Providing for further consideration of the bill (H.R. 4437) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to strengthen enforcement of the immigration laws, to enhance border security, and for other purposes.

Madam Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. I wanted to make a couple of points.

First of all, the visa lottery system has been susceptible to fraud. Doing away with it would do away with fraud. Secondly, the visa lottery system does not give visas to people from ``over-represented countries,'' and that includes Mexico. So no Mexican is eligible to get a visa on the visa lottery system. I think that is discriminatory.

Also, the visa lottery system is unfair because the winners go ahead of spouses and children of lawful permanent residents, including Mexicans, and married sons and daughters of citizens who have waited for visas, in some instances for years. It also is used as a potential for aliens who pose a danger to Americans.

I think that with all these problems in the visa lottery system, the best thing to do is pass this amendment and get rid of it.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Madam Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, even though I am not against the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment which adds distribution of fraudulent immigration documents to the list of criminal offenses.

Document fraud is a serious offense that enables our immigration laws to be violated and creates a national security threat. Controlling the production and distribution of false immigration documents is a critical component to effective immigration reform. Currently, the criminal code provides stiff penalties for those who forge, counterfeit, or alter visas, border-crossing cards, or other similar types of documents.

However, the statute does not currently mention distribution of fraudulent documents among the enumerated offenses. This amendment would help prosecutors go after those who are not necessarily producing the fake documents, but those who are making them available on the black market. Those who distribute or sell false documents deserve the same harsh penalties as those who forge or counterfeit the documents. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Madam Chairman, since I have the right to close, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, for purposes of clarification, before I summarize the provisions within the manager's amendment, I will highlight what the amendment does not contain.

The amendment does not contain a sense of Congress on foreign workers; nor does it decrease the criminal penalties for illegal entry and illegal presence. The latter issue will be addressed in a separate amendment I will soon offer.

I will now summarize the provisions of the manager's amendment within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.

First, the amendment contains a provision drafted by the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) that will prohibit localities from requiring businesses to set up day labor sites as a condition for conducting or expanding a business. No business should be compelled to facilitate the hiring of illegal aliens by establishing labor sites on or near their premises, and this amendment will prohibit this practice.

The amendment also contains a provision drafted by the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) that requires the Attorney General to report on the status of criminal alien prosecutions, including prosecutions of smugglers. Mr. Issa is rightly concerned about the lack of sufficient prosecutions of alien smugglers who prey upon the most vulnerable.

The amendment also includes a number of important provisions that will facilitate the ability of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to combat illegal immigration. Specifically, the amendment sets mandatory minimum sentences for repeated marriage fraud; improved sentencing enhancements for aliens who enter illegally after criminal convictions; clarifies that the Board of Immigration Appeals' decisions on motions to reopen removal proceedings are not subject to judicial review; increases penalties for passport and immigration fraud and penalizes fraud against aliens applying for immigration benefits; makes criminal defendants' immigration status an express consideration in determining whether they should be released on bond; extends the statute of limitations for all immigration-related fraud; makes passport fraud a ground of inadmissibility and deportability; and abolishes attorneys' fee awards to removable aliens under the Equal Access to Justice Act.

Madam Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

First, on the hypothetical the gentleman from California raised, there is this thing called prosecutorial discretion. It seems to me we should have more faith in our prosecutors not to prosecute genuine refugees, but continue the law on the books as proposed in the manager's amendment that will get at the people who use passport fraud to cover the transportation of a lot of people who are not refugees and who should not enter the United States.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that, should this matter survive conference, there will be a statement that it is not intended to include the situation in the statement on the part of the managers. And I can say, as the floor manager of this bill and the author of the manager's amendment, it does not either.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment, and I think we ought to talk about what operational control means.

Under the amendment, it means the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including by terrorists and illegal aliens, and including all narcotics shipments.

The amendment also provides that, within 90 days of enactment, the Department of Homeland Security provides the Congress a comprehensive plan for border surveillance and, within 180 days, DHS provides to Congress a national strategy for border security and a report on progress made.

Now these goals are obviously ambitious and the Department of Homeland Security has not been ambitious on anything, in my opinion; but it seems to me by setting deadlines, and then the two committees in their oversight functions can be on the back of the Department of Homeland Security, and we might shame them into doing the right thing.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. This amendment has been triggered by a recent IG report of the Department of Homeland Security that not all applicants for immigration benefits undertake an IBIS check. The excuse that was given is that not all U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service employees have a high enough security clearance to conduct the proper checks, and some of the problems stem from simple lax management. Neither of these excuses is valid.

I am amazed that this has not always been a requirement of the law. We should conduct a thorough background check of anybody who seeks immigration benefits. The necessity of these checks was demonstrated by the fact that at least six of the 9/11 hijackers, murderers, ended up slipping through the cracks. I think this amendment plugs an important loophole in the current law, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, under current law, illegal entry into the United States makes an alien subject to a Federal criminal misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 6 months in prison. However, unlawful presence itself, such as by overstaying a visa, is not a criminal offense, but only a civil ground of inadmissibility.

