months prior to the briefing. That statement also was not reported by my office to anyone other than then Chairman McCaul and the other Members and their staff in attendance at the closed briefing. The briefing my office provided to then Chairman McCaul and the other Members was initiated at his request in his capacity as Chair of the Subcommittee on Investigations. Mr. McCaul and the other Members understood that the information my office was providing was not public, and was not to be made public--it was For Official Use Only for the Committee's use in discharging its official business. At the time my staff tried to accommodate then Chairman McCaul by providing an oral briefing, we did not have the benefit of a trial transcript or even a written report of investigation. Consequently, my staff made some misstatements during the briefing, but nothing that affected the investigation, the trial, the convictions or the sentencings of Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean. The only reason the statement that Mr. Ramos and Mr. Compean allegedly said they ``wanted to shoot a Mexican'' has become public is because the terms under which my office briefed the Members have not been honored. Others have publicized that inaccurate information and reported it to the media. That information was not used at trial nor in the sentencing of Mr. Compean or Mr. Ramos. The evidence that was introduced at trial proved that Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos attempted to shoot Mr. Aldrete-Davila in the back while he was unarmed and running away from them. Evidence introduced at trial proved that when Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos attempted to shoot Mr. Aldrete-Davila in the back, they did not know that he had been attempting to smuggle marijuana into this country. Evidence introduced at trial proved that when Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos attempted to shoot Mr. Aldrete-Davila in the back, they did not even know that he was in this country illegally. At no time did Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos warn their fellow Border Patrol Agents that they believed Mr. Aldrete-Davila might be armed. Consequently, other Border Patrol agents walked around in the open where they were exposed, rather than taking cover or other precautions. After shooting Mr. Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks, Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos made no attempt to arrest him, thus allowing him to escape back into Mexico. Rather than try to arrest Mr. Aldrete-Davila, Mr. Compean picked up the spent shell casings and threw them away and instructed another agent to do the same. Neither Mr. Compean nor Mr. Ramos reported the shooting incident to their supervisor, though required to do so. In conclusion, I am deeply disturbed that these allegations have been made regarding the integrity of my staff I reiterate my staff acted honestly and in good faith at all times. And let me note, despite the administration's repeated claims that Ramos and Compean were convicted by a jury of their peers, it is important to note that the jury didn't hear so many of the facts that were important for them to come to the truth in this issue. Finally, after 11 months, the completed trial transcripts of their trial were made available. So for 11 months we haven't even been able to see the transcript of this trial. And here we have the Department of Homeland Security telling us that when they were giving a briefing to Members of Congress, one of the Members of Congress who is the chairman of an oversight subcommittee, that they had made misstatements, and then this document itself is filled with misstatements. One wonders about the sincerity and the professionalism of the people in this administration in this very volatile issue dealing with border control. Something is amiss. Something is causing the system to go askew. Federal District Judge Kathleen Cordone, another Bush appointee, I might add, would not permit critically important aspects of this case to be introduced during the trial. She did this at the request of the prosecution. For example, she would not allow any reference to describing the dangerous conditions of the border. Essentially the jury was supposed to imagine that the shooting took place in a completely sterile environment where the likelihood of Border Patrol agents confronting armed drug smugglers was not a plausible scenario. Well, that is absurd. And a recent headline in the Washington Times is a perfect example. It states: ``Officers Outgunned on the Border.'' The reporter describes in great detail the unprecedented surge in violence along our borders fueled by heavily armed illegal gangs who patrol those areas in order to protect their criminal enterprises; yet this judge didn't think it was important for the jury to find out that these Border Patrol agents were working in extreme danger every day. And thus when they thought they saw him turning around and aiming something at them, would that be justified? It might not be justified if you are in downtown USA in some very peaceful town someplace around the country, or at some school or church or maybe even in a courtroom, but when you are on the border, and you are off on your own, and you are confronting this type of challenge, yes, if someone is pointing something at you, and you realize he has just escaped, that