Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 18 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, June 5, 2019, at 9 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to address what I think is the most pressing issue in America right now. But prior to addressing it, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Congratulating Samaritan's Purse on New Ministry Center in North

Wilkesboro, North Carolina

Madam Speaker, prior to addressing the immigration crisis, which is the biggest problem, I think, facing America today, after hearing a rather lengthy speech before mine, I was analyzing the well here and noticing the flag of the United States of America behind me. As I am looking at that flag, I couldn't help but think about the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Pledge of Allegiance begins: ``I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.''

I pondered why that Pledge of Allegiance refers to this country as a republic instead of a democracy of which it stands. I think it would be a good thing for the other Congressmen up here to think about that as well.

There have been several versions of the Pledge of Allegiance. In each one of the versions, while there are changes made, it refers to our country as a republic instead of a democracy. We should wonder why that is, and I think every Congressman should read up on the difference.

Now, the reason I am here today is to discuss what I think is the biggest problem in the United States of America, the one thing we have to deal with in the immediate future and something that I believe does not grab the attention of Congress the way it should, and that is the immigration crisis.

One more time, another month will go by, and another 100,000 people will enter this country not at the designated points of entry. We believe another 10,000 people will enter at the points of entry and claim asylum, whether they actually need asylum or not.

No country can afford to have over 100,000 people pour into that country month after month after month without being appropriately vetted, stepping in line ahead of the people who are doing what is appropriate to become a citizen of the United States or appropriate to get a work visa in the United States.

Ultimately, this will destroy our country, and it is something that this Congress should be dealing with immediately.

I think it is a little embarrassing, hearing all the other speeches up here and no speeches about the immigration crisis.

I want to point out, neither I nor President Trump wants to reduce the 700,000 people who are sworn in as citizens in this country every year, neither do we want to deal with the 4 million work permits that people in this country already have. Neither are they overly concerned that we, right now, have the highest number of foreign-born people in this country as a percentage of our total population since World War I.

Now, what are we going to do about this crisis? Because, obviously, be it culturally, be it fiscally, we cannot allow this to go on any further.

The first thing I think President Trump should do is end birthright citizenship. To say that if you come here, and particularly given that we allow entire families to stay once somebody is a citizen, to continue to allow the situation to happen in which, if you come here, whether you come in not at a designated point of entry, whether you come here flying in on a jet plane, in the United States of America, a newly born child becomes a citizen.

We and Canada are the only two countries of the 40 wealthiest countries in the world per capita that allow this birthright citizenship to continue.

I know President Trump understands this problem very well. He understands very well, as some Members of Congress do not, that the amendment to the Constitution that talks about people being born in this country becoming citizens was meant to deal with slavery, not meant to deal with anybody who comes here.

I strongly urge President Trump to step up and do something that he talked about doing during his campaign, and that is ending birthright citizenship.

In addition to the fact that it is wrong on its face, as long as you have birthright citizenship, it encourages people to come here, even illegally, knowing that if they have a child here, it will create a situation in which there is a good chance the rest of the family will follow.

The next thing I think we can do is put immigration judges on the border. Right now, people are showing up, and they are asking for asylum. They are given a court date 5 years down the line.

Well, who knows whether they will be around in 5 years. They probably will not show up for the court date at that time.

I strongly encourage President Trump to put judges on the border so we can immediately judge whether these people are entitled to asylum or not.

The next thing, along the same lines, I strongly encourage the Border Patrol to be trained to judge credible fear. Again, we believe that there are people coming from other countries who claim they have a credible fear who do not meet that standard as far as coming to the United States. We know that people are being coached as to what to say to come into this country. By training our Border Patrol to deal with these issues, we will not have so many people coming into the country illegally.

The next thing I strongly think that President Trump should do is he should have ICE round up the million people who already have orders to be deported. This should be a relatively simple matter. By deporting some people, it sends the message to people in other countries that the United States will take our immigration laws seriously.

Today, to a certain extent, because far too many politicians are encouraging things like sanctuary cities, getting rid of ICE, talking about giving public benefits to people who are here illegally, it is not surprising that people in other countries are getting the message that the United States does not treat its immigration laws seriously.

The next thing I think we ought to do is I hope President Trump expedites the rule in the Department of Homeland Security dealing with allowing for removal of people who are taking advantage of public assistance.

