Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 4760) to amend the immigration laws and the homeland security laws, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, it certainly saddens me to have to come call legislation harsh and cruel; for if there is anything that we should do in a bipartisan or, frankly, nonpartisan manner, it should be the complement to the Statue of Liberty, which, over the centuries, has been the standard-bearer of the values and virtues of this Nation.

I am saddened that we have come to a point, having worked on the Judiciary Committee with outstanding leaders like my ranking member, my chairman, the subcommittee ranking, Ms. Lofgren, for many years on real immigration reform, here we are today.

Let me tell you why I am opposed to this. It may be because I represent Americans, Americans who are in the 18th Congressional District in Texas. It may be because we are one of the most diverse cities--my mayor says the most diverse city--in the Nation. It may be that we have South Asians and Haitians. We have people from Eastern Europe. We have those, of course, who are Latino. We have those from the Caribbean, and Africans, and many, many more. We have those from Europe.

Here is what this bill will do. It will quash any opportunity for mom and dad to bring in extended family members, citizen mom and dad to bring in their family members. It ends legal immigration and what we have called the values of America, family reunification.

At the same time, the ugly name that has been given to diversity visas is not true. Those who come through the diversity visa for small countries--should we discriminate against small countries?--have the highest level of education and go into medicine and science and try to help.

Then there is no relief for DACA. People who are military, paramedics, lawyers, teachers, we are dependent upon them, having grown up here, loving this Nation, pledging to the flag, pledging to the United States flag.

Then, finally, let me say that it is a sin and a shame that we have such an administration.

Then, as we have not done anything for DACA, we have not done anything for the children snatched away from their families, the children that I saw for 2 days on the border at Texas--Roger, who I held in my hands; maybe the 2-year-old like this--because what it does is it does nothing to reunite the children. It does nothing, after 20 days, to be able to protect them, because the fake executive order does not go beyond 20 days.

Frankly, we don't know where the 2,000 children are, and I know the values of the faith community in America are to reunite. I am saddened that we have this bill. I ask my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman for yielding the time.

I would offer to say that those Guatemalan Americans, El Salvadoran Americans, those Americans from the country of Mexico, and others who serve in the United States military, certainly reflect the diversity of this Nation.

I would offer to say that, sadly, this is the image that is America today. It is not the Statue of Liberty. I stand to oppose this bill because I know, as a member of the Homeland Security Committee, we had a plan that was bipartisan that would provide for border security that included technology and barriers.

Now, we have succumbed to a process which every good-thinking person has to oppose, including the business community. Law enforcement opposes this legislation, in particular, because it makes communities less safe.

Just this week a Texas sheriff's deputy was arrested for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl and threatening to deport the undocumented mother if she reported the claim. Good law enforcement officers understand that they need to have people report the crime.

We know that it was an immigrant, a researcher, who helped us get the polio vaccine.

Finally, young people who now are coming to this country, snatched away from their parents, unaccompanied youngsters as well, will no longer have the protections of the special immigrant juvenile status. It strips crucial protections for abused, abandoned, and neglected children by limiting their ability to access special immigrant juvenile status.

This bill is a bad bill. It is not an immigration bill. It is a bad bill and it really is not for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition of H.R. 4760, the ``Securing America's Future Act of 2018.''

H.R. 4760 is a DREAM Killer Bill that fails to fix our nation's fractured immigration system.

This bill slashes legal immigration, it cripples our agricultural industry, criminalizes undocumented immigrants, undermines our public safety, and denies critical protections for children and families.

H.R. 4760 withholds grants from communities implementing community trust policies that limit law enforcement officials questioning an individual's immigration status.

This Republican-sponsored bill forces local governments to comply with Trump's mass deportation agenda, despite Republican's historic demands that the federal government stay out of people's lives.

My colleagues and I will never vote in favor of a bill that perpetuates the administration's mass deportation agenda, especially in light of the human rights violations we are currently witnessing at our U.S.-Mexico border.

When I visited the border this past weekend, what I witnessed was horrific. It was not the America that I know and love.

Since early May, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents.

By playing the blame game and putting the burden on Congress to fix what President Trump alone has started, the Administration issued an Executive Order yesterday that pretends to open the door for a halt of his intentionally barbaric policy of separating families intended to deter people from attempting to cross the border.

The new policy detains entire families together, including children, but ignores legal time limits on the detention of minors.

The President is ignoring the immigration laws that set the precedent on this arena.

The Flores Settlement, issued in 1997, was the result of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of immigrant children in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

It requires the government to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to parents, relatives, or those willing to accept custody.

It also mandates that the government cannot keep children in detention for over 20 days.

Trump's executive order is in direct violation of the Flores agreement by allowing children to be detained for well-over 20 days.

H.R. 4760 is a politically motivated bill intended to spread the false narrative that immigrants are criminals, liars, and job stealers who are somehow a drain on our society and deserving of punishment.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many of our nation's most beloved and respected figures that are even taught about in schools, were immigrants.

H.R. unfairly and unnecessarily subjects immigrants to lengthy criminal sentences, as well as excessive detention and unreasonable scrutiny.

The restrictive features of the bill--including asylum provisions, cancelling the applications of 3 million people waiting to immigrate legally, and permanent reductions in legal immigration--we are told are a small price to pay to help Dreamers gain a pathway to citizenship.

However, this is not the case.

The CATO Institute recently reported that 82 percent of Dreamers would not even benefit from this bill's citizenship path.

H.R. 4760 does not provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers; instead, it denies Dreamers the coveted American Dream.

Mr. Speaker, I stand in strong opposition to H.R. 4760, the ``Securing America's Future Act of 2018.''

This bill offers minimal protections for Dreamers in exchange for implementing Trump's mass deportation plan.

It includes a litany of bad proposals from the House Judiciary Committee.

It eliminates most family-based immigration categories, as well as the diversity visa program.

It mandates the use of E-Verify on a nationwide basis, thereby crippling industries such as agriculture, restaurants, hotels, construction, and many others.

It purports to address concerns in the agricultural industry. But its solution is to replace the 1 to 1.5 million undocumented farmworkers in this country with an army of guest workers at drastically depressed wages.

This would undermine the wages and working conditions on farms and a host of other sectors (like forestry, logging, and food processing) that employ many U.S. workers and have never been considered agriculture.

It subjects each and every undocumented immigrant over the age of 18 to criminal prosecution by making it a crime to be here without immigration status.

This would effectively turn most undocumented immigrants--including the parents of the Dreamers the bill purports to help--into criminals overnight.

