Nuclear Family Priority Act

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening on behalf of the Immigration Reform Caucus of this House of Representatives. Hopefully, as we go forward with the Immigration Reform Caucus in a bipartisan fashion, and our new chairman hopefully will be joining me during this hour, and that is Congressman Brian Bilbray from the great State of California who is determined to make the Immigration Reform Caucus of this House a bipartisan organization, and I really look forward to that change.

As we reach out to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, both Republicans and Democrats, I think we can solve this problem of immigration, and in particular, illegal immigration. We have to do that, Mr. Speaker.

This is a hugely important issue. It is an issue to our security, it is an issue to our economy, and it is an issue to this great country, this sovereign Nation, the United States.

Tonight I come to my colleagues to talk about a problem not regarding illegal immigration, we may have an opportunity tonight to discuss some of those issues which are so important and which we have worked so hard on in the 109th Congress and hopefully we will continue to do so in the 110th Congress; but my concerns tonight will be addressed toward a legal immigration problem, Mr. Speaker. Let me repeat that, legal. That is a situation that we refer to as chain migration. Let me try to explain that to my colleagues.

I have here to my left a first slide, if you will, in this presentation. As we look at it, Mr. Speaker, at first glance those in the audience tonight might think, gee, Gingrey is up here with a chart of his high school or college chemistry periodic table; or somebody else may say, no, that is his grandchildren's Pac-Man game. It is a confusing chart to look at, but I am going to hopefully be able to, in a short period of time, to simplify this rather arcane, complex looking first slide. But this really is what this whole problem, this legal immigration problem is about, this chain migration issue, Mr. Speaker.

If my colleagues will focus their attention at the bottom of this first slide, I point to this very prominent kiosk, this icon that would be a legal permanent resident in this country. That individual, man or woman, could be here through any one of several ways of entering this country legally. It could be a skilled worker. And that is indeed why we have an immigration policy, to make our country better, to bring in skilled individuals from countries throughout the world, as we have always done since we started this country. That is the whole purpose of being able to bring individuals in based on what they can contribute. Certainly we want to make their lives better as well, but we want them to be able to contribute to our great Nation and enjoy the privileges of citizenship eventually.

So this individual comes, maybe as one of those legal immigrants, as a skilled worker; or possibly this first person that I am going to refer to at the bottom of the slide is a part of somebody's nuclear family, maybe it is the wife of a legal permanent resident who has already come; or maybe it is a minor child who has grown up and become of age to marry and have a spouse; or possibly this is an individual, a third category, who has sought asylum in this great country. And certainly that is what the Statue of Liberty is all about, that is what the inscription of the bottom of Lady Liberty says in regard to opening our arms to the oppressed and the people that need safety in this great country. So any one of these three categories, Mr. Speaker, of legal permanent residence in this country can start this chain migration. Which clearly, clearly our country never intended that effect.

What happens is this legal permanent resident is able to bring in his spouse or her spouse. And they can legally bring in their minor children. And let's say, based on the current fertility rate south of our border, our southern border, it is three children, three minor children. Now, that is one individual that, by virtue of bringing in an additional skilled worker under the quota for that particular country, has brought in four additional people by virtue of genealogy. And this is, of course, a nuclear family so far. We are talking then about a nuclear family, a husband, a wife and their three children.

Now, once the husband and wife become citizens, then the real problem begins, because at that point then each of the husband and wife can bring in their parents. This is perfectly legal to do this. So there are an additional, assuming that both parents of both the husband and wife are still living, which is very likely, maybe it is a man and a woman on each side who are in their late forties or early fifties.

In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, again, this one individual that is in this country legally, as a legal permanent resident, hopefully has become a citizen. At that point, then all of his siblings and all of his wife's siblings can come into this country. And that is where the chain really takes off, because you repeat this over and over again. And at the end of 17 years, a short of 17 years and two generations, what you end up with under this insanity of legal chain migration is that one legal permanent resident who was brought into this country as a skilled worker, as an individual seeking asylum from a country in which they are suffering the devastation of oppression, or it happens to be a spouse of a legal permanent resident, that one person in a short span of 17 years can bring in 273 people, Mr. Speaker; 273 people. And that counts against the quota for that country.