he has been in an altercation with one of the officers, and then later, of course, we find out that he was a drug dealer, yes, there was every reason for them to be concerned that he might have a weapon and shoot them. In fact, his family, again has told a reporter, he was armed many times when he went out, and he was someone who had done this many times before, drug smuggling, that is. So perhaps the most troubling omission from the trial, again, was about the drug smuggler himself. Already under immunity for smuggling $1 million worth of drugs into the country on that day of the shooting, Davila was involved with a second drug smuggling incident in the months later after the first incidents. In October of 2005, he again was part of another drug smuggling incident. According to sensitive DEA documents obtained by my office, the government's star witness against Ramos and Campeon was ID'd as the driver of a van filled with another 750 pounds of marijuana seized during a joint DEA-Border Patrol operation on October 23, 2005. This was only 6 months after he had been intercepted by Ramos and Campeon. So instead of doing the right thing and throwing the case out because their star witness has proven to be an awful, dreadful human being, a professional drug dealer, instead of throwing the case out, no, the U.S. Attorney chose to ignore this information; not only ignore it, but to pressure everyone in the trial to make sure that this information that their primary witness, the guy who they are portraying as a man who had never done this before, and was simply raising money for medicine for his mother, that the information he was involved in yet another drug operation was never disclosed. The U.S. Attorney did everything he could to make sure that was not disclosed to the jury or the public. Johnny Sutton has lied to the American people about this. Every time he was asked questions about it, he would give an answer that sounded like he was saying no, there was no second incident. But if you examine the words, that is not what he was saying. He was, as unscrupulous lawyers often do, saying one thing, but making people think that he was saying something else. He was lying without actually having to be technically lying. So, what happened? We have their prime witness now involved in another drug deal operation, and the U.S. Attorney pressures the judge to not permit anything about the second incident to become known to the jury. They said ``Mr. Davila is not on trial.'' The prosecutor then insisted that the defense could not even question Davila about a second incident. Unfortunately, the judge went along with the prosecution in this case and then ruled that just because the star witness had been arrested again for drug dealing, that that was not relevant to this case. A gag order was placed on anyone involved in the case so no information open the second drug smuggling incident could ever reach the jury. So the jury wasn't allowed to hear that the drug dealer's commission of a second offense while he was waiting for that trial had taken place. We are talking about the credibility of the primary witness against Ramos and Campeon. His credibility is not relevant? The jury shouldn't know that this is not just a man who is raising money for the medicine for his mother, that that is not who he is. Who he really is is a professional drug cartel mule who did this often and was arrested again after he had been given immunity by our government, and a pass, I might add, to go in and out of our country? The jury also never heard that Christopher Sanchez, the Department of Homeland Security investigator who took Davila, took him and the removed bullet fragment, which had been removed from him, this Department of Homeland Security investigator took him to his personal residence for a night after he was released from an American hospital which got this bullet fragment out and the bullet fragment was in his possession. So we have a negligent action that broke the chain of custody for this vital piece of evidence. What we are talking about here is something that any lawyer can tell you is the type of sloppiness that taints evidence and disqualifies it from being used by the prosecution. That wasn't permitted to be told to the jury. What is going on? Our Border Patrol agents make one possible procedural mistake in the field in an instantaneous reaction to a man who might be shooting at them, and the book is thrown at them. ``You make any mistake and we are going to squash you like a bug.'' But when they make a mistake about breaking the chain of evidence and actually taking a witness putting them in a prosecutor's home, totally violating procedures and tainting the prosecutorial case, well, those mistakes in procedure are just ignored. They are just ignored. Why is it that the two heroes who are protecting us with their bodies every day of their life have the book thrown at them, and if they can possibly turn a mistake into a felony, they are destroyed; but the U.S. Attorney's Office, if they make a mistake, or the Department of Homeland Security, which now admits that they made misstatements to a group of Congressmen investigating this issue, and then I might add for 4 months covered up the fact they had made those misstatements, why is it all forgotten and forgiven on one side, but yet our defenders have to have the book thrown at them? Why is the government bending over