Forty percent of the current illegal alien population entered legally, but overstayed their visas. The other 60 percent of the illegal alien population came here by illegal means and are therefore already subject to criminal penalties for committing a Federal criminal offense.

At the administration's request, the base bill makes unlawful presence a crime, such as unlawful entry already is. This change makes sense. Aliens who have disregarded our laws by overstaying their visas to remain in the United States illegally should be just as culpable as aliens who have broken our laws to enter and remain here illegally.

In the base bill, the maximum penalty for illegal entry was increased to a year and a day, and the same penalty was set for unlawful presence, to make the enhancements for these offenses consistent with the other penalty enhancements of the bill.

The administration subsequently requested the penalty for these crimes be lowered to 6 months. Making the first offense a felony, as the base bill would do, would require a grand jury indictment, a trial before a district court judge and a jury trial.

Also because it is a felony, the defendant would be able to get a lawyer at public expense if the defendant could not afford the lawyer. These requirements would mean that the government would seldom if ever actually use the new penalties. By leaving these offenses as misdemeanors, more prosecutions are likely to be brought against those aliens whose cases merit criminal prosecution.

For this reason, the amendment returns the sentence for illegal entry to its current 6 months and sets the penalty for unlawful presence at the same level. Some have argued that this provision would require 11 million prosecutions. That is not true. Prosecutorial resources are limited, and authorities would rather quickly deport an alien whose only offense is to be here unlawfully rather than to prosecute and have to detain that alien pending trial.

Even if an alien were prosecuted under this provision, a conviction of unlawful presence would not prevent an alien from some day attaining legal status or even citizenship if the alien would otherwise qualify.

Making unlawful presence a crime, however, would serve as a greater deterrence to aliens overstaying their visas. For these reasons, I ask that the Members support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I regret to say, the gentlewoman from California, whom I greatly respect, is wrong. Under the Federal juvenile statute, children cannot be prosecuted for any Federal crime, felony or misdemeanor, if it is not a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime.

So her entire argument about making children subjected to Federal criminal prosecution simply by being here is not valid. They can be subjected if it is a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime. What this amendment does is reduce the penalties for this type of immigration violation from a felony in the base bill to a misdemeanor. That is all the amendment does.

And what it does do is criminalize the presence of the people here who have overstayed their visas. Now those who have entered the United States illegally, not through a port of entry and not submitting themselves to inspection by U.S. Immigration and Customs authorities commit a crime. That is a crime now. It is a Federal misdemeanor.

But if you do go through inspection and do not go home when you are supposed to, then it becomes a civil ground of inadmissibility. So we are treating illegal aliens differently. You are a potential misdemeanant if convicted if you entered the United States illegally. But if you overstayed your visa and did not go home, then you do not subject yourself to criminal prosecution.

The bill takes care of this anomaly. But it makes both offenses felonies. What this amendment does, it makes it misdemeanors. So if you are against the amendment, you want to keep it as felonies because that is in the base bill. You should be for the amendment to make it a misdemeanor for the reasons that I have stated.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. Chairman, two of the 9/11 hijackers overstayed their visas. Under the current law, that is just a civil ground of inadmissibility. I think that that should be some type of a crime so that at least they can be detained.

The businessperson who inadvertently overstays their visa because the flight is canceled, no problem; no prosecutor is going to prosecute that person because of it. I see some games being played here. The people who are saying that this bill is too harsh want to keep these penalties as felonies. I do not know why that is. I think it will be much better to make them misdemeanors, because at least, that way, we do not have to have the taxpayers pay for a lawyer to defend them if they do not have any money. And we do not have to have the space to incarcerate them in Federal penitentiaries.

This amendment makes the bill workable. I believe it is a good amendment. I urge its adoption.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, even though I support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment, and I want to commend the gentlewoman from New York for offering it.

One can ask all 435 Members of the House of Representatives what is the principal area of constituent complaints that caseworkers in our local offices deal with, and they will all say immigration complaints, because the immigration service legacy, as well as the component parts that it has been split into, has not been dealing with these issues properly.

This is an issue that deals with immigration benefits that legal aliens are entitled to receive. And it seems to me that if we are the welcoming country to legal aliens that we claim to be, we ought to deal with their petitions promptly and professionally. That is not being done, and we owe it to our present constituents and future constituents, as many of these people are eligible for permanent resident status and will eventually become citizens of the United States, to solve the problems of the backlog in dealing with immigration benefits.

The Government Accountability Office is about to issue a report that will deal with the effects of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reduce the immigration application backlog that has plagued the system for years. This report will confirm that this new agency, created under the Homeland Security Act and transformed from the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, has made significant strides in reducing application backlogs since its creation in 2003.