So this is the problem, Mr. Speaker, that I think a lot of people just don't realize. We worry about a porous border. We worry about the fact that there are anywhere from 12 to 20 million illegal residents, immigrants in this country, many of them, of course, most of them probably are hardworking, God-fearing, good people, moms, dads, good families, and they are trying to do the right thing. And the only thing that they have committed, of course, is coming into this country illegally. But it is a huge, huge problem for us, as I said at the outset, in regard to the stress and strain on our economy, on our infrastructure, on our safety net programs, on our public school systems. But here we have something that is part of our legal permission to let people come into this country, and then bring in 273 additional extended family members. Not, Mr. Speaker, what we originally intended.

I want to go back and talk about the Jordan Commission. In the early nineties, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas, a very, very distinguished Member of this body, chaired that commission to study immigration reform and clearly said as part of the recommendations, there were a number of those recommendations, only some of which, Mr. Speaker, were implemented, but one of them was to say very specifically that it should only be a nuclear family, not this situation where because of this chain effect, that in a very short period of time of a couple of generations, or really a short period of 17 years, we end up with 273 people. And they may be good, hardworking, skilled men and women that can contribute to our society, can make their lives better, can make our lives better. But it is really not based on that, it is based totally on genealogy, by virtue of being related in some extended way, first, second, third cousins, aunts, uncles, grandfather or grandmother and on and on and on.

And what that does, other than just overwhelming the number of legal permanent residents who come into this country from a specific country on a yearly basis, indeed, Mr. Speaker, from Mexico to our southern border we are talking about maybe 30,000 a year, and that quota is surpassed in day one of the calendar year.

So you can't say, well, it just doesn't matter; that means maybe you are going to push these skilled workers a little bit further behind in the queue, but they will get there eventually. Well, they may get there eventually, but instead of 2 or 3 years, Mr. Speaker, it may be 15 years, it may be far beyond the time that it would be any advantage to them or us for them to remain in the queue. So this is the problem. We have a solution. I have a solution for it, and I want to talk about that as we go forward.

Mr. Speaker, this next slide that I have again just points out, and I hope my colleagues, I hope this writing is big enough. In case it is not for those in the back of the Chamber, I would be happy to go through it bullet by bullet. But this says ``Chain Migration Equals Inter-Generational Relocation Program.'' It gives visa priority to the cousins, to the adult children and distant relatives of legal immigrants. It creates a backlog of visa applicants. And it allows, and this is the final point on this slide, Mr. Speaker, and of course I have already alluded to these points in my opening remarks, but it allows genealogy, not job skills, not education, not English proficiency to determine who immigrates to our country. We just can't afford that. We absolutely must use common sense and go back to the Jordan Commission recommendation in regard to limiting genealogy entry into this country based not on skills at all, but on just who you happen to be related to. And I will get to that in just a few minutes.

My colleague from Iowa is with us tonight. We call on him a lot, but he is always forthcoming with very, very good, useful information on many subjects, not the least of which is the issue of immigration. I am talking about Representative Steve King, my classmate. I thank him for joining me during this hour, and I look forward to his comments.

I would like to go ahead and yield the floor to him now for however much time as he would like to take. We can colloquy back and forth. And I certainly appreciate him being with us this evening.

And the same thing, as I said at the outset, anywhere from 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants we estimate, and we hear talk about the need for a comprehensive bill that would include letting them pay a little fine and fess up and get a clear ID card, identify themselves, and all of a sudden become a permanent legal resident on a track to citizenship. Each one of those 20 million then could start this chain migration.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank him, and I would like to do it formally. I would like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray), who is chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus in the 110th Congress. I look forward to his leadership on this caucus of the Congress, this bipartisan effort on his part. The gentleman from California certainly knows of what he speaks.

I thank the gentleman, and I hope the gentleman will be able to stay and continue as we have a colloquy on this issue.

Just by coincidence, we have the Catholic caucus here, as we have the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Iowa and myself, so we know about these large families.

But to put it in perspective, in regard to numbers, Mr. Bilbray mentioned the fact that a million come into this country as permanent legal residents every year. It varies from country to country and hemisphere to hemisphere, the overall quota. And then that million additional that come in under all of the visa programs, the H-1B, et cetera, temporary agricultural workers and various skill levels, you are talking about an additional million.

But from 1776 to 1976, 200 years of our country's existence, the average number of immigrants was about 250,000. So that just shows you where we are today; and of course we are not talking about the 3 or 4 million illegals if we don't close down our border and secure our border. Not close it down, secure our border. Then you are going to have 3 or 4 million illegals in addition to that.

The gentleman from Iowa has been mighty quiet for the last few minutes, and I yield back to him.