backwards to accommodate and protect a professional drug mule? Our government went to Mexico, sought out the drug smuggler, granted him immunity, issued a border crossing card and provided him free healthcare, all at America's expense, and now the fellow thinks he is going to sue the U.S. Government for $5 million. Perhaps most perplexing is the fact that three of the 12 jurors in the trial of Ramos and Campeon later submitted sworn affidavits alleging that they had been misled by the jury foreman into believing that if the majority of jurors voted for a conviction, they had to go along and vote guilty, even though they thought the defendants were innocent. That is right. These are unsophisticated jurors, not very well educated people, but regular human beings; intelligent, but not educated in the ways of the law. They were told by the foreman of the jury that hung juries would not be allowed. The three jurors said, and they have signed written affidavits, that they felt pressured to vote guilty. One of them said, ``Had we had the option of a hung jury, I truly believe the outcome may have been different.'' Another juror said, ``I think I might not have changed my vote to guilty had I known that a hung jury was an option. I did not think the defendants were guilty of the assaults or the civil rights violations.'' The judge, again at the urging of the prosecutor, denied a request that the two agents that we are talking about, Ramos and Campeon, be permitted to remain free on bond until the appeal could be heard. Common criminals are permitted to stay out on bond until their appeal is heard, but not these two Border Patrol agents. I stand before you, Mr. Speaker. Here we are, and right now as we are speaking Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Campeon are languishing in solitary confinement in Federal prisons as a direct result of the mean-spirited, ruthless prosecution that was brought upon them by our Justice Department and with the backing of the President of the United States. Ramos and Campeon were ripped away from their families on January 17, 2007, and forced to begin serving their unjust 11 and 12 year prison sentences all because our own Federal Government chose to take the word of a drug smuggler and give him immunity and take his word over that of two law enforcement officers and throw the book at them, even though those two law enforcement officers had put their lives on the line to protect the borders of the United States, protect our families and our communities for 5 and 10 years, risking their lives for us. I, along with a dozen other Members, signed on to a letter requesting that the Justice Department release the officers on bond pending their appeal. As I say, it is a courtesy often afforded common criminals. And, yes, Ramos was severely beaten in prison, and thus we knew that their lives were in danger for them to be in this prison and there was a reason to let them be out on appeal. Yet the Justice Department chose to ignore the pleas of Members of Congress and the pleas for mercy of the families, and the agents were denied bond. I might add that after a lengthy delay, I finally received a letter from the Justice Department claiming to have no choice but to deny bond. By the way, this was the Justice Department's letter to me. I received it just today telling me why they couldn't give these two, Ramos and Campeon, bond and let them out on bond while they are do going through their appeal. They really have to be very specific and they have to follow all the rules. They have to be exactly right in what they are doing. Except, of course, they address the letter to ``Congresswoman Rohrabacher.'' Congresswoman Rohrabacher. Well, if they can't get that right, why are they playing with the lives of Ramos and Campeon? If they can't get that right, why is it that if Ramos and Campeon make a little mistake in their procedure, that they get the book thrown at them? Also let me note this ``Congresswoman Rohrabacher'' letter to me from the Justice Department is just another example of the contempt that this administration has demonstrated time and again for congressional oversight and congressional concerns. This Attorney General, this President, has time and again, instead of treating the legislative branch as something that deserves the respect that we do deserve, as the presidency deserves, time and again we have been shown contempt. We have had people in communicating to us, we put questions in to the Attorney General and get calls back from people four or five layers down. Here we are getting an answer back from someone who doesn't even know that I am not a ``Congresswoman Rohrabacher.'' Yes, that is contempt, and they will pay the price for that contempt. Our pleas as Members of Congress were not unfounded. Members warned the administration that Ramos and Campeon faced imminent danger once they entered the respective Federal correctional facilities. Not only were they not properly protected, Agent Ramos was placed in a facility known to be infiltrated by illegal Mexican gang members, and within 8 days of his arrival, Agent Ramos was savagely beaten by five of those illegal Mexican gang members. Instead of sending him to a minimum security prison or letting him be out on bond, the administration decided to make an example of him. They wouldn't even send him to a minimum security prison where he would be safe. Instead, the