It undermines our asylum system by establishing impossibly high evidentiary burdens and denying asylum to those that travel through ``so-called'' safe third countries.

It removes critical protections for unaccompanied children and creates a scheme to swiftly remove them without an opportunity to see a judge.

It also abolishes important child safety protections for children traveling with their parents.

No Path to Citizenship: In exchange for all of the above, and much more, the bill offers no path to citizenship.

Instead, it creates a renewable ``contingent nonimmigrant'' status that would perpetually deny Dreamers the American Dream.

Dead on Arrival: We are only voting on this bill to appease members of the House Freedom Caucus.

A similar bill offered by Senator Grassley only received 39 votes in the Senate.

The bill is simply too extreme for many Republicans, as indicated by letters of opposition from right-leaning groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Koch-brothers funded LIBRE Initiative, and the CATO Institute.

Expands Family Separation: The Trump/Sessions zero-tolerance prosecution policy is fueling the wave of family separation at the border.

This bill doubles down on the use of criminal prosecution by making unlawful presence a misdemeanor, or a felony under many circumstances.

This would exponentially increase family separation in the interior, as it transforms non-violent, civil immigration violations into criminal offenses.

The result would be the arrest, conviction, and detention of millions of immigrants.

Harms Children: Republicans will likely argue that this bill treats unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from Central American like those from Mexico and therefore does nothing more than remedy a loophole in the law.

But in fact, this bill removes basic protections for all UACs. Among other things, the bill: removes protections for young children aged 13 and under, as well as children with disabilities; eliminates an existing provision allowing limited government funding for counsel for UACs, relegating many children to appear in immigration court without legal representation; requires DHS to investigate and remove all potential UAC sponsors. This would both disincentivize sponsors from coming forward to claim children and overburden state foster care systems:

eliminates the ability for all UACs to first present their asylum claims to specially trained USCIS asylum officers in a non-adversarial setting. UACs would instead be required to present their claims in open court to an immigration judge, opposite a trained ICE trial lawyer, and likely without legal representation; and

strips crucial protections for abused, abandoned and neglected children by limiting their ability to access Special Immigrant Juvenile status.

Makes Communities Less Safe: The bill withholds DHS grants and other law enforcement grants from communities that implement community trust policies that limit or restrict law enforcement questioning of an individual's immigration status.

Although Republicans often demand that the federal government stay out of people's lives, the bill forces local governments to cooperate with Trump's mass deportation agenda.

Republicans have long sought to turn ``sanctuary cities'' into a pejorative term, but studies show that such jurisdictions have ``statistically significantly lower'' criminal activity compared to other jurisdictions.

Law enforcement officials across the country oppose these provisions because it would make their communities less safe.

For example, Latinos in three major cities have been reporting fewer crimes since Trump took office, particularly as it relates to domestic violence and sexual assault.

Just this week, a Texas sheriff's deputy was arrested for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl and threatening to deport the undocumented mother if she reported the crime.

If enacted, the bill would supercharge Trump's deportation agenda, thereby turning undocumented immigrants into prey for criminals.

Destabilizes Agriculture: The bill mandates E-Verify use nationwide, despite the reliance

on undocumented immigrants by several large sectors of the U.S. economy.

To address labor concerns in agriculture and various other industries, the bill creates a massive new guestworker program in which undocumented farmworkers may purportedly participate.

But the bill's unrealistic and anti-worker provisions would have devastating impacts on those workers, as well as similarly situated U.S. workers and employers.

Among other things, the bill provides status to undocumented farmworkers through a ``report to deport'' guestworker program that requires them to first leave the country--including their homes and families--with no assurance that they would be able to return.

Few would participate in such a program.

The guestworker program would eventually result in millions of guestworkers in the country, and all would be paid at far-below market wages.

This combination would have devastating impacts on the labor market-- not only in agriculture, but in other covered industries such as logging, forestry, and food processing.

Given what Republicans often say about the need to protect U.S. workers, we cannot see why they would support this bill.

Fails to Fix the Broken System: The bill fails to repair our fundamentally broken immigration system.

H.R. 4760 is simply a politically motivated bill intended to propagate the fiction that immigrants are criminals, liars, and job stealers who are somehow a drain on our society and need to be punished.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Immigrants generally play a positive role in our society, and this bill unfairly and unnecessarily subjects them to lengthy criminal sentences, as well as excessive detention and unreasonable scrutiny.

Republicans have long championed their identity as the ``Party of Lincoln,'' but this bill proves that they have clearly become the ``Party of Trump.''

Trump champions nativist fear-mongering, relies on alternative facts, and seeks to send America back to the dark ages of isolationism and cultural in-fighting.

This is the wrong direction for our country.

Family Immigration Led To John Tu's Billion Dollar Company.

John Tu created wealth, shared that wealth with his employees and demonstrated people can achieve the American Dream while also fulfilling the dreams of others.

Immigrant entrepreneurs possess relatively few options for starting a business and remaining in the United States.

There is no startup visa that allows individuals to receive permanent residence specifically for starting a business.

Once someone acquires permanent residence (a green card) he or she has the freedom to start a business in America.

That is why the stories we hear about successful foreign-born entrepreneurs come almost exclusively from individuals sponsored by an employer or family member.

John Tu is a great example of this.

John Tu (No. 87 on the Forbes 400 list) was born in China in 1941, where he lived with his parents and sisters.

He describes himself as a mediocre student unable to attend the best Chinese colleges.

He was denied a visa to the United States and instead applied to a college in Germany, where in 1978 he earned a degree in electrical engineering.

``My dream of coming to the United States persisted,'' said John in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration.

He recalled visiting his sister, who was living in Boston.

She had come to America as a student and married a U.S. citizen born in Taiwan. That trip reignited his dreams.

``My experience brought me to the conclusion that in the U.S. one can be anything he wants. I decided right then that I would find a way to make my home in America.''

His sister, who became a U.S. citizen, sponsored John for immigration through the immigrant preference category for the siblings of U.S. citizens.

As someone willing to take a chance on a new country, it's not surprising John Tu quickly became an entrepreneur.

He started a one-man gift shop in Arizona, where his sister had moved to, and sold collectables imported from China.

A few years later, John ventured into commercial real estate, eventually buying a condominium in Los Angeles.

In California, he met David Sun, his future business partner, who also was born in China.

In 1982, John Tu and David Sun started a computer hardware company called Camintonn Corporation.

They later sold the company to AST Research, with each man earning about $1 million.

But a year later, John and David lost almost everything.

Their broker, a trusted friend, invested poorly, which caused their savings to be nearly wiped out in the October 1987 stock market crash.