I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I want to move back now for just a moment and focus again on the solution to this problem of chain immigration, and we will get into further discussion of some of the many things this Congress, and the 109th Congress when we were in the majority and led this great House of Representatives, some of the many good things that have been done in regard to controlling illegal immigration.

But let me just for the moment, before my colleagues some possibly have to leave, refocus on this issue of chain migration, Mr. Speaker, because we have presented the problem. We have spent maybe 20, 25, 30 minutes talking about the problem of chain migration, the one person bringing in 273 others, not based on skill, strictly being, I guess, based on the luck of your birthright, geneology, and how inappropriate that is and how we cannot afford to continue to do this. We have a solution.

But Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to call my colleagues' attention to this next slide, and again, it depicts on this scale of justice, as we have here in the middle of this slide, on the one side you have an imbalance, too much emphasis, too much weight in regard to the second cousin of an immigrant, i.e., chain migration.

On the other side, however, not weighing so heavily in this scale of this balance of justice is the skilled laborer waiting to emigrate into this country.

This is what this hour is mainly about, Mr. Speaker, that we need to correct this. We need to get back to what Congresswoman Barbara Jordan recommended to this House back in the early 1990s as she chaired the Commission on Immigration Reform.

Basically, this is what she said, Mr. Speaker, in this next slide: Proposed tripartite immigration system, legal immigration. That basically, as I said at the outset of the hour, people come to this country first and foremost maybe as a skill-based worker, skill-based admission; or possibly on the far side of the slide, come in as a refugee for humanitarian reasons, a humanitarian admission; and then, finally, the nuclear family admissions that Congresswoman Jordan, the distinguished lady from the great State of Texas talked about, nuclear family admissions, Mr. Speaker.

That is the solution to this problem, and how we got away, how we did not follow her recommendation, there were a number of things that were recommended that were enacted by this body, but we missed the most important, and that is in regard to nuclear family admissions.

This print is far too small for my colleagues to see, even in the front of the room, so I want to point out, under nuclear family, the first priority would be spouses and minor children of United States citizens, under the nuclear family. The second priority would be parents of the United States citizens, and the third priority, as we talked about, would be spouses and minor children of legal immigrants. Of course, hopefully they will become and we want them to assimilate into our society. We want them to be part of this great country, the United States of America, and at that point of course they could bring their parents, both husband and wife, as part of this nuclear family.

Mr. Speaker, in my final slide, here is the result of that. Again, this is the initial skilled worker that comes in legally. This is her husband or his wife and their three minor children. That is a total of five people, one permanent legal resident and an additional four. Now, when husband and wife become citizens of the United States, then each of them under this new Nuclear Family Act, and that is what I want to present to my colleagues tonight, the bill that I have introduced, H.R. 938, remember that number, many of you on both sides are considering signing on to this bill. Many of you already have. I think we are up over 60 at this point, and hopefully, there will be many more when they understand the magnitude of this problem that we are presenting tonight.

So H.R. 938, the Nuclear Family Priority Act, taken almost verbatim from Congresswoman Barbara Jordan's recommendations back in 1990, again, a distinguished Democratic Member of this body, these two, husband and wife, when they become citizens, they can bring their parents. Assuming both parents are living, then that is four additional people, and then they in turn having become citizens can bring their parents in. There is a possibility that if the parents were divorced and remarried, that instead of two on each side, there would be four.

I do not want to confuse my colleagues with another arcane slide, but basically, this is the bottom line to take home. On this slide, if all of these people came in under the Nuclear Family Priority Act, you are talking about 35 people. Chain migration, which currently is the policy, you are talking about 273 people.

So, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about cutting that down by 87 percent, and that is not small change. That is a significant solution to this problem, moving in that direction to enact the Nuclear Family Priority Act.

So, again, it is straightforward. I leave this slide up and let my colleagues continue to look at it. I want to yield back now to the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray).

I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from California, the gentleman from Iowa, for being with me tonight. The hour is getting late. I appreciate their sharing their knowledge. It is so important that our colleagues do that, because we have very bright Members of this body on both sides of the aisle. We are not all experts on every issue, but we help one another. We share our knowledge. We rely on each other.

I am very grateful to Mr. Bilbray and Mr. King of Iowa for being with me today, to help me talk about not just this issue of chain immigration, that's the main focus of the hour, but to discuss the overall problem of Georgia.