Obviously, the United States cannot become the welfare magnet for the entire Western Hemisphere. Everybody knows that, while it is frequently illegal, many people who are here illegally are taking advantage of public assistance, and we should expedite the legal ability to remove these people.

I would like to take a pause here to congratulate Secretary Ben Carson for removing illegals from public housing.

I will point out something a lot of people don't know. Frequently, under Section 8 or, even more, under section 42, the housing assistance they get from the government gives people housing that is superior to what many of the working people get. It is even more ridiculous when people who are here illegally get housing superior to what many of the native-born people in this country who rent are receiving.

So I would like to thank Secretary Carson for having the ability to step up and begin to take a stand on the idea that, if you come here illegally, you should get free or reduced housing.

The next thing I would like to see this House take up is sanctuary cities. I have introduced H.R. 516, which takes away grants from State and local units of government that become sanctuary cities.

There are a variety of problems with sanctuary cities. First of all, it encourages people to go to those cities to get some sort of welfare benefit.

Secondly, whenever a mayor or a Governor wants to declare their city or State a sanctuary city, it sends the message that the United States is not going to enforce its immigration laws. As long as that message is out here, people will continue to flow into our country, and it will eventually be the end of the United States.

The next thing I want this body to do is pass H.R. 848, another bill of mine. The purpose of that bill is to increase the verification for compliance on any welfare benefits which people who are not in this country could be receiving. We are also saying that anybody who is not a citizen of this country should not receive any public assistance, which should be common sense.

If you are coming here for an opportunity and you are not able to find a job, even if you are coming here legally, the answer is not to have the American taxpayer who is already $23 trillion in debt pick up the tab. The answer is, if you cannot find opportunity in this country, return to your country of origin.

I hope this body, which is spending so much time dealing with less important issues, takes up this bill in the near future.

Finally, I ask President Trump to continue to work towards the wall. I ask this Congress, as we move appropriation bills out, to make sure that wall is funded.

I have been down on the border. I did not find any Border Patrol agents who were embarrassed to do their job or didn't want to do their job. The Border Patrol agents that I talked to on the Arizona-Mexico border felt we desperately needed a wall. They realize

that walls work in other countries, and they realize that in the long- or even in the short-term, walls would save us a lot of money.

Right now, different estimates vary between $50 billion, $100 billion a year is lost because of illegal immigration. Given the cost of a wall would be under $10 billion, it would be a big cost savings. And for a country that is $23 trillion in debt, we need big cost savings.

In any event, those are suggestions of some of the things we can do to deal with this crisis.

Think about it: 100,000 people coming here every month, people unvetted, people who may wind up on welfare, people who may wind up having a criminal record, and all coming here skipping ahead in line of those people who have sometimes waited 5 or 10 years to come here legally, which is incredibly unfair to them.

In any event, I hope Congress begins to act on these measures. I encourage President Trump to make border enforcement his number one priority over the next couple months, because we can see it. It is very difficult to remove any of these people once they come to this country.

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

Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank President Trump for earlier today, one more time, bringing the issue of immigration to the forefront. I think President Trump's speech was an interesting speech and provided a nice starting point for the immigration discussion ahead.

I would like to highlight three issues that I hope the President will consider as we move forth on some sort of compromise on this problem.

The first issue that I really wish President Trump would have addressed today, but I am sure he will address in the future because he has dealt with it in the past, is birthright citizenship.

If we are going to get control over who is in this country, we cannot allow the continuation of something which was certainly not intended by the Constitution, and that is something called birth tourism. I know somebody from California, and they see, on a regular basis, people coming to California to have a child here.

Now, I know in the future we want to vet our future immigrants. We want to perhaps have a balance between different countries. We want to make sure that the immigrants who are coming here learn English, the people who are coming here are going to be hardworking people and not become a public charge.

Under current law, the United States interprets, wrongly, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution as requiring that, if someone is born here, they will become a citizen here. That, of course, was not the intent of the Amendment, and President Trump, I know, knows it was not the intent of the Amendment.

The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution was solely put in for the purpose of making sure that slaves who were born in the country prior to the Emancipation Proclamation would become citizens. There was a fear at the time that some unethical, particularly Southern, States would say that people who were not citizens prior to the Civil War were not citizens after the Civil War.