Nevertheless, more progress needs to be made. The current backlog stands at about 1 million applications for immigration benefits. Although this figure was reduced from over 3 million applications when the new agency was formed, much of this came from definitional changes which I have publicly questioned. We must do more to challenge the Department of Homeland Security to improve. This will mean a more professional and prompt resolution of dealing with the documents that legal immigrants need to integrate themselves into American society.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman).

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

This amendment clarifies the inherent authority of State and local law enforcement officers to enforce the immigration law and provides reimbursement to those States and localities for their assistance. Most importantly, it provides a means for Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers to work together to apprehend, detain, and remove illegal aliens.

The fact is that at the present time there are only 2,000 special agents to locate and arrest the entire illegal alien population nationwide. The Norwood amendment would allow State and local officers who are willing to do so to be a force multiplier for those 2,000 agents.

It is a good amendment and should be adopted.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment which would strike the provision added by the bill the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren), mandating expedited removal for other than Mexican aliens apprehended after entering illegally within 14 days and 100 hundred miles of entry.

Unlike what the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) said, the Lungren provision in this bill applies to land borders only, and it would not apply to asylum seekers who ask for asylum at the time they enter through a port of entry.

The provision that this amendment would strike is crucial to ending the current practice of catch and release of aliens along the southern border. While nationals of Mexico who are apprehended along the southern border can be returned to Mexico, the nationals of other countries cannot. Rather these aliens, known as OTMs, must be placed in removal proceedings which is a process that can take months. Because of a lack of detention space, most are released on the promise that they will show up for their adjudication.

Experience has shown that if OTMs are released to attend their removal proceedings, they will likely disappear. Of the 8,908 notices to appear at the immigration court at Harlingen, Texas, issued last year to OTMs, 8,767 failed to show up for their hearings, according to the statistics compiled by the Justice Departments's Executive Office of Immigration Review.

The fact that these aliens were able to enter illegally, be released and then disappear into society has encouraged even more OTMs to illegally enter. Arrests of non-Mexicans along the U.S.-Mexico border, which total 14,935 in 1995 and 28,598 in 2000, rose to 65,814 in fiscal year 2004.

As nationals of these countries have entered with impunity, they have encouraged others to do so also. The Lungren provision addresses the problem of catch and release by requiring DHS to remove these OTMs who are apprehended within 14 days of entry and 100 miles of the border through expedited procedures. This codifies DHS's current practices. By limiting the amount of time that aliens are in proceedings, these procedures allow DHS to use its limited detention space more effectively. This in turn ensures that more aliens can be detained, which discourages other aliens from attempting to enter illegally.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) for yielding me the time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, at several points during my remarks I am going to refer to Ellis Island, and I am going to begin today by citing Emma Lazarus, who wrote the poem ``The New Colossus'' in 1883. Twenty years later, it was engraved on a bronze statue in New York in the harbor.

What Miss Lazarus said at the beginning of her poem is, ``Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land; here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows worldwide welcome.''

She goes on to say, ``Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!'' With silent lips she cried. ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.''

Emma Lazarus understood the dynamics of America, as did those who went through Ellis Island and those of us that visit there to draw our strength in the diversity of this Nation.

Today, we come to put a cover over that torch and a blindfold on that lady and toss all of those magnificent notions of diversity and this great golden door right out into the Hudson. Or maybe it is the Potomac River that we do so today.

I rise to express my strong opposition to this restrictive rule, the second in as many days, for a xenophobic bill masked in catchy phrases, such as ``border control'' and ``homeland security.''

This restrictive rule blocks all but a select few from offering amendments to the underlying legislation. The chairman of the Rules Committee was in here a minute ago and said that they have made more Democratic measures, speaking of the entirety of the session, in order than Republican measures. Well, that does not hold for this particular party in part B, a very confusing process, I might add, which even the majority leader recognized.

Republicans are again allowing important and critical debates to happen behind the closed doors of the Republican Conference rather than on the House floor in the eye of the public.

What did you all talk about yesterday for all them hours that you could not bring this mess out here to the floor?

Under this rule, 18 of the 115 possible amendments, that would now make 33 of 130, could be considered or actually made in order. Two of those will be offered by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the author of the underlying legislation. As if that is not offensive enough, only four of the 18 amendments permitted in order in the rule will be offered by Democratic Members.

Then again, Democrats should not be surprised that our amendments have again been blocked from consideration. After all, President Bush, a Republican, could not even get his legislation proposal through the House Rules Committee.

President Bush, one day in July of 2001, in remarks at Ellis Island, in part said the following: ``The Founders themselves decided that when they declared independence and wrote our Constitution. You see, citizenship is not limited by birth or background.''

We have an amendment dealing with that here today. ``America at its best is a welcoming society. We welcome not only immigrants themselves, but the many gifts they bring and the values they live by. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants take the oath of citizenship every year.''

And I have had, me, I have had the pleasure of seeing them in tears, with their hands raised, on numerous occasions when I served in the Federal judiciary. And my colleagues in the Federal judiciary will tell you there is no greater feeling, except perhaps when we, in other roles as judges, are helping people to adopt a child, than to see a person adopt this country as their own.