It is a huge problem. We can't really afford to turn our backs and shut our eyes and bury our head in the sand with regard to 3 or 4 million additional people coming in every year illegally on top of those 2 million that are coming, as the gentleman from California pointed out in his earlier remarks. There is no way, this country cannot sustain that.

He talked about the cost in California and their problem, indeed, as a border State, is a lot bigger than it is in the State of Georgia. Of course, their population approaches 55 million, and the population of Georgia is 9.3 million. But on a percentage basis, we have a huge problem in Georgia as well, maybe fourth or fifth number percentage- wise of illegal immigrations of any State in this country. I think the last count in Georgia was about 750,000.

We have got a problem. Certainly, we are a great country. I think that we have done some great things in the history of this Nation. Indeed in 1969, we put a man on the Moon. If we can do that, we can solve this problem. We just need to have the will. I think my colleagues are helping bring that to the attention of the Members of this House and this Congress, both House and Senate, to the administration, to the American people. I like it when we talk during these times to our colleagues in a bipartisan way and say that, look, we can do this together. We all worry about who has got the power and who is in control, and who is in the majority, and who is the Speaker, and who are the committee chairs, and who is the next President. Of course, that will be upon us pretty soon.

But in the meantime, there are so many things that we can do in a bipartisan way and really pat ourselves on the back, because I don't think our constituents care whether the Democrats solve this problem or the Republicans solve this problem. They want us to do it in a unified way.

We have got such a few more on the Democrats side of the aisle in this 110th, a few more on our side of the aisle in the 109th back to 1994, these things go back and forth. But we can't let that tie our hands and keep us from going forward and getting things done for the American people.

I know that my colleagues that are here with me tonight, and I think all the colleagues of this 435-Member body would hopefully say, right on, Gingrey, we agree with you on that.

You know who else would be pleased, and that is the employers in this country, and a lot of the industries. In Georgia, I mean we have got agriculture, we have the poultry industry, we have the carpet industry. We all have the homebuilding industry in every State, and I know that most of my friends that are in those businesses pay good wages, they pay good benefits, they are treating their employees in a compassionate way.

In return, they are getting a heck of a day's work for their wages that they pay, and I think they would welcome, I think that the employers would welcome. I know Representative King, in a bill that he introduced in the last Congress and has championed in regard to an identification system that is foolproof, and we can do that, we can have a tamper-proof, biometric identification card. And I think our employers, and I have talked to many of them, and I commend them, but there may be a few that are paying low wages and gaming the system. You always have that problem. But we will ferret them out.

At the same time, kudos to those who are playing by the rules and doing the right thing.

There is no question about that.

The point the gentleman from Iowa is making is that we have really tried hard in this body to address this problem. We on this side of the aisle, when we were in control and had the majority in the 109th, felt very strongly that first and foremost to solve the problem and ultimately decide what to do with the 20 million that are estimated to be here illegally, is to stop the hemorrhaging. As a physician member, I use that expression a lot, having been a surgeon in my previous life, OB/GYN physician, but you have to stop the bleeding. If you sit there and let the patient continue to bleed, and that is analogous to the porous borders, the 3 or 4 million that continue to come in every year, in addition to the 2 million that the gentleman from California was talking about earlier, then the patient is going to die. That patient, as the lifeblood seeps out of us, is the United States of America.

So it is so important to do the things that we have done, tried to do in regard to Mr. Sensenbrenner's legislation. He was a champion in regard to the REAL ID Act. Basically the REAL ID Act was just in response to the request of the survivors of the 9/11 victims. As they testified before the 9/11 Commission and made those recommendations, 41 or so specific recommendations, one of the most important ones was to say you have got States that issue driver's licenses without requiring any proof of legal residency. The 9/11 hijackers, 19 of them I think, had something like 53, a total in the aggregate of 53 legal issued driver's licenses from some 10 or 12 States.

So basically what we said is, look, we can't tell you, we the Federal Government can't tell the States how to run their motor vehicle department and how they issue driver's licenses and to whom and how long and how much you pay for driver's licenses, what age you have to be, whether you have to take driver's ed or not. That is a State prerogative, certainly. But if they do not have proof of legal residence, not citizenship, because a permanent legal resident certainly can be granted a driver's license, then they can't use that license from that State for Federal purposes, like getting on an airplane and blowing it to smithereens or using it as a guided missile.

I see Mr. Speaker is tapping me down. I didn't realize, I was having so much fun with my colleague from California, the chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, that all of a sudden our time has expired.

I appreciate his patience and indulgence. I continue to promote the Nuclear Family Protection Act. Let's all get behind it and thank you.