John Tu and David Sun picked themselves up and did what entrepreneurs do best--they started another business.

Their new company, Kingston Technology, sought to fill a niche in the marketplace for computer memory products.

``Kingston soon began developing memory products for a variety of PCs and thriving beyond either of our expectations.

It is ironic that from the biggest financial failure came my most successful venture,'' said John.

The company grew to over 500 U.S. employees and by 1996 was valued at $1.5 billion.

Not surprisingly, this attracted the interest of buyers. That year, John and David sold 80 percent of Kingston to Japan-based Softbank Corp.

While the sale initially made news, it is what John Tu and David Sun did with the proceeds that generated worldwide attention: The two men set aside $100 million in profits from the sale and awarded bonuses to their American employees, something virtually unheard.

In many cases, the bonuses ranged from $100,000 to $300,000.

This decision changed the lives of those working at Kingston, allowing many to fund dreams for themselves and their children.

``The bonus meant a great deal to the employees, for some it meant ridding themselves of debt, for others a down payment on a house, and for one person the opportunity to return to college and finish his education,'' said Kingston employee Gary McDonald.

He decided to use the bonus money to fund schooling and assistance for his four children, two of whom had special needs, including one with autism.

``Without the bonus it would have been much more of a financial struggle,'' he said.

Fate intervened and in July 1999, for business reasons, Softbank decided to sell its 80 percent share in Kingston back to John Tu and David Sun for less than half of the original sale price.

Today, Kingston is ``the world's largest independent manufacturer of memory products,'' according to the company.

Kingston employs more than 3,000 people around the world and maintains its headquarters in Fountain Valley, California. It has garnered a number of awards, including Fortune magazine's list of the ``Best Companies to Work for in America.'' John and his company Kingston contribute to many charitable causes.

An Immigrant And An Immigrant's Son Saved Americans From Polio.

Polio struck future presidents and poor children alike, becoming an epidemic that consumed Americans throughout much of the 20th century.

Immigrant Albert Sabin and the son of an immigrant, Jonas Salk, developed the vaccines that ended polio as a threat to Americans.

Neither Salk or Sabin--or their life-saving Polio vaccines--would have been in America if not for family immigration.

``Without Sabin and Salk, American children would continue to be paralyzed for life by polio,'' Michel Zaffran, director of polio eradication at the World Health Organization, said in an interview. ``Their contribution is quite simply immeasurable.''

Americans today do not consider polio a threat. That was not always the case.

``No disease drew as much attention, or struck the same terror, as polio,'' according to David Oshinsky, author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning book Polio: An American Story.

``Polio hit without warning. There was no way of telling who would get it and who would be spared.

It killed some of its victims and marked others for life, leaving behind vivid reminders for all to see: wheelchairs, crutches, leg braces, breathing devices, deformed limbs.''

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair throughout his presidency, is the most famous victim of polio.

But at its approximate height, in 1949, around 40,000 cases were reported in America, according to Oshinsky.

In San Angelo, Texas, one out of every 124 residents contracted the disease, resulting in 24 deaths and 84 cases of permanent paralysis, affecting mostly children.

Cases of polio first appeared in the U.S. in the 1800s.

The invention of the electron microscope in the 1930s allowed researchers to see the virus that causes the polio infection, which is spread through fecal waste, from one person to another, by hand, food, water and other methods.

When Albert Sabin was born in Poland in 1906, Americans could not have known this Polish infant would someday grow up and change their lives.

``When he was 15, his family came to the United States to escape the murderous pogroms [against Jews] that erupted there following World War I,'' according to David Oshinsky.

``The Sabins settled in Paterson, New Jersey, an immigrant textile center, where his father took a job as a weaver. Fluent in Polish and German, but knowing no English, Sabin was tutored by a cousin who encouraged him to avoid the dead-end life of the silk mills by getting an education.''

Sabin did well in high school, while working to help support the family, and accepted an offer from an uncle who offered to pay his college tuition if he agreed to join him as a dentist.

Albert did not enjoy studying dentistry and lost his uncle's financial support.

In a great example of mentoring, the well-regarded New York University (NYU) professor William Hallock Park, a bacteriologist, saw something in Sabin and arranged for a scholarship.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I

call up House Resolution 954 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), 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.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 954 provides for the consideration of a bill aimed at curbing the flow of illegal immigration across our southern border by combining a strong border wall and security measures with targeted modifications to the current immigration visa process.

The rule provides for one hour of debate on H.R. 4760, the Securing America's Future Act of 2018, with 40 minutes equally divided and controlled by the Committee on the Judiciary and 20 minutes controlled by the Committee on Homeland Security.

The rule provides for the adoption of the Goodlatte amendment reflecting a number of provisions, which were negotiated with numerous parties since the bill was first introduced in January of this year. This amendment will be incorporated into H.R. 4760 upon adoption of the rule today.

It also includes the McCaul amendment, which makes technical corrections to the underlying bill.

Further, the rule provides the minority with one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

The laws and legal agreement currently governing our enforcement efforts along the southern border are between 20 and 60 years old. America is a Nation built and continually supported by immigrants. However, the world has changed and how we accept new immigrants may adapt as well.

H.R. 4760 begins the process of reforming our immigration system for the first time in decades, and I encourage the passage of the rule to consider this important bill.

The Securing America's Future Act refocuses legal immigration for the skills that our country needs. It also secures our border, strengthens interior enforcement, and makes changes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The diversity visa lottery program, which awards 50,000 green cards to a randomly selected pool of applicants, is eliminated, along with visas for relatives except for spouses and minor children. Overall, immigration levels are decreased, while visas for skilled workers are increased and the agricultural guest worker program is reformed to better meet the needs of our farmers and food processors.

Construction of a border wall system is authorized, including the use of additional cameras, sensors, and aviation assets. Recently, President Trump approved the use of the National Guard along the border, increasing capacity by over 1,100 personnel and 14 aircraft. This bill would also authorize the use of the National Guard aviation and intelligence support. It requires full implementation of the biometric entry-exit system at all ports of entry and provides for 10,000 border patrol agents and officers.

To strengthen interior enforcement, the bill mandates E-Verify so that all employers check the immigration status of their employees. It combats sanctuary city policies by withholding law enforcement grants and allows the Department of Homeland Security to detain dangerous, illegal immigrants who cannot be immediately removed from the country.