``Each has come not only,'' President Bush says, ``to take, but to give. They come asking for a chance to work hard, support their families, and to rise in the world. And together they make our Nation more, not less, American. Immigration is not a problem to be solved, it is a sign of a confident and successful nation. And people who seek to make America their home should be met in that spirit by representatives of our government. New arrivals should be greeted not with suspicion and resentment but with openness and courtesy.''

I hope throughout the debate people hearken to the great commander in chief of this country.

At 6 a.m. this morning, 6 a.m., Mr. Speaker, those of us on the Rules Committee with our colleagues in the majority voted along party lines against the President and rejected an amendment that would have made the Kolbe-Berman-Gutierrez-Flake guest worker visa amendment in order.

Less than 24 hours ago, the chairman of the Rules Committee, my good friend from California, stood on this very floor noting that the Republican leadership was committed to debating the President's proposal during consideration of the underlying legislation.

Yet on two separate occasions when presented with opportunity to fulfill their empty promises, my friends in the majority balked. I guess old habits are hard to break.

We can only hope that encouraging the spread of democracy into the House of Representatives will be the Republican New Year's resolution for 2006. Later we are going to vote on spreading democracy in Iraq. I hope all of that works, but I sure would like to see more of it come to the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, this morning south Florida newspapers include a story about 20 Haitians being found last night in a boat just north of the district in West Palm Beach that I am privileged to serve. Upon boarding the boat, which had left Port-au-Prince roughly 10 days ago in search of safety from political turmoil, customs officials noticed that they had no food or water, and that the day before many of them had fallen dreadfully ill, including the children.

While the 20 hopeful immigrants were all taken into custody and will eventually be deported back to Haiti, I tell this story because it happens too often in the district that I am privileged to serve and in south Florida generally.

In the Southwest of our great country, they come on foot. In Florida, they come by boat. People go to extreme lengths and take enormous risks just to get here. Once before in Boynton when a group of Haitians had washed up on shore, I stepped over the body of a naked pregnant Haitian woman and I thought to myself, my God, what kind of courage does it take to try to get away from despotism, to try to get away from political turmoil, to get on a boat and come here the way that she and others that died in that event had done?

In no way do I or any Member of this body, that is Republican or Democrat, condone illegal immigration, but if Congress is going to have this debate, we ought to consider why people are willing to risk their lives to come to the United States. It is not always to bilk our social programs or to steal an American job, it is for all of the things that Emma Lazarus, and President Bush described her emblem being at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and President Bush speaking there, as I quoted earlier. It is for safety and for security and for a better life.

Building a fence around the country, which some have advocated, is not going to deter people from coming here illegally, but reforming a system which requires literally years to process work visa applications will. Authorizing more border security personnel also will not deter people from coming here illegally, but ending double-standard immigration policies will.

Yesterday I talked about how much hypocrisy exists inside our immigration measures. We have wet foot, dry foot, up foot, down foot, all kinds of policies that seem to come at the whim of whomever the director is at any given time, be they Democrat or Republican.

The system is broken. Nevertheless, the policy solutions in the underlying legislation will never end these failures because they do not even address them, not to mention the fact that they are not going to see the light of day. They are Black Flag dead in the United States Senate. Instead, they are extreme ideas aimed more at catering to the lowest common denominator of the majority's political base than providing practical, commonsense solutions to a real issue in America.

`` `Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she with silent lips. `Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.' ''

What she knows as she puts the new colossus before us is that this Nation's strength comes through that golden door, and many of the persons that we will talk about today as if they are objects have made more than valuable contributions.

Many of our ancestors who were brought here, others who were forced to come here, others who came of their own volition have gone on to make this Nation the great Nation that it is. I beg my colleagues to reject this restrictive rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased and privileged to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) that doubtless has significant wisdom with regard to the matter we are debating.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), who has an extraordinary amount of experience in the area that we are debating.

Mr. Speaker, pretending that we are dealing with the problem is not dealing with the problem. This bill is going nowhere fast, end of story.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I see that my distinguished friend and your fellow colleague from Georgia could not resist, I see he joined us. Maybe I could talk some ``Savannah talk'' and ``Brunswick talk'' to get him to understand that people come through those areas, too, as I am sure he is mindful.

Mr. Speaker, basically what we have here is enforcement, but none of the compassion that President Bush has been speaking about.

Let me tell you what the President said. I quoted him on Ellis Island, and he was eloquent on Ellis Island in July of 2001. But August 24, the same year, here is what the President said in part: ``And I remind people all across our country, family values do not stop at the Rio Bravo. There are people in Mexico who have got children who are worried about where they are going to get their next meal from, and they are going to come to the United States if they think they can make money here. That is a simple fact. And they are willing to walk across miles of desert to do work that some Americans won't do, and we have got to respect that, it seems like to me, and treat those people with respect.''