I thank my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, for stepping up here tonight and organizing this Special Order and bringing this subject matter before you, Mr. Speaker, and before the American people.

This immigration issue that is before America is I believe the most complicated and least understood piece of policy that I have seen debated in this country in my lifetime.

I have been involved in the immigration issue since well before I came to Congress 5 years ago. Today as ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee, I sit through immigration hearings two times a week, sometimes three times a week, sometimes more than that. Witnesses bring a lot of information before the committee, and

we are required to read a lot of information. And then one has to read the press clippings to try to understand what the American people are trying to divine out of the things that we are wrestling with here in this Congress.

As I state how complicated this issue is, and I look at the chart that Mr. Gingrey had up, the one that I believe demonstrates the 273 people that could be brought into the United States under the chain migration program, the family reunification plan, the plan that presumes that all family reunions, however minor or major, are reunions that all must take place in the United States as long as there is any one person of one of those families that is here. That is quite a presumption, that you can't have a happy family reunion except in America.

And the 273 that can generate from one individual that is lawfully present in the United States and starts this process, this is a calculation that isn't something that we happen to know in this Congress, because Mr. Gingrey has presented that here tonight; this is a calculation that is done by illegal immigrants and legal immigrants across the world, not just across our southern border into Mexico and points down south towards the Panama Canal, but China as an example. So the going rate, if you are a pregnant Chinese lady, is $30,000 for a roundtrip ticket to come illegally into the United States, have the baby, get his little footprints put on a U.S. birth certificate and go on back to China. Then after the 18th birthday, that child can start the family reunification plan, and you start down the path of this chart that shows 273.

Mr. Speaker, that 273, that is the calculated number that one individual can bring in, and they might come in illegally and find the path to a legal lawful presence and then start the 273. When that chart was done, it was not really limited to 273 except space on the spreadsheet confined it to 273. The number could be 100 or more above that. And the size of the sibling unit, it might be 6 or 12. And if I remember right, the size of the unit for the chart was 3.1 siblings per family. A very conservative estimate.

So we have the automatic citizenship plan, the anchor baby plan, and that will yield 350,000 babies born a year to illegal mothers but on U.S. soil. Some argue their constitutional right to citizenship. I will argue that they also have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States when they are born. Therefore, it is a practice, not a constitutional right. But we have 350,000 new citizens that would not be citizens if we enforced our law on that. That is Nathan Deal's bill, another leader on immigration from Georgia. I certainly support that bill.

But the family reunification, the chain migration, 273, and this usurps the kind of policy that the United States of America ought to have. Every nation, and we are the most generous Nation in the world when it comes to immigration, by raw numbers, by percentage of the population, by having a standard there that isn't a very strict standard at all, but we need an immigration policy designed to enhance the economic, the social and the cultural well-being of the United States of America.

As the gentleman from Georgia alluded, we are not measuring in this chain migration plan the relative merits of the individual immigrants that would come in. We are simply letting that be set by genetics of the family, maybe that and marriage and whatever kind of familial relationship they want to have. I would submit that we need to establish in this Congress, first we need to get control of the illegal flow over our borders. That is about 11,000 at night.

I have sat on the border and I have heard the fence squeak at night, and I have watched the shadows go by me. It is twice the size of Santa Ana's army pouring across the border. And then we have the 350,000 automatic citizenship anchor babies that are born, and the family reunification plan. All of those things are out of the control of the Federal Government right now.

Because we have those elements and we have the overstayers of the visa that are not being enforced, because of that, the immigration issue has become so chaotic that we cannot engage in a rational immigration debate that can be designed to do the things I say and enhance the social, economic, and cultural well-being of America.

If we can get enforcement back under the control of the American people, then I believe we need to put together a matrix, a score system, a score sheet that rewards potential immigrants for their education level, for the capital that they bring into the country with them, for the business acumen that they might have, for the likelihood that they can assimilate into this broader, overall American culture that we have, so we can have some cultural continuity in the United States of America and assimilate and tie together and maintain this vision of one people, one people under God. As we sit today, it is out of our control.

Another thing that we are going to see, a White House initiative, a Senate initiative, and I believe a House initiative coming together trying to get a critical mass of voters between the Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate to work with the White House on this bill that I believe clearly the American people understand, and that is amnesty. That is the bill which has been dropped in the House within the last day.