Many illegal immigrants without legal status claim asylum when apprehended by border agents. While there are legitimate claims of fear of persecution, there are also instances of immigrants being coached to say the correct phrase to obtain asylum. To combat this fraud, the bill increases the credible fear standard. It also makes being a gang member a removable offense and qualifies illegal presence as a Federal misdemeanor.

In 2015, Kate Steinle was killed by an immigrant without status while walking with her father in San Francisco. The man responsible for her death had been deported multiple times and should never have been in the country on that day.

Constituents of the 26th District of Texas experienced a similar tragedy in 2013 when a young girl in a crosswalk was struck and killed by someone in the country without legal status.

While the recent enforcement policies along our southern border have led to a temporary separation of parents and children, a father and a grandmother in the 26th District of Texas will never be reunited with their daughter and granddaughter.

Kate's Law enhances criminal penalties for multiple illegal reentry to help prevent future tragedies. Inclusion of this provision will reduce the possibility of the tragic killing of American citizens.

Finally, the bill provides for a 3-year renewable legal status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients that allows them to work and travel overseas. This will apply to approximately 700,000 individuals who are currently in the United States. While it was not the fault of these then-children that they entered the country without legal documentation, the fact of the matter is that they are here now and we need a solution.

While I do not support an expedited path to citizenship, I do support allowing them to get in line and apply just like any other law-abiding potential immigrant. The bill does not allow for a special path to citizenship. However, it does allow the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipient to obtain a green card and apply for citizenship like any other law-abiding applicant.

Recently, we have heard a lot about the enforcement policies along the southern border. Mr. Speaker, this crisis is not new. In 2014, the number of unaccompanied alien children increased exponentially and reached crisis levels. It remained steadily above 400,000 apprehensions from 2013 until the present.

During a visit by the Honduran First Lady in 2014, she was asked if Honduras wanted their children back, and without hesitation, she responded that they did. So a planeload of women and children was sent back to Honduras that resulted in an immediate reduction in the attempted crossings of unaccompanied alien children. However, because there was no follow-on enforcement actions, the numbers again began to increase, reaching above 563,000 in 2016.

In the lead-up to the 2010 election, the numbers increased, because then-candidate Trump spoke about securing our border with a wall that would finally end the possibility of illegal entry along our southern border. When candidate Trump became President-elect Trump, this number dramatically decreased because potential immigrants believed that construction of the border wall was imminent.

As a Member of Congress representing a border State, I have maintained regular contact with Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. What we heard during this period, 2016, was that immigrants crossing the border illegally wanted to get into the country before the possibility of a Trump election occurred and could direct construction of the border wall. They were under the impression that if

you crossed our border, at a point of entry or illegally, you would be granted amnesty and welcomed into the country. While we do welcome legal immigrants, this perception led to only more vulnerable children being entrusted by parents to human traffickers, typically for large sums of money, to bring their children to the United States.

On this journey, children could experience harsh conditions. Some were abused physically, sexually, and emotionally. And this abuse is not a threat just from the adults that are supposed to care for them, but also it can occur from their fellow travelers. A lot of these kids are just trying to survive, trying to make it to a life where they may one day thrive, but this existence is often all they have known, and they react in a way that reflects this reality.

While there is a concern about children arriving with parents who are then prosecuted for illegal entry and subsequently placed in the custody of the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, numerous children never get to make this journey with their parents or even relatives. Many adults are now bringing nonrelated children with them in an attempt to be released into the United States because of their association with a child that cannot, because of the Flores Agreement from 1997, be held in custody.

When the influx of unaccompanied alien children began exceeding the capacity of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, I traveled to the border area specifically to visit these facilities. I engaged with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to fully understand the care that these children were receiving in 2014, 2015, and 2016. The Office of Refugee Resettlement responded to my concerns about threats of communicable diseases from foreign countries being brought to our homeland. Mr. Speaker, there was not even a physician employed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2014 before I raised this issue.

The issue became a concern because there were members of Customs and Border Control that actually felt that they were perhaps developing a condition as a result of contact with people because of a skin parasite that was easily communicated. And the question arose, could other diseases be communicated as well? And people were rightfully concerned about that. It is not just an illness like scabies; it is an issue like multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis that people were most concerned about.

While treatment in facilities has vastly improved in the last couple of years, the path by which immigrants come here is still dangerous. On one of my visits near the border at McAllen, Texas, I traveled with border patrol agents along a cactus-strewn, dusty road, mesquite bushes growing in from the sides. They brought a bus down there, a big bus. They stopped, they flashed their lights, they honked their horn, and the bus filled up with people. The bus went off to town, bouncing across this dusty road, and I remained back with the Customs and Border Patrol.

Then a State agent came up, someone from Fish and Wildlife, and said: I need help. I have got people over here that I think belong in your jurisdiction because you are the Federal Government.

And Customs and Border Patrol went over to the area that he had pointed out, and here were a number of women, small children, and teenage boys. They had come across the river, delivered by traffickers, just literally on the other side of the river, and dropped there. They had no idea what was the direction to town. They were not equipped to travel in the harsh conditions. It was probably 110 degrees outside that day. Small children, children, babes in arms, probably 1 year of age or less: this is what the traffickers left on the side of the river.

Had the Fish and Wildlife Service not come by and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol not come by, I don't know how these people would have made it to town. And it is quite possible they would not have made it safely.

So the situation along the southern border is not just a border crisis, it is also an immigration crisis. Attorney General Sessions announced a zero-tolerance policy to finally and fully enforce our laws. I believe he did this so that Americans and immigrants alike would recognize and remember that we are a Nation of laws, and also to demonstrate that the dangerous journey to our southern border is sometimes not worth the risk and the struggle required to make it within just a few miles of a fence.

The ebb and flow of border crossings has consistently reflected the rhetoric of American leadership and perception of enforcement of our laws. The rate of border crossings rapidly increased in the last year because there has been no significant visible action by the Congress to President Trump's request for a border wall. However, this is not the only factor.

It is no secret that countries in what are called the northern triangle, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, are some of the most dangerous countries in the world. Yet, these countries receive millions of dollars of aid each year for economic development, for military financing, and security initiatives.

This funding rapidly increased to more than $600 million each year beginning in fiscal year 2014, mostly in response to the growing crisis with unaccompanied alien children. So I think it is appropriate to ask ourselves, is the funding being allocated in a way that will help improve domestic conditions on the ground and reduce the desire to leave?

To address this concern, I introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Children Assistance Control Act, and I offered this bill as an amendment to H.R. 4760. Simply put, this bill would reduce foreign aid allocations to Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala by $15,000 per child to each country if their child crosses the border illegally or if they are referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement for custody and care.