We ought to treat ourselves with respect and have comprehensive immigration reform, and not some piecemeal bumper sticker stuff that is not going to do anything other than give people an opportunity to go home to

say that we did something about immigration.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you what we are doing: We are going to create fear and confusion in the realm. And it is not all about 11 million illegal people, it is about a number of circumstances having to do with that knock on the door.

Defeat this rule.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 621 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 621 is a structured rule providing for further consideration of the bill. It provides that no further general debate is in order, and the remaining proceedings under House Resolution 610 shall be considered as subsumed by this resolution. It makes in order only those amendments printed in the Rules Committee report accompanying this resolution.

This resolution provides that the amendments printed in the report accompanying the resolution may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole.

It waives all points of orders against the amendments printed in the report and provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 621 and the underlying bill, H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.

Yesterday, this House began consideration of the underlying bill and a portion of the amendments offered that were made in order. Following yesterday's debate, the Rules Committee completed its consideration of over 130 amendments, and today, upon passage of this rule, we will be able to complete consideration of the bill and the amendments that were made in order.

Mr. Speaker, I again would like to commend Chairmen Sensenbrenner and King for working together to give this House an opportunity to debate the issue of border security and to pass meaningful legislation to secure our borders.

As I emphasized yesterday, this debate is, at its core, an issue of protecting the homeland. While the economic and the social impact of illegal immigration cannot be denied, the integrity of our borders is fundamentally a matter of national security.

Mr. Speaker, we do not have the luxury to turn a blind eye to our borders and simply do nothing, and this problem cannot be talked away. I believe that today's bill, though not perfect, puts many good ideas into action. Border security did not become a problem overnight and, Mr. Speaker, it simply cannot be solved in 1 day.

Now, I understand that some of my colleagues may have legitimate disagreements with certain aspects of the bill. In fact, I do not agree with every aspect of this bill and would even like to see some additions. However, I remain confident, I remain confident that the underlying legislation will prove essential in beginning to turn the tide on illegal immigration.

H.R. 4437 is a commonsense bill that makes the employment verification system mandatory rather than the existing voluntary program. It also increases penalties for illegally crossing our border and for businesses that knowingly hire these illegal immigrants. We must mandate detention for all aliens apprehended at the border, especially the so-called OTM, ``other than Mexican,'' category, and deport them back into their country of origin.

Mr. Speaker, if we pass H.R. 4437, we will have stronger borders and we will save and protect lives. And, Mr. Speaker, not just the lives of our own legal inhabitants, but also the lives and the safety of so many of the unsuspecting immigrants left stranded on our side of the border.

So, Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleagues for their support of the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida has a great heart, and he indeed is my friend, and he knows that. He in his remarks indeed tugs at our heartstrings as he so eloquently quotes poetry and talks about the inscription on Lady Liberty and the men and women over the history of our country who have come to our shores seeking new opportunities.

It compels me to think about and to speak about my own heritage, my maternal grandparents, my grandfather an immigrant, an Ellis Island immigrant, in the early part of the 20th century from County Roscommon in the country of Ireland; my grandmother, Ellen Heron from Scotland. These two young people met in New York City and married and started a family of five children, including one of whom is my precious mother, 88 years old today.

I never knew my grandfather because he died at 25 years of age, literally working himself to death, possibly on buildings like the Twin Towers that were attacked so viciously 4 years ago where over 3,000 people were killed, and not just United States citizens. There were many foreign nationals among those 3,100.

So I certainly share the compassion and the intense feeling that my good friend from Florida has with regard to our love in this country of immigrants, and we do welcome them.

I am sure if my grandparents were living today, they would want to thank God that they had this opportunity to come into our great country to produce a better life for them and their children. In those days, of course, they had to be physically healthy and mentally healthy.

But today, Mr. Speaker, as we all know, the times unfortunately have changed drastically, and what we are trying to do with regard to border security is not just to protect our own citizens, but protect every person who comes to this country legally seeking a better opportunity, the land of free, that they are safe to go to work, to go to school and raise their children.

Mr. Speaker, that is what this legislation is all about. I want to make sure that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle understand.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to respond to the gentlewoman from California.

I want to remind the gentlewoman we are not criminalizing 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. Indeed, 60 percent are already criminalized from the standpoint from entering this country illegally, and 40 percent are just because they have overstayed their visas, and we are equalizing that in this bill.

The other thing that is important for the gentlewoman to know, given the history of her ancestors, that addressing this issue first and foremost, border security, is protecting, indeed protecting those 11 million, most of whom are working and supporting their families and are law-abiding except for the fact that they came in illegally. We want to protect them as well.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to my colleague on the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\3/4\ minutes to the gentlemen from Arizona, Mr. Hayworth.

(Mr. HAYWORTH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the question if the gentleman is opposed to the basic principles of this bill, the preponderance of provisions that are included in this base bill, or does he have other concerns that he might want to express?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlemen from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

The gentleman from California did not ask me to respond, but he suggested the bill is one of two things, but I suggest to him that, rather, it is a third thing.