Justice Department chose to keep him at this dangerous facility where he had already been beaten. And Agent Ramos, even as we speak, has been in solitary confinement for 45 days and counting. Solitary confinement. Locked in a cell 23 hours a day, telephone privileges limited to one call of 15 minutes every 30 days, and no interaction with other inmates. Mr. Campeon is suffering the same fate. The Bureau of Prisons uses the euphemism to describe their incarceration as ``special housing for their own protection.'' Make no mistake about it, they are in solitary confinement, a unit designed as a punitive measure, not a protective measure. Ramos and Campeon, two brave Border Patrol agents, are suffering a fate not even bestowed upon murderers and drug dealers. This amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, intentional cruel and unusual punishment. These two agents could have been sent to a minimum security prison where they would be safe. We actually asked the President, through back channels, personally, just go to the judge and support the effort to let them out on bond until the appeal is heard. The next day, it was announced that no, the administration officially opposes any letting them out on bond. Well, basically, that was sending a message to everyone who patrols our borders. He sent the message to every Border Patrol agent when he said not only are you going to be prosecuted, but you will be destroyed, you will be obliterated, you will be smashed like a bug if you get in the way of what we want to happen down at the border. President Bush has essentially dismantled our ability to control America's southern border. Any agent who gets in the way will be squashed, as I have said. So much for the President's compassion. So much for his talk about Christian charity. Ramos and Campeon are languishing in solitary confinement. They are being brutalized. There is cruel and unusual punishment being dealt out to them because they dared challenge the President. I don't want to hear anything more about compassion from a man who lets that happen to our brave defenders, and then focuses us on a far- away war while letting terrorists and drug dealers penetrate our southern border. Since January 17, when the propaganda machine and smear campaign against Compean and Ramos was fully unleashed by the President, by Tony Snow, and his protege, the U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, more questions than answers have arisen. Both Tony Snow and Johnny Sutton smugly lectured the American people and Members of Congress to ``take a closer look at this case.'' And as the President said in his own words, ``Take a sober look at this case.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, I have closely examined this case, and maybe it would behoove the President to take some advice and to look at this case honestly. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, who is probably briefing the President, has his own personal life tied up in this. He is not an unbiased source of information about this case, just as Attorney General Gonzales is not. They have already advised the President in a horrendous way and started him down the road to the situation where he is at today. John Sutton prosecuted the good guys and gave immunity to the bad guys. He could have done it the other way around, but he didn't. He chose to prosecute the good guys and give immunity to the bad guys. Sutton has continually engaged in a propaganda campaign aimed at creating a prejudicial public view against Agents Ramos and Compean. He has repeatedly stated that ``these corrupt agents shot an unarmed man in the back.'' This is not true. The prosecution's own witness, an Army surgeon, testified that the bullet hit Adrete-Davila in the buttocks, not in the back. And, of course, he was turned in a way that the bullet entered indicating he was aiming something backwards. And, of course, this was not just a man in the back. It was not a nun or some tourist who happened to stray across the border. It was a professional drug smuggler who works for a drug cartel, a mule, a deliveryman for drugs, bringing dangerous substances into our neighborhoods in order to threaten our schools and our children. Remember, since the drug smuggler absconded into Mexico, there was no way to know whether he was armed or not, yet Sutton chose to believe the drug smuggler who said he was not armed, even those the smuggler's own family members say he has been smuggling drugs since he was 14 and was ``always armed.'' So there is no question that he was a member of a drug cartel, but Johnny Sutton takes the drug smuggler's word over the law enforcement agents', and he portrays the drug smuggler to the jury in a dishonest way and keeps from them information that would expose the drug dealer as a professional drug dealer and not as he was portrayed before the jury. Johnny Sutton turned the drug dealer in front of the jury into a victim. He was just trying to raise money for medicine for his dear mother and had never done drugs before. Sutton turned reality on its head. He sided with the drug smuggler over two men who risk their lives every day to protect us. So now they must be destroyed to protect the mistake that was made not only in prosecuting them, but the mistakes that are made in policy down at the border that are putting our country at risk. These two Border Patrol agents are being destroyed