While this may not seem like a lot, the reality is that each child cared for by the Office of Refugee Resettlement costs the American taxpayer about $35,000. Even Attorney General Sessions has stated that the care these children receive is better than the average American child.

While we cannot leave children without care, we must recognize that prioritizing alien children over our own sends the wrong message. Removing that $15,000 of foreign aid per child will send a message to Mexican and Northern Triangle leaders that our accepting their children will not be without cost to them.

As we all know, Mr. Speaker, if you want to make it important, it has to be about the money.

Unfortunately, the accountability in these countries is poor, and the use of funds largely goes unchecked. They rely on American aid, and we must ensure that it is being used appropriately and wisely to combat the forces that are driving their future generations--it is their future--away from their own countries.

By withholding funding in the face of rampant corruption, we not only provide a potential funding stream for President Trump's proposed border system, but we send a signal that we will not willingly deprive the children and desperate immigrants of the life they desire and need in their countries of origin.

The best place for a child and a family is their home. Because of the condition in the Northern Triangle countries, home for many children is now a stark facility along a foreign border.

It is time to take steps that would not only strengthen our immigration laws for the security of American citizens, but is in the interest of restoring and maintaining the home from which many would-be immigrants try to escape.

Congress has not successfully reformed our immigration laws in decades. It is time to begin that debate to align our immigration system with current realities. For this reason, I encourage the adoption of the rule to begin consideration of H.R. 4760, Securing America's Future Act.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support today's rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a crisis of President Trump's making. Those of us who served here during the Bush administration were aware that this was a problem. Certainly, those of us who served during the Obama administration were aware that this was a problem.

When President Obama declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2012, it was immediately followed, 2 years later, by the wave of unaccompanied alien children who came to our southern border. This crisis has been a long time in the making. Congress does need to solve this problem. The President is quite correct in that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I would just point out that, under current conditions, current laws, the United States of America takes in 1.1 million new citizens every year. We are the most generous country on the face of the Earth. American citizens should be rightly proud of that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I just remind people in this body that 10 years ago the Democrats were in the majority. Indeed, then in the 2008 election that occurred 10 years ago, they strengthened that majority. House Republican Members were so far in the minority as to be irrelevant in all exchanges.

There was a 60-vote majority over in the Senate. You may recall that is where the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank and other pieces of legislation that I would have thought would never pass actually did pass in that environment.

A question that I hear a lot is: Why didn't Democrats do something about the Dreamer problem when they controlled all the levers of power? And it is a valid question.

Senator Durbin had a bill, as you will recall, in that next session of Congress that began in January of 2009. Senator Durbin had a bill to deal with the Dreamer situation, and he worked on it all year. It never came up until December of 2010.

Now, you remember in November of 2010, actually, the majority changed in the House of Representatives and there were enough Republicans elected that the Democrats would not be in the majority the next year.

So here we are in a so-called lame duck session of a party that is exiting power, and I think it was December 8 of that year that, in the House, the Democrats brought Senator Durbin's bill up and passed it on the House floor, as would be expected. They did have a significant majority.

They lost one vote over in the Senate, as I recall, and had 59 Democrats. Speaker Pelosi told me at a Rules Committee hearing several months ago that it was then that the Republicans blocked that vote from happening in the Senate.

But that is not exactly true.

Three Republicans voted with the Democrats on the Durbin bill. Five Democrats voted in the negative, and that is what killed the Durbin bill when the Democrats controlled all levers of power in 2010, the last time they did.

Mr. Speaker, don't blame this problem on President Trump. It has been in existence for some time, but it is up to us to solve it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the author of H.R. 4760.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk to you about a story of separation, a father and daughter who have been separated. Chris, my constituent, came to me with this story several years ago.

He served his country in Iraq. While he was serving his country in Iraq, his wife developed cancer and died. Chris returned home to be a single dad to his daughter.

His daughter went out with friends one night and was struck and killed by an automobile--an automobile driven by someone who was in the country without the benefit of citizenship.

Chris comes to my townhalls and asks me: While I was serving my country, you were supposed to be enforcing the laws on the border. Because you did not do your job, I am now separated from my daughter in perpetuity.

H.R. 4760, the Securing America's Future Act of 2018, is the product of months of work by Chairman Goodlatte, Chairman McCaul, and other stakeholders. This is an answer to our persistent problems with our immigration system that so many Members of this body have been talking about for years.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support today's rule and move the debate forward on this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 954, I call up the bill (H.R. 4760) to amend the immigration laws and the homeland security laws, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4760.

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

Mr. Speaker, I introduced H.R. 4760, along with Michael McCaul, Martha McSally, and Raul Labrador, to provide an equitable and permanent legal status for unlawful aliens who grew up in America after their parents brought them here as children. Just as importantly, we want to strengthen our borders, close gaping loopholes, curtail endemic fraud, and enhance interior immigration enforcement so that our Nation won't face the same dilemma in a few years.

President Trump did the right thing and tried to end President Obama's blatantly unconstitutional DACA program. As a Federal court ruled in enjoining DACA's sister program, DHS cannot ``enact a program whereby it not only ignores the dictates of Congress, but actively acts to thwart them. . . . The DHS Secretary is not just rewriting the laws; he is creating them from scratch.'' President Trump also did the right thing by immediately turning to us, asking Congress to fix the problem.

As he asked for, H.R. 4760 solves the DACA conundrum. It provides DACA beneficiaries with an indefinitely renewable legal nonimmigrant status allowing them to live and work in the United States without worry and travel abroad as they choose. It also allows them to receive green cards on the same terms as any other intending immigrant around the world.

As I indicated, the bill will help ensure that the distressing DACA dilemma does not recur. It ends catch and release at the border, battles asylum fraud, and ensures that unaccompanied minors caught at the border will be treated equally, regardless of their home country. It will ensure that the law no longer tempts minors and their parents to make the dangerous illicit journey to the United States and to line the pockets of cancerous cartels with hundreds of millions of dollars.

The bill will also take away the other magnet that draws millions of persons to come to the United States illegally: the jobs magnet. Through the inclusion of Lamar Smith's Legal Workforce Act, it makes E- Verify mandatory. After two decades of constant improvement, E-Verify has become an extremely effective, reliable, and easy way for employers to ensure that they have hired a legal workforce. Three-quarters of a million employers currently use E-Verify, which almost instantaneously confirms the work eligibility of new hires 99 percent of the time.

The bill will also allow DHS to deport members of MS-13 and other virulent criminal gangs and allow it to detain dangerous aliens who cannot be removed. It will combat the public safety menace of sanctuary cities in multiple ways, including by allowing the Justice Department to withhold from them law enforcement grants.