But the thing we must insist upon, however the issue of amnesty is resolved, however the issue of the national ID card is resolved, we must insist on an overall national cap. The aggregate of all of immigration components that are there, and I think there are 30-some different categories that people can come into the United States legally under, that needs to be capped.

So if a family reunification plan takes up to a million a year, fine, we hit the cap, we stop. No H-1Bs, no work permits. It is simply we hit the cap.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

The thought that goes through my mind as I listen to that discussion about the cumulative total of legal immigrants in the United States, it occurs to me that the Senate bill that passed last year that they said was not amnesty, that the American people rejected because clearly it was amnesty, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, would have legalized over the next 20 years, and that is the calculation period of time that we have for immigration, 66.1 million people.

It also occurs to me that back in 1986 when President Reagan signed the amnesty bill, that was supposed to legalize 1 million people, and that went over 3 million people.

Reclaiming my time, I am happy to yield to the gentleman to make any clarification he likes, but I have a flow in my thought process here that I want to make sure I can stay with here.

The published numbers, though, was supposed to be amnesty for 1 million and ended up being 3.1 million the numbers I have. Then if you go up to 1996 in California, when President Clinton accelerated the naturalization of a group of citizens in the number of 1 million in 1996.

So I am pointing this out that 1 million people was an outrageously high number in 1986, was an outrageously high number in 1996, and last year, the Senate passed a bill that legalized 66.1 million people, and we swallowed that and talked about it not in terms of the magnitude of it but just simply is it amnesty or is it not amnesty.

But put this into the scope, that the point I want to make here is that my numbers show, my census numbers, from 1820 until the year 2000, and those would be the years when our census was keeping track of the naturalization, that period of time, 1820 to 2000, the sum total, the cumulative total of all naturalized citizens come into the United States was 66 million.

So the Senate would have legalized a number in one of the stroke of the pen equal to the sum total of all legal immigrants that have come into America in all of its history and still leave these kind of programs here. That is the essence of the point I wanted to make.

I thank the gentleman from California.

So, picking up on this point, I want to broaden this discussion, if I could, a little bit, too, and that is, the labor supply in the United States of America. We hear continually from the other side the specious argument that we do not have a labor supply in the United States, and so since there is a demand for more cheap labor, therefore, you ought to bring in more cheap labor, as if the United States of America was just a giant ATM and there was nothing more to our Nationhood than a giant ATM.

We are more than a giant ATM. In fact, we are a sovereign Nation based upon a constitutional foundation, and we have a whole series of foundations that have created and established American exceptionalism, and without going down into the components of American exceptionalism, I would point out that we do have a labor supply, Mr. Speaker. That labor supply is not something where you just go looking at an unemployment rate and say, well, traditionally, it is kind of low, it is 4.6 percent. How many does that make? A few million out there you could hire. You could add up a few that are on the welfare rolls.

It is more than that. Look at the whole United States of America as if we were one huge company. If you were going to establish a company in a locale, you would not just go into that locale to measure how many were on the unemployment rolls and count them and say that is the only available labor supply. You would hire a consulting company to go in and survey that region and find out how many people were underemployed, how many people were not in the workforce, and how many people were unemployed so that you could look at the universe that could be hired from.

I did that for the United States of America. It was not hard to do. I am kind of astonished those big business interests did not do that. So I went to the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site, and I started to add up what about the people that are not in the workforce.

Well, between the ages of 16 and 19, there are 9.3 million that are not even

doing part-time work, and then you go into the ages of 20 to 24, and there is a number there that I believe is 5.1 million. 9.3 million for the teenagers, 5.1 million for the 20- to 24-year-old, and you go on up the line. So I began adding up these available workforce, and I went on up to 65, and then I thought but you know Wal-Mart is hiring up to 74. They get greeters there to hand you your cart at 74. So they are available workforce, too, not a lot of them, but they are there. You add this up, there are 6.9 million working illegals in America, and there are 69 million nonworking Americans of working age.

So any company that is worth their salt would look at that and say all we have to do is go hire 1 in 10 of those that are not in the workforce. One in 10 is all it takes to replace the illegal labor that is in America.