to protect Sutton's failure. They are being destroyed to protect Gonzales' job, and they are being destroyed to protect the President's legacy, because all of those are at stake if the people learn the truth about what is happening on our border, and what the Ramos-Compean prosecution is all about. Sutton vilifies helpless Border Patrol agents like these guys who get in the way every chance he gets. Just ask David Sipe, Gary Brugman and Gilmer Hernandez, all law enforcement officers who have been prosecuted by Johnny Sutton. What we are talking about with Ramos and Compean is not only a sin against these men, not only a message to all our Border Patrol agents, but part of a pattern that is going on in which this administration is trying to cower our protectors, our law enforcement officers, from enforcing the law at our border, leaving us totally exposed. The lies are evident. For example, Johnny Sutton continually refers to Ramos and Compean as corrupt agents. Well, again, why is our U.S. attorney out speaking on radio calling them corrupt agents? There weren't any charges of corruption. In fact, I have looked through this, there has never been a charge of corruption against either of these men. Yet the U.S. attorney is out in the mass media saying they were corrupt Border Patrol agents. They have never been charged with corruption because they have a totally clean work record. Yes, Ramos had some family problems years ago, not part of his job, and Mr. Sutton, of course, has chosen to bring that personal matter up in order to vilify Mr. Ramos. But in terms of that, everybody understands you can have family problems. This had nothing to do with his job. In fact, Ramos had been nominated for Border Patrol Agent of the Year, and there is no corruption, yet Johnny Sutton lies and says these corrupt Border Patrol agents. Johnny Sutton, when asked whether there was a second incident, lies and says something that makes it sound like there wasn't a second incident. But in reality his words are just technically not a lie, but what he is presenting is an untruth. That is what unscrupulous lawyers do. What is the real significance of this case? The U.S. Attorney's despicable prosecution of these Border Patrol agents has put Border Patrol agents on notice: Any use of force to protect America, to secure our borders, and you will go to prison, and your life will be destroyed. The consequences for Ramos and Compean in this case extend far beyond the destruction of these two men and their families. Yes, it is horrible that these families are being driven into destitution, and now they add insult to injury, sending them a bill. The Compeans have lost their home. There are three kids in that family, and they do not have health insurance, and their lives are being shattered, and Johnny Sutton sends them a bill to rub their nose in the fact that their father is in prison in solitary confinement. But what are the consequences of this to all of us? These families are being destroyed, but there are more American lives at risk. Our southern border is open not just to an invading army of illegal immigrants, but, yes, to drug dealers like the ones like Ramos and Compean confronted, and, yes, to terrorists. What if it was found that that van that Davila was in turned out not to possess a million dollars' worth of drugs, but instead it was a dirty bomb in that van; and if that drug dealer wasn't a Mexican, but instead turned out to be an Arab terrorist on the way to a target in the United States? Well, these two men, instead of being in solitary confinement, they would be invited to the White House and be congratulated and be made heroes. Now there is a bigger agenda here. There is a hidden agenda here at play with the Ramos and Compean prosecution. The American people have a right to know who gave the order to go ahead to prosecute Ramos and Compean in the first place. I am sure Gonzales was in on it, and we need to know that. We also need to know as this case progressed where the President and Mr. Gonzales played a role in making decisions as to where they would be imprisoned, and if they would get out on bail during the time of appeal. How did an incident that could have easily been resolved through an administrative reprimand within the Border Patrol itself spiral into charging them with attempted murder and a civil rights violation? According to a memo dealing with a meeting between four members of the Texas delegation and representatives of the Department of Homeland Security investigating team, the Mexican Consulate contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office on March 4, 2005, the same day this investigation began. It seems to fit a disturbing pattern with all of these other prosecutions that the administration has moved forward with. In the Gilmer Hernandez case, the Mexican Consulate sent 17 letters to our government demanding prosecution. In the Gary Brugman case, the Mexican consul sat in the courtroom during the trial, and Johnny Sutton went so far as to thank him for his assistance in locating the illegals Sutton used to testify against Brugman. This stinks. We need to get to the bottom of this and find out if a foreign government is having an undue influence on prosecutorial decisions of our own law enforcement agencies and members. This subject of whether there is some type of foreign involvement, meaning the Mexican Government, in