The bill makes significant reforms to our legal immigration system. It puts an end to extended family chain migration and terminates the diversity visa green card lottery, which awards green cards at random to people with no ties to the United States or any particular skills.

In addition, it replaces the dysfunctional H-2A agricultural guestworker program. The H-2A program is slow, bureaucratic, and frustrating, often forcing growers to leave crops to rot in the fields. They also must pay an artificially inflated wage rate, along with providing free housing and transportation. In doing the right thing, H- 2A users are almost always repaid by being placed at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace.

The bill provides growers with streamlined access to guestworkers when sufficient American labor cannot be found. It finally provides dairies and food processors with year-round labor needs with access to a guestworker program. It avoids the pitfalls of the H-2A program, and it will remain at its core a true guestworker program. As growers learned the hard way after the 1986 amnesty, illegal farmworkers will leave en mass and flock to the cities when provided with permanent residence.

The Agricultural Guestworker Act contained in this bill is supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the dairy industry, and over 200 distinct agricultural organizations from across the United States.

Following introduction of this legislation, I have sat down with my colleagues for months to learn of any concerns and to strive to improve the bill. The product of this intensive work is better legislation. While I am disappointed that the rule did not allow me to include all of the improvements made possible by the input of so many Members, I am gratified that I could include the refinements to the H-2C agricultural guestworker program.

To give just one example, the bill now clarifies that the Department of Homeland Security will issue documents to unlawful alien farmworkers who have been sponsored by growers to join the program, authorizing them to return to the United States without the need for visas after completing their initial touchbacks. This will create certainty for growers, allowing them to receive pre-approval of their H-2C petitions for current workers before they leave the country and precertification of the workers' admission back into the United States before they leave.

Congress has a unique opportunity to act before the country ends up with another large population who crossed the border illegally as children. Let's take this historic moment to come together and support vital legislation that provides commonsense, reasonable solutions.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join President Trump and support H.R. 4760, and I reserve the balance of my time.

House of Representatives,

Committee on Agriculture,

Washington, DC, June 20, 2018.

Hon. Bob Goodlatte,

Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Goodlatte: Thank you for the opportunity to

review the relevant provisions of the text of H.R. 4760, the

Securing America's Future Act of 2018. As you are aware, the

bill was primarily referred to the Committee on the

Judiciary, while the Agriculture Committee received an

additional referral.

I recognize and appreciate your desire to bring this

legislation before the House in an expeditious manner.

Accordingly, I agree to discharge H.R. 4760 from further

consideration by the Committee on Agriculture. I do so with

the understanding that by discharging the bill, the Committee

on Agriculture does not waive any future jurisdictional claim

on this or similar matters. Further, the Committee on

Agriculture reserves the right to seek the appointment of

conferees, if it should become necessary.

I ask that you insert a copy of our exchange of letters

into the Congressional Record during consideration of this

measure on the House floor.

Thank you for your courtesy in this matter and I look

forward to continued cooperation between our respective

committees.

Sincerely,

K. Michael Conaway,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), who is the author of an important provision in this bill related to electronic verification of employment, and he is the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to some of the false charges that we are hearing here.

First of all, with regard to E-Verify, unfortunately, there is a misconception that it is our intention to implement the new H-2C program and mandate E-Verify for agriculture simultaneously. This could not be further from the truth.

The AG Act, under that act, E-Verify would not be mandated for agriculture until the H-2C is properly up and running and no sooner than 24 months after enactment of the legislation. In addition, E- Verify will only apply to future hires.

Secondly, I want to respond to those who complain about what we are doing for the DACA recipients in this legislation. I want to make it very, very clear we are going to do something that is legal, something that is constitutional for them instead of something that was illegal and unconstitutional, and it is going to be superior in this bill to what was done for them there, because they

will be allowed to remain in the United States permanently, renewing every 3 years. They are only excluded if they do not meet certain criteria.

The fact of the matter is we will have an opportunity for them to avail themselves of existing pathways to citizenship. If they are married to a United States citizen, as it would be logical that a great many of these DACA recipients are because of the fact that they have grown up here, they will be able to benefit from that. They could not do that under the Obama executive order. So this is much better than how the Democrats have treated the DACA recipients.

Lastly, whether the labor workforce status quo is sustainable for American agriculture, under current law in California and other States, farmers are facing chronic employee shortages. Last fall, the California Farm Bureau announced the results of an informal survey of its members. The survey showed that 69 percent of those surveyed were experiencing labor shortfalls. Despite all the efforts California farmers and ranchers have made to find and hire people to work on their operations, they still can't find enough willing and qualified employees.

California Farm Bureau President Paul Wenger said: ``Farmers have offered higher wages, benefits, and more year-round jobs. They have tried to mechanize operations where possible and have even changed crops or left ground idle, but employee shortages persist.''

The labor force status quo is simply unsustainable for American agriculture. Clearly, this is not a situation that is going to be solved by granting permanent resident status to farmworkers. In fact, that is the opposite of what is needed.

Granting permanent resident status to illegal farmworkers will not do anything to ensure that farmers and ranchers have access to the labor they need for years to come. It is shortsighted and does nothing to relieve employers or legal farmworkers of the unnecessary burdens and competitive disadvantage they face under the outdated H-2A program.

Americans' food can be grown in other countries where land and labor are far cheaper. To ensure that our meat and produce continue to be grown in America and that our Nation's agricultural industry thrives in the global marketplace, the U.S. needs a flexible, workable, and fair guest worker program like the H-2C program established in the AG Act and contained in the legislation that we are debating right now.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Labrador), the chairman of the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, this bill has been mischaracterized and was just again.

This bill makes provisions for when the immigration service prosecutes somebody at the border. It doesn't tell them when to do that. So it is entirely incorrect to make that assertion.

I see the conflicting news reports about what the intention of the administration is today on that issue, but that does not change the fact that that has nothing to do with the good measures in this bill that correct the problems that we are speaking about.

The overwhelming majority of the American people want children to be with their parents, and I have just seen a poll a few minutes ago that shows that the overwhelming majority of them want those children detained with their parents, not to have the parents and the children released into the interior of the country where they never return for their hearing.

That kind of open border policy that is supported by the advocates on the other side of the aisle is not good for America, and it is not good for sound immigration policy.

We are a nation of immigrants. There is not a person in this room who can't go back a few generations or several generations and find someone in their family who immigrated to the United States. But we are also a nation of laws, and respect for the rule of law and following our legal immigration system is the foundation of our society.