If you want to look at it from another perspective, Mr. Speaker, I would submit this, that 4.7 percent of the workforce is illegal labor, and they represent 6.9 million workers but they are not as productive as more educated, more efficient and more effective workers that are the American workers. So they are really only doing 2.2 percent of the work. Well, if you wanted to replace 2.2 percent of the work, if this great huge megafactory of the United States of America got up in the morning and realized that 2.2 percent of your labor force was not going to show up for work, it could happen all at once but it will not, then you could make an adjustment on your production line and you would just say to the people, well, you know that 15-minute coffee break that you have in the morning and the afternoon, for the sake of this emergency that we are in, we are going to shorten that down to 9.5 minutes in the morning and 9.5 minutes in the afternoon, and you have picked up 2.2 percent of your productivity. Eleven minutes a day will more than recover all the illegal labor in America in the size of the economy that we have.

We are not in a labor crisis. We just simply always will have more demand for cheap labor as long as we have more labor that makes it cheaper.

I wanted to make the point that we tried mightily in this House last year to bring immigration reform, we passed H.R. 4437. It had a lot of the things in it that would clean up the problems that we have with an enforcement here, internally, domestically, with employment enforcement, as well as border enforcement. That bill, of course, didn't make it through the Senate. The Senate passed their amnesty bill, and we passed our enforcement bill.

We came back and we did the one thing that we could agree to, and that was provide the online border security at the fence. That was something the American people wanted and demanded, and it was right, and it was appropriate, and it was just.

But the reason that that was the one thing we could agree on, because there is a tug of war going on in this country, a tug of war would be going on between big business that wants to have a supply of cheap labor, and people that want to have a supply, a long supply of voters, or at least people in the

United States they can count for the census purpose. There is a lot of political power, most of that is on the left, and there is a lot of business power, most of that is on the right.

We have this, it's an unusual, odd and some would say an unholy alliance. I think of it as a set of barbells where you have the weight on the right of the business interests, where you have the weight on the left is the political power, and the barbell in the middle, that handle that you pick it up with, the bar, that's the middle class. The middle class is being squeezed ever more narrow because of the overload on the upside and the overload on the downside our economy.

We got to this point last year, and we did all we could do. But the American people became cynical because they weren't seeing legislation get to the President's desk that fixed the problem. Now we are faced again this year with trying to arrive at a consensus, trying to arrive at something that preserves the rule of law, does not provide amnesty, satisfies the interests on both ends of that barbell that I described, and doing it quickly. Because once we get past the summer, once we get past the August break, we are into the fast slide into the next Presidential race, as well as the elections here and a third of the Senate.

But the Presidential race, if it's done and if it's done right, we will take this issue up in Congress, and if we don't solve it first, it will be become the issue du jour of the Presidential debates. And I am looking forward to a Presidential candidate that will step forward with clarity on this issue and start that inertia towards the White House. That is the one thing that can solve this issue. That is my best hope.

If the gentleman would yield on that, I think the American people don't realize that we take more legal immigration than all the world combined. We are taking now more than we ever have.

But first, I want to stop a second and thank the gentleman from Georgia for hosting.

I would thank the gentleman from Georgia for hosting our report on immigration to the American people tonight from the Congressional Caucus.

People have to understand how really, really we have bent over backwards to accommodate people to immigrate to this country. We have about 800,000 people become citizens. We have a million that are allowed to be permanent resident aliens every year, and then we have another million-plus that are allowed to come here to work in the United States. That is almost 3 million people a year that we are accommodating from overseas in one way or the other. And when people say we are a Nation of immigrants, we are a Nation of legal immigrants; but there is a reasonable level of immigration. When the American people realize that we just absolutely have our doors open, there is no excuse for illegal immigration, and we have to make sure that our legal immigration policies are reasonable.

I don't think it is much to ask, those of us who are sworn to represent the people of the United States, to make sure that the American immigration policy is for America first and for the immigrant second. We not only have a right, we have a responsibility to make sure that our immigration policy serves the American people. Like every other policy that the Federal Government is initiating, the American people should come first before anyone else.

This issue of the cost of just the legal immigration, let me give you one cost that most people don't think about. The cost just in one State of giving birth to the children of illegal aliens in California is $400 million a year. That is $400 million just for giving free birth to the children of illegal aliens. In San Diego County, it is $22 million a year just for birthing babies of people that aren't supposed to be in the country.

You add that up, the impact on the taxpayers, there is no way in the world I can believe that any man or woman can stand up in this Chamber and say I am for a balanced budget, I am for fiscal responsibility, but I am for giving amnesty that has been estimated to be $50 billion if Mr. Kennedy and some people in the House get their way of rewarding people for being here illegally.

I think there is a basic issue that we ought to call down and say, since when does this country believe that those who follow the law should be punished and told to stay at home, but those who break the law get rewarded and get into this country?