This bill, indeed, is a response to the American people who are demanding we secure our borders first.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the coast of Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard from the other side, and indeed from some Members on this side of the aisle, question what we are going to do with the 11 million or so illegals who are mostly working hard, supporting their families, law-abiding since they have been here.

As a physician Member of this body, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a medical analogy as to why we are approaching this in the manner that we are approaching it; that is, to secure, first and foremost, our borders.

The medical analogy, indeed a surgical analogy, is this: The patient is our great country, the United States of America. The surgeon is this Congress. During the surgical procedure, it is discovered that massive hemorrhaging is occurring, massive hemorrhaging. The analogy is the 500,000 illegal immigrants that continue to come through our porous borders every year.

There is lots of blood in the field that the surgeon is concerned about. But does he or she spend their time, we, the Congress, trying to mop up the blood before we stop the bleeding? If we do that, I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the patient dies.

No. First and foremost you stop that hemorrhaging. And that is what we are doing in this bill. Then you deal with the blood that has been lost, that is in the suction bottle, if you will. And do we take that blood and pour it down the drain? No, Mr. Speaker, we do not, because that blood, and that is the 11 million people that are here working hard in this country, that has been the lifeblood of this patient, the United States of America, for a number of years.

So what we do, Mr. Speaker, in many instances in a surgical situation, we put that blood back into the patient, because we know that it has served the patient well. Then we restore the patient to perfect health.

Mr. Speaker, that is what we are talking about. That is why we are addressing this issue in the timeline first and foremost, stop the hemorrhaging. If we do not, the patient dies.

Mr. Speaker, we in the Congress have a solemn responsibility to protect the integrity of our borders, and inaction would be a dereliction of duty. The American people look to us as the stewards of our Nation's security, and we must not let them down. I want to encourage my colleagues to support both this rule and the underlying bill.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. I ask that the House carefully consider this amendment because it may in one respect represent a not-so-subtle attempt to dismantle the only program that guarantees that at least 4 percent of the new immigrants have a chance to come to this country from under-represented nations.

The Diversity Visa Program is the chance for many people of color around the world to immigrate to the United States and pursue the same American dream that many of the ancestors of the Members here were able to pursue.

There is no time in our Nation's history when race and ethnicity were not primary factors. So what we are asking here is that just as many great Americans have come to this country as refugees, I have no doubt that many great Americans have and are coming through the diversity program. You need only to look at the promise of young Freddie Adu, the teenage boy who is the newest star on the National Soccer League and the youngest professional player in the United States. He has got great promise, and but for his entry to the United States on the Diversity Visa Program, that promise might not have been realized.

I urge my colleagues to consider this amendment carefully. I hope that it will be turned back. Let us not dismantle an important and valuable program.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, the problem about fraud in this program is that people apply multiple times when the rules only allow one application a year per person. In some cases, multiple applications are the result of people trying to cheat the system; but in other cases, people may apply not understanding that, unlike many other lotteries, multiple applications are not allowed and do not really improve your chances.

The State Department has already addressed this in several ways. This program, I want to emphasize to the membership, is extremely valuable for those countries that have so very few people coming in under the regular system, and I would not want us to take this out of the present law. It is working well. We have had many success stories, and we think that there is not a serious history of fraud in the program.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentlewoman's remarks.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, how much time remains on both sides?

Madam Chairman, as we have the right to close, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

This amendment, I think, has been mischaracterized seriously. To allow 4 percent of new immigrants to have a chance to come to the country from under-represented nations is a way of addressing the imbalance that I do not think anybody would disagree with that exists in the immigration patterns, whether they are accidental or purposeful.

There has been no time when race and ethnicity were not primary factors in immigration policy. Please, I think this is a very important provision. The Diversity Visa Program should be sustained, and I hope that the amendment will be turned away.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, we come to the floor with a 39-page manager's amendment that has never been considered in the committee during the rather lengthy number of times that we have held hearings at the subcommittee and full committee level. And while there are fortunately some parts of it that I can agree to, I have counted approximately nine parts of it that present very serious problems.

One is that the punishment does not fit the crime. The manager's amendment would expand the definition of aggravated felony to include a wide range of passport and related document offenses, even if the person never spent a day in jail. As I have previously stated, the consequences of an aggravated felony conviction are severe. They include, among other things, mandatory detention, permanent deportation and

ineligibility for any type of relief. And so I think that is a very serious criticism. It criminalizes the most vulnerable of our populations.

This manager's amendment, with regard to passport fraud, would criminalize trafficking victims, victims of domestic violence or abuse, victims of animals, coyotes, and others who often do not have control over what documents are presented to immigration officials on their behalf.

Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), a member of the committee.

Madam Chairman, I would be pleased to yield 30 seconds to the chairman of the committee.

Madam Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from California.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The other point that we would like to make, and there are so many, but the manager's amendment punishes amazingly battered immigrant women who would suffer some very harsh consequences when they are frequently forced by their batterers to use fraudulent travel documents.