So, to me, when you say that it is not good enough to do better for the DACA recipients than Barack Obama did, where do you get that idea from?

When you say that we are not a generous country with regard to immigration and that this is an anti-immigration bill when it sustains far more legal immigration than any other country on Earth, they are completely wrong.

But at the same time that we do that and we promote that in this bill, good legal immigration policy and something fair for the DACA recipients, we must also have secure borders in our country, and we must give any administration, not just this one, the tools it needs to close the loopholes to secure the border and to end crazy programs like the visa lottery program that gives 55,000 green cards to people just based on pure luck. There are better things to do with those green cards to move to a merit-based immigration system.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation, reject the negative ideas of the opposition, and move forward with a policy that does both something important for the DACA recipients but also secures America's national security interests and the interests of our citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this effort to distract us from the major problems that we are attempting to address in our country. This motion to recommit only--only--deals with amnesty for a far larger population of people than the American people expect to have addressed. The people who are the DACA recipients are people who arrived here as young children before June 15, 2007.

This bill does nothing to solve the problem with the surge of people at the border of our country. It does nothing to create a new border security wall and fencing system, technology and personnel who are needed, and judges in courtrooms to process the huge number--the 600,000 backlog--of amnesty cases that we have.

This does nothing to close the loopholes that are allowing people to enjoy what is called catch and release. When they come into the country, some of them even turn themselves in knowing that, ultimately, they are going to be released into the interior of the United States. We need to give the administration the tools they need to stop this problem. It is not a new problem.

The Obama administration wanted a number of the changes that are in this bill with regard to clarifying things like the terrible Flores decision, which is at the heart of the problem we have with young children being separated from their parents.

We fix those things in this legislation, and yet this would substitute all of that for something that is just targeted at what the other party wants to do. And they call upon us to work in a bipartisan fashion.

This bill addresses all of the areas that need to be addressed, and they give lip service to the other areas, but they do not address them. This is proof of that by the fact that it only deals with amnesty.

We need to have a movement to a merit-based immigration system. We need to end the terrible visa lottery system, which is a national security problem and which is something that does not benefit the American economy.

We need to move from chain migration to a merit-based system, and we need to make sure that we treat the DACA recipients better than they are treated under the unconstitutional, illegal Obama process, but not at the cost of not doing the other three pillars that we are seeking to address.

We need to address border security and interior enforcement; we need to end the visa lottery and move to a merit-based system; and we need to end chain migration.

It also doesn't have anything about E-Verify or helping 1 million agricultural guest workers who want to work in this country legally and the farmers who want to have a system that allows them to do that legally.

This is the bill that we need to pass, not this motion to recommit. I urge my colleague to oppose the motion to recommit and support the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time and for his hard work on this issue as well.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very good bill. It is not something that was cooked up overnight. This bill was introduced 6 months ago. It is based upon legislation that has passed out of the Judiciary Committee in previous Congresses, and some of it in this Congress. It is a good effort to make sure that we are addressing all three aspects of immigration law that need to be addressed.

It has a very good proposal with regard to the DACA recipients. They get a legal status permanently for the rest of their lives, renewable every 3 years, as long as they don't commit a crime. And that is a statutory protection.

That is not something that is subject to court challenges. That is not something that is subject to the whims of any President, past, present, or future. It is something that allows them, then, to avail themselves of existing pathways to citizenship, and it is something that will allow them to work in the United States, live in the United States, own a business in the United States, and travel in and out of the United States.

I think it is a good first step in addressing this situation.

Secondly, the President has made it very clear, and people watching the news coverage know, the difficulties that the administration--any administration, this administration, the Obama administration, the Bush administration before it--has with laws that need to be corrected to make sure that loopholes are not followed at our border.

We have, now, a waiting list of 600,000 people applying for asylum. Historically, asylum, which is a very good part of our immigration law, has been granted to 5,000--some years, maybe as many as 10,000--people.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident, who wrote ``The Gulag Archipelago,'' got political asylum in the United States. But when everyone who is apprehended coming across the border illegally trying to avoid detection, when they are apprehended then says, ``Oh, I am here for political asylum,'' and you create a backlog 600,000 people long and then they are released into the interior of the country and don't return for their hearings in many, many, many instances, that is a very flawed aspect of our immigration system. This bill addresses that, as it does the problem with unaccompanied minors.

Children 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years of age, mostly young boys, coming across all of Mexico and then through the desert or across the Rio Grande River and then thinking that this is an acceptable thing for them to do to enter our country, they need to be returned safely home, and the laws need to be reformed to accomplish that.

We need to reform many other aspects of our border security laws, close these loopholes.

We need to have greater technology. We need to have, along some segments of our border, improved wall technology. We have fences and some walls already. The fences have big holes in them. People come with chain cutters and cut holes through them in a matter of seconds and go through them when it is foggy there in San Diego or other times when they have that opportunity.

We need to have a more secure border both with technology and with a wall in some places and with the necessary personnel to handle this, including not just Border Patrol, but the judges and other officers who are necessary to process people when they are apprehended. This is a very serious problem, and it is addressed in this legislation.

We also need to move toward a merit-based immigration system.

We have, as the gentleman from Texas has repeatedly noted, the most generous immigration policy in the world. We have tens of millions of people who come to visit this country every year: some to work, some to go to school, some to conduct business. For more than 75 different categories of reasons they come here.

We also have more than a dozen immigrant visa categories that allow people to come to the United States, and we give out, on average, about 1.1 million green cards a year to people who go through the process lawfully. That is the most generous system in the world. We need to recognize that as we do that, we have to move toward a system where we are meeting the needs of American citizens, as well, as we do it.

Areas where we have shortages so that we can keep businesses in the United States rather than having them move elsewhere in the world where they can find the workers they need is an important part of this. So eliminating things like the visa lottery, where we give 55,000 green cards out for no good reason at all other than the pure luck that people attain from that and instead use those to have a new system where we have the opportunity to move towards a merit-based system, which is not in this bill but should be the successor to this bill, is an important thing to do.

I think that all of those measures are contained in this legislation. I think it is very, very good legislation.

But this bill contains two important provisions that are not in the second bill, and I want to particularly address those.

First, we have in this bill the E-Verify program. This is a program, a very fine program, that exists today. More than 800,000 businesses use it. Many large businesses use it. I would bet that probably a majority of the people who process job applications today utilize it. But it is certainly not utilized by everybody.

As a consequence, it is not being totally effective, because the people who aren't using it either don't want to know whether somebody is lawfully present in the United States, or they think they are unlawfully present and don't want to have a system that uncovers that.