Obviously, that Amendment was not designed to say somebody who was a tourist here, somebody who was here illegally or whatever, if they had a child, that that child would become a citizen.

It is time that President Trump do what he talked about doing in November and October, and I applaud him when he will do it, and that he get rid of the birthright citizenship. I think he can do this as President by himself, though it would be nice if Congress would pass such a law.

Right now in this country, we estimate that 7.5 percent of the births in this country are births of people who are here illegally. There are a variety of problems with that.

First of all, it encourages illegal immigration, in part because, once somebody is a citizen, under the family laws that we have right now in the United States, the parents, perhaps the siblings, will eventually become citizens outside of the way we want to pick our future citizens and make sure that they are appropriately vetted.

Now, we know that there are, I call them devious one worlders on both sides of the aisle who will fight this.

The reason this has remained a practice in the United States for several decades is, unfortunately, perhaps even Republican Presidents, for whatever reason, did not want to have our immigration laws be treated seriously.

But I do call upon President Trump to stop this policy. I think it is important not only to discourage illegal immigration, but I do not think right now that, when people come here on work visas, it is the intent of Congress that these people's children will automatically become citizens.

I think we want to stop the excessive policy of chain migration which follows, as then the parents who broke the law when they came into this country would be able to turn around and become citizens themselves, kind of a reward for breaking the law.

So I hope as this immigration law moves through the process and President Trump fine-tunes things, he does what we were all so happy to hear him say he would do last October, and that is end birthright citizenship.

The next thing I think we want to look at is the idea of public benefits for illegal immigrants. First of all, under current law, you are not hypothetically supposed to get public benefits if you are here illegally.

I would like to thank Housing and Urban Development Secretary Carson for stepping to the plate and making sure that people who broke the law to come here do not take advantage of our generous low-income housing benefits.

However, we should go beyond that. We should pass a bill saying, outright, that public benefits are not things that we should give to anybody who is not a citizen.

First of all, we are broke. I don't think it has been publicized enough,

but about 20 percent of the current Federal spending is borrowed. When you are around $23 trillion in debt, the idea of providing generous public benefits to people who are not citizens is preposterous.

Secondly, insofar as efforts are made to increase our citizenship through things like DACA, we do want to make sure that we are not collecting immigrants who are eventually, themselves, going to become a public charge or coming here because of our generosity rather than the opportunities that take place for people who work hard.

I have introduced legislation which will say that any local unit of government that gives benefits to people who are not citizens will lose its ability to give those benefits, because we have to crack down on this. Otherwise, the future generations of Americans will no longer be like past generations who came here to take advantage of the opportunity to get through hard work, but we will begin to get some people here who will take advantage of the opportunities that are available from government benefits.

I hope President Trump, as he continues to discuss this immigration situation, talks about this.

The third thing I think he should talk about, and something that I don't think the mainstream media has highlighted enough, is what we are going to be spending money on in the next budget.

So the viewers back home are aware, when we pass our annual spending bills, we break it into 12 separate bills.

Now, right now, as we have 100,000 people a month crossing our border illegally, I would say that it is probably the number one concern for the future of the United States.

Sadly, the majority party, as they let us know where their priorities lie, told us the percentage of increases in each one of these 12 bills. For example, Labor and HHS was due for a 6 percent increase; Defense for a 3 percent increase; State and Foreign Ops, a 5 percent increase; the Legislative Branch, I think, about a 3 percent increase.

Who came along in last place at 1 percent? Homeland Security. In other words, a sign that the least priority in the next budget should be enforcing our borders, this at a time where groups estimate the cost of illegal immigration to our country to be between $50 billion and $100 billion.

Not to mention, when we talk about the moral fiber of America, which has kept us going for so long, we begin to have the next wave of immigrants, who will become the next wave of Americans, whose first action coming to this country is breaking the law.

I want to point out that neither I nor President Trump is anti- immigrant. I think it is tremendous that every year in this country we swear in another 700,000 citizens. I think it is wonderful in this country that we have 4 million people here on work visas, and it is possible that number will go up in the future.

But there is a difference between people coming here on work visas; there is a difference between people going through the appropriate steps and getting sworn in legally and people who are crossing the border illegally.

These are three suggestions of things that I would think would be minimal requirements before an immigration compromise is reached.

Again, I emphasize we should get rid of birth right citizenship. The