Under the Violence Against Women Act, battered immigrants are entitled to self-petition for immigration status, independent of their abusive U.S. citizen and lawful permanent residence spouse. So this would be a huge step backwards for those of us who have been working in this area.

So I urge and I hope that because there has been insufficient attention given in the committee and since we did not know these were going to come up, that the manager's amendment will be turned back and that we be given an opportunity to examine this more than a dozen objections that we raise.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time on this side, although I am not opposed to the amendment of the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I think our colleague from Georgia has an excellent amendment, but I think his deadline may be too generous. The Department of Homeland Security should report to Congress on the progress it is making to secure our borders, but, unfortunately, they have an unenviable record of submitting their reports to the Congress. Our ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee has written Secretary Chertoff twice on the repeated failures of the Department of Homeland Security to meet congressionally mandated deadlines.

As you have stated, we have a duty to ensure that it is protecting the American people, and to do that we must receive information to ensure that the Department is up to the task. Every day that passes in which Congress does not receive this information is another day that the terrorists gain on us if they are planning the next attack.

So I support the amendment of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price), which gives the Homeland Security Department a lot of time, but I think we want to ride a very careful herd over these fellows in terms of where they go from this amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, we have had a lot of time here with the current administration to have ridden herd and call for an accounting. I think the gentleman from Georgia is forced, and we are all collectively forced, into this position. They have had plenty of time to have been far more compliant.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman).

Mr. Chairman, we support the Price amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Hayes). The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. This Norwood No. 65 amendment includes a number of provisions of the CLEAR Act; and in addition to giving State and local police the same authority to enforce immigration laws as a Federal agent, the provisions do not require, as a matter

of fact limit, the amount of training that they could receive in order to enforce these rather technical provisions.

Moreover, the provisions require the entry of millions of civil immigration law violators into the National Crime Information Center, an FBI database of those who are wanted; and these entries go on thousands of times each day.

I am just wondering if my colleague, the author of this amendment, is aware of the incredible complexity that he is suggesting now be included in this measure. If these categories were limited to wanted criminals, that would be one consideration. However, the list includes millions of people with technical status violations that are fluid and easily remedied, and we would be creating, I think, in my judgment, an administrative nightmare.

We have a lot of examples. But let me just close by saying that local police have more than enough work to do hunting down the people that are law violators. But entering the names of people with minor status problems into a criminal database would overwhelm it and mix those who may be legal and those who are not criminals with the rest who are. It exposes to liability for unlawful arrests. It discourages immigrants from working with local law enforcement. And those are the reasons I have serious reservations about this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Berman).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I think the author of the amendment will rest more comfortably tonight when he finds that not only do the people that he described that do not want this amendment are joined by numerous State and local police departments across the Nation, but also scores of groups that work with victims of domestic violence.

The proponents of this amendment must understand that there is nothing in this bill to ensure that ICE or SCAT in Homeland Security will be able to respond to the millions of requests from local police to pick up low-priority civil law violators.

Remember what the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) said: you cannot dump millions of people into this database and think it is going to work. It will not. Turn down the amendment.

Madam Chairman, reserving the right to object, and I do not intend to object, might I ask the author of the amendment, as he was speaking I was wondering what was going on. It sounded like he was giving a very articulate and reasoned, I disagree with some of the points, but reasoned position for an amendment that he was not allowed to offer under this rule.

I am wondering whether he thought it might have been appropriate that a coequal branch of the Congress, the House of Representatives, on an issue as fundamental as the one he has just spoken to might have been allowed to have had a couple of amendments in order for this issue to be discussed and voted on in this body. Would that have been a sensible way to approach this issue?

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Madam Chairman, further reserving the right to object, in case anyone noticed, the gentleman from Arizona did not support rules which prevented us from discussing maybe the most important issue involved in the context of whether or not to pursue comprehensive immigration reform.

Madam Chairman, I withdraw my reservation.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I would ask the chairman to consider one specific thing about one very discrete narrow part of the manager's amendment.

In the fantasy world we are in, should this bill ever actually become a law, the issue on the passport violations that the gentleman from Michigan just spoke to, there are limited situations where someone that you and I and everyone around would agree truly was a refugee, with a well-founded fear of persecution, escaping from a politically repressive regime took advantage of some kind of falsified and altered passport in order to escape.

The only question I have, as we look at the manager's amendment now, there should be some discretion here in the context of either criminalizing or deportation to allow a situation where that was the purpose; the person met the full test of a refugee and that that not become a basis for deporting him or her back to the regime or incarcerating that person or charging them with a criminal offense.

Madam Chairman, I felt that answer was not totally satisfactory from my point of view.

Would somewhere in the context of the language of that provision or the report language indicate that it is not our intent in that situation, with your classic refugee purpose?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I do not oppose the amendment. In fact, I think it should be labeled from ``our lips to God's ears.''