But this bill, applying prospectively only--you don't have to apply it to your current employees--works 99.7 percent of the time. It is very, very accurate. And most importantly, it has a safe harbor for both the worker and the employer. So that if you get a false positive, and if you are getting that three-tenths of a percent of the time--that is still a significant number of people when you use the E-Verify system--the new law actually gives them a way to work out the catch-22 situation that workers and employers find themselves in.

Because under the current law, we use the I-9 forms. Oftentimes, someone will look at it and say: I am not sure these are genuine documents. But if they refuse to hire the individual and it turns out that they are genuine documents, they can be sued for discrimination.

And on the other hand, if they hire the worker and it turns out they are unlawfully present, they can be prosecuted for hiring someone unlawfully present in the United States.

And so the safe harbor says, you can go ahead and hire that person until we work out whether it is a false positive or a false negative without that consequence, and only until we know that, will you then have to not employ that person. You will face no consequences in doing that. That is good for the worker and it is good for the employer as well.

When you do that--there is no doubt that there are sectors of our economy where we have a lot of people who are not lawfully present in the United States working. And by far, the number-one sector that is affected by that is our agricultural workforce. There are some estimates that as many as 80 or 90 percent of people working in agriculture, beyond the actual family members who own a farm, are not lawfully present in this country.

Some estimate that more than 1 million people who are working, are not lawfully present in this country. Wouldn't it be great if we could turn that workforce into legal workers where they have the opportunity to go back and forth across the border, to go home to where their family is without the fear of being apprehended and prosecuted?

That is what this bill does. It gives farmers a much more reliable workforce. It gives them a much better program where they can self- certify, where the worker can come in for up to 2 years at a time. And in the dairy industry where they have no program at all today, or in processing plants, raw-food processing plants, they have no program at all today, we have the ability to help those farmers.

This is an area of our economy that is very much affected by international competition. It is exceedingly important that we pass this legislation to

move immigration in the direction it needs to move, and this is an enlightened way to do it. It is not a bad bill. It is a good bill for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

This rule makes in order H.R. 4760, the so-called Securing America's Future Act, and two amendments in the legislation.

Before I speak on the legislation, let us consider why we are here today. President Trump has created immigration crisis after immigration crisis. President Trump is the reason Dreamers are at risk of deportation. President Trump is the reason families are being separated at our Nation's borders. This is a Trump-manufactured crisis, plain and simple.

President Trump's executive order, signed yesterday, does nothing to fix this. His order does nothing to reunite the thousands of children separated from their parents. In fact, his order directs his deportation force to now jail families at the border, which is in direct violation of current court orders. It will lead to more family separation, and the only difference now is that families will wait 20 days before being separated.

I want every Member of this body and everyone watching at home to imagine what it must be like. Imagine traveling thousands of miles to flee some of the most dangerous countries in the world, countries with the highest murder rates, and then, when you finally think you are safe, having your child ripped away from you.

In 1946 to 1948, during the Truman administration, human experiments were conducted in Guatemala. American doctors infected mostly uneducated and indigenous people with syphilis. Today, in the Trump administration, we are forcing drugs in pill form and injection on the indigenous children seeking asylum.

So this brings us to why we are here today. Mr. Speaker, everyone watching this debate should be crystal clear on what this bill does. This bill fails to solve the separation of families on our Nation's border. It reduces legal immigration. It fails to offer DACA recipients a path to citizenship. It adds $25 billion to our growing wall of debt on top of the $2 trillion that we already added when Republicans voted for their tax scam.

This bill makes it harder for those seeking asylum to receive protection, and it fails to protect the 2,000 children who have already been separated from their parents.

Many will call this legislation the more conservative option that the House will consider today. But let us be clear, this bill is not conservative at all.

After adding trillions to our Nation's debt through the tax scam, Republicans now are putting us in another $25 billion debt. Where are we going to borrow this money from?

Remember, colleagues, President Trump has declared a trade war with China. What will happen if China decides to cash in on that debt?

In addition, President Trump's family jails will cost the American taxpayer 10 times more than the alternative policy he ended for family migration.

Conservative? Absolutely not. Cruel? Inhumane? Absolutely, yes.

Mr. Speaker, last night, during consideration of this bill in the Rules Committee, my colleagues and I offered many fixes, which were all blocked by this rule. My amendment to replace the bill with the Keep Families Together Act, which would have reunited families, was blocked.

Representative Roybal-Allard and Representative Polis joined me in offering the Dream Act as an alternative, but that was blocked also.

Another Rules Committee Member, Representative Hastings, and his amendment to fix TPS, blocked.

But not all amendments were blocked. Just like President Trump's executive order contained misspellings, this bill contained a giant typo to give President Trump an additional $100 billion for his wall.

So which is it? $25 billion? $100 billion? Are Mexicans going to pay for it? What is it?

The committee has said that they are making this correction, and they did so in the middle of the night. But I doubt President Trump would be happy to hear that, so we will wait and see.

If this truly is a mistake, these kinds of corrections could have been caught if Democrats had been allowed to participate in this process, if we would have had a committee hearing.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule and this cruel legislation now, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, Chairman Goodlatte just clarified that his bill has been in print for 6 months. I thank the gentleman for clarifying. The American people should know that your real intention was to allocate $100 million for the Trump wall, and it wasn't until we shined the light on that, that in the middle of the night the Republican caucus scrambled to reduce that amount to $25 million.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Barragan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to strike the text of this rule and insert House Resolution 774, Representative Denham's bipartisan queen-of-the-hill resolution. This rule would bring up four separate immigration bills to be debated and voted on the House floor.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Aguilar) to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from California an additional 15 seconds.

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

Mr. Speaker, in 1970, a Guatemalan couple decided to send their daughter to the U.S. That young girl was I. I was welcomed here in a loving home. I was not put in a freezing cell. My parents felt they had no choice. My mother died a couple of years later.

These parents are making a choice that, frankly, I could not make today for my children. A few months ago, I was away from home for so long--4 weeks--that my grandson, a 3-year-old, felt he had to reintroduce himself to me because he had not seen me for 4 weeks. He didn't think that I would remember him. Imagine an infant when that infant is returned to their parent; they will be introduced to a total stranger.

Pope Francis just tweeted: Pray together, walk together, work together. This is the way that leads to Christian unity.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule and this cruel legislation. Let's help those who can't help themselves in these very corrupt countries of the Northern Triangle. They are not s---holes as the President has referred to them. Let's give them an opportunity to live another day.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.