And since when is it not the right thing to do to make sure that our immigration policy serves the people we are sworn to represent in this Chamber and in the Senate? It is a major issue that the American people need to be asking those that they have sent to Washington.

I, as the new chairman of the Immigration Caucus, look forward to working with Democrats and Republicans because I think in all fairness, immigration is not a Democrat or Republican issue, it is an American issue. And Americans across this country on both sides of the political divide believe it is time we address this issue reasonably and not make the terrible mistake we made in 1986 of rewarding people with amnesty and not doing something about enforcement.

I appreciate the chance to be able to address the issue. That chart scares me to death. And I just say this as a practicing Catholic with five children. Your numbers are a lot lower than for those of us that are in my Mass every day. I think we have to recognize this number as a huge threat of really overturning the entire concept we have of reasonable immigration levels, and those reasonable immigration levels are not only our right to set here in Washington, it is our responsibility to do that.

I yield back.

Actually, it was----

I just remember I was involved with running the County of San Diego in 1986, and I remember that before the bill was passed the number estimate was 300,000. It was after the bill was passed that they said, oh, it might be as high as 1 million, and then they kept continuing the deadline and increasing those who qualified to apply, and it ended up being 3 million. So I just think people have got to remember, when the bill was passed, what was being told was 300,000, and what ended up being the final number was 3 million.

Well, I would just like to congratulate you on explaining exactly what your legislation is focused on. You articulated the problem, the challenge, and it seems to me not only a very common- sense approach but a very, very compassionate approach to the issue.

I think any American that thinks about hundreds of people coming to this country because one person was allowed in sort of boggles your mind saying why has not anybody brought this up before.

I think that look at your diagram there, and the level of legal immigration you are proposing per person, based on family relations, is quite reasonable. I don't think any of us, especially those of us that are a family from immigrants, my mother came from Australia, could say that is an unreasonable and an unfair proposal and unrational proposal at this time.

I really want to compliment you at actually addressing this issue, because we are talking about a lot of other difference issues. But this is one that is sort of below the radar, people aren't talking about, and I am glad you are able to bring it up. I think that is why

our Wednesday evening reports to the American people on the status of immigration is so important. I want to thank you sincerely for bringing up this issue and for introducing this bill.

Let me say this as a Republican. I think the American people will be so pleased if the Democratic majority would bring a bill forward that addresses the major source of illegal immigration, and that is illegal employment. If the Democrats were brave enough to just come forward, not with an amnesty that rewards illegals for being here, not pandering to the illegals and the whole industry that has been built up around that, but went and actually did a project that addressed the real source of illegal immigration; and that is, have a simple employer verification system and a crackdown on the people that are profiteering from illegal immigration, and that's the employers. IF the Democratic Party did that, I think the American people would embrace that.

I think it's a real chance for them to show that they can get the job done and get this issue done that the Republicans didn't get done. You know, as an American, I think that is more important than Republicans having to take advantage of this issue. I just wouldn't be happy as an American to see the Democrats sit there and actually get the job done so I could join them, could vote with them at doing, actually getting the legislation through that the American people have been waiting for too long. I would sure love to be surprised, and I am sure the American people would love to see us working as Democrats and Republicans for America first, not our party first and our Nation second.

I just tell you, I think that our grandchildren would be well served, because all of us, I know the three of us here, if it meant somebody on the Democratic side getting credit for it, then God bless them. What's important is that we leave an America for our grandchildren that is worth our grandchildren living in, and taking care of this problem is going to be part of the important part of doing that.

I think the key is the fact that every legitimate employer wants to have a simple system that lets them know who is qualified to work and who is not. The employer doesn't want to be the person having to make that determination.

We require every employer in this country now to get a Social Security number for their employee. All we are saying now, with the Silvestre Reyes-David Dreier bill, H.R. 98, is we will now give the employee a card to prove that it's their number, so that the employer, when they get this number, gets it from a card, doesn't just take somebody's word. It gives us, as legitimate citizens or legal residents, the ability to prove this really is our number, not 20 other people that are using that number somewhere else down the road.

This issue of upgrading the Social Security card seems so simple. We haven't done this since the 1930s, though every driver's license from every State has been upgraded since then. Now that we have done the real ID bill, where we are requiring finally that driver's licenses be upgraded, isn't it appropriate that the Federal Government do the same thing with our card, our Social Security, to upgrade it to be as tamper-resistant as the new driver's license would be?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate our hour. I hope the people in Colorado enjoyed prime time back there.