If we say that by a certain date we will stop and Homeland Security will stop, using the chairman's definition, will have operational control so that no terrorists, no illegal aliens, no drug smugglers ever come into our country; if we say that and we say it strong enough, then maybe it will happen.

And after we do that, I suggest a bill that says that by a certain date we eliminate poverty, and pass that, and a few other very important goals that I think we all share here.

Mr. Chairman, I am not in opposition, but I would like to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I congratulate and agree with the notion that no immigration benefit should be given to any alien until all relevant background and security checks have been completed and any suspected fraud related to the granting of such status or benefit has been fully investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.

The gentleman from Florida is right. He has said in the context of his comments for this amendment that he believes that is happening now, and he may be right. I do not know that it is not. But all I know is that for my congressional office and for my colleagues' congressional offices, every time our staffs call regarding the processing of an immigration application, we hear there is nothing we can do. We are waiting for the FBI to get an answer. Why the FBI is just choosing the cases our congressional offices do, to hold back on providing information and denying immigration benefits, I do not know. In other words, what you say and what you ask for is correct, but the problem is not so much with the immigrant. The problem is with the bureaucracy.

The resources, the leadership to get these terrorist lists, these watch lists, the criminal database up to date so we can get this information in a quick time is very important.

I would just like to tell a quick story about the NSEERS program in Los Angeles. They had a registration date for different countries. If you are here from Iran on a nonimmigrant visa, come in on such and such date and register. People did that. Huge numbers of people flocked into the Los Angeles office of INS to do that.

The FBI was totally unable to give any clearance to the people who were coming in. Huge numbers of people were held, detained and kept overnight over a weekend thinking they were just going to file a registration form because the FBI could not get the clearance. That is a scandalous way to treated a number of people who came here as refugees fleeing the tyranny of the ayatollah because our bureaucracy failed to provide the answers.

So to me the answer here in Homeland Security and the FBI and in the other critical agencies is to get these lists and this other critical information online and accurate and quick so that we can move ahead with legitimate requests for these benefits that should be conditioned on getting that information out.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

I want to understand the state of play. If this amendment goes to a vote, a recorded vote, then am I to understand that the chairman and the Republican leadership has offered a tough bill and now they are asking their colleagues on the majority side to soften the criminal penalties for illegal immigration?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me an additional minute.

To follow up, I support very strongly the Velazquez amendment, and I am glad that the chairman and the majority support it as well. It is very important. But as I look at the bill, I find an issue that will take a higher precedence than the problem of the backlog in terms of our constituents and in terms of our congressional offices and I think will put that far in the background in terms of things that most bother them, because under the Alien Smuggling and Related Offenses provision of the bill that we will be asked to vote on, anyone who assists, encourages, directs, or induces a person to reside in or to attempt to reside in or remain in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such person is an alien who lacks lawful authority to reside or remain in the United States, is subject to penalties of up to 5 years in jail if it is not for commercial purposes. If it is for commercial purposes, understandably, it would be tougher sentences.

So when a person calls my district office and talks to my congressional staff and says, I was here on a temporary visa, the date passed, I have an immigration petition pending, is there anything I can do? if my office assists that person or suggests that person go see a lawyer and perhaps if my assistant does not call the Department of Homeland Security and tell them to pick that person up, my staffer, potentially, is subject to criminal penalties. Congressional staff do not have congressional immunity. That means I am going to have to do all the casework in my district office. I think we need a little correction of the base bill in this particular area of alien smuggling. We are sweeping very widely here.

With that, I urge adoption of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

There is an interesting juxtaposition going on between the gentleman's amendment and the base bill. The gentleman says something that I think is very important: we have got to prioritize. The priority in a country where there are 10, 11 million people who are here without status and under this bill and would, therefore, becoming guilty of a criminal offense, he says let us get the 500,000, whatever number it is, who have committed crimes of violence and economic crimes and murder and drug dealing and all these things. And he is right. No one can disagree. That should be the most urgent priority.

But in a universe where you have criminalized all 11 million, you have lost our ability to do that. So what is so funny about the argument for the gentleman's amendment is that in the context of this, all 11 million, it is the flip side of where some people have to wear a band designating it and the way of protesting that is everybody wear the band. You have lost your ability to prioritize.

Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, and I do not intend to object, I wanted to simply point out to my friend from Colorado that before he praises this legislation too much, he should make sure there really is a strategy to turn it into a law, because I am very skeptical that you will ever see this bill coming back from here, very skeptical. If I had to bet, I would bet these provisions which you like and which you think make this into an attractive proposition and a serious attempt will never be seen again.

I simply want to add one other point: one day I would like you to explain to me how the employee verification system, which I think, like you do, is a critical part of dealing with the problem of illegal immigration, will ever get implemented in the context of 10, 11, 12 million people in this country in unauthorized status.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. Chairman, without accepting the gentleman's assumptions about the worthiness of the bill, I withdraw my reservation of objection.