prosecutorial decisions here of our own law enforcement officials, that is now going to be looked into by the International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee of which I am the ranking member. Chairman Delahunt has stated that we will be holding hearings into this subject. There will be hearings of our oversight subcommittee to explore the pattern of questionable foreign influence on our government's decisions to prosecute law enforcement officers in the United States, especially those law enforcement officers who are trying to stop drug dealers who are coming in from Mexico, and stop the invasion of illegal immigrants who are pouring into our country from Mexico. The Mexican government is having an undue influence on the decision of our government prosecutors in order to make concessions to the Mexican government. If our government is actually prosecuting people who do not deserve to be prosecuted, the American people have a right to know what political decisions are being made in coming forward with these indefensible prosecutions. Did Ramos and Campean make mistakes? Maybe. Should they have been punished and reprimanded for them? Maybe. Should they have been charged with a crime? Absolutely not. By doing so, the Justice Department has demoralized our Nation's defenders on our southern border. These are the facts. These are the facts that have engaged the public, causing Americans to wonder what in God's name is going on with our government, with our President. What is their President thinking? How could our President be as mean-spirited and arrogant as to not hear the pleas of so many citizens and to hear the pleas for mercy from the families of Ramos and Campean. Yes, there is a hidden agenda here. Powerful economic interests want cheap labor. They want an open border. They want illegals who work cheap and who will depress the wages of working Americans, but the out- of-control flow of illegal immigrants is a nightmare at this moment for the American people. This administration and past administrations and policy-makers and big corporate interests in Washington are so far out of touch and do not understand the reality of what is going on with this issue, and they do not care about the suffering of the American people. These elites, they do not care that illegal immigrants are pulling down the quality of our health care, shutting down emergency rooms. They do not care that they are undermining the quality of education by overcrowding our classrooms. They do not care that they are driving down the wages of middle class working people. They do not care if our criminal justice system is being stretched to the breaking point, that American citizens are now being victimized and murder and raped and robbed by criminal illegal aliens every day. The only heroes in this entire system on which ordinary Americans depend are those in the thin green line of the border patrol. The elites have turned against our heroes, our defenders. They smashed two of them to warn the others what will happen to any patriot who actually is trying to protect our southern border and stop the criminal illegal aliens from entering our country. This case shows why a guest worker program or amnesty program is not even remotely feasible until we can control our southern border. This is a country that cannot or refuses not to stop these illegal aliens that are pouring into our country. This country's policy has not stopped this invasion of our country, and if we do not do this and we do not support those who are protecting us in our southern border, there will be a price to pay. On 9/11 we suffered a huge loss when people flew airplanes into buildings, but when it is fully understood, and I am sure the message has gone out not just to our border patrol agents but to the drug dealers and the terrorists throughout the world about what the situation is on our southern border, we could end up with a catastrophe in the making. We need to protect our southern border. We need to protect it because that is the protection that we can give to our communities, to our families. Those border patrol agents, that thin green line of individuals who risk their lives for us, they are our first and last line of defense between chaos and mayhem and murder and the lives of our families. I would ask that all of us make sure that we let everyone know, our elected officials and the executive branch, the President as well as Members of Congress, know how strongly we feel that Ramos and Campean should be pardoned and that we should protect our southern border and make sure the United States remains safe and secure.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I believe my amendment is germane. After all, we do add many such regulations on bills that we pass. They have to meet certain standards. This standard certainly is no different than many of the other standards. It is just that this body refuses ever to involve themselves in anything that would stem the flow of illegal immigrants into this country and quit giving people an incentive to come here to take the jobs and the benefits that belong to the American people. And certainly this amendment, which is no different than many other types of restrictions that we place on government spending, is certainly germane to this bill. And, therefore, I would argue my case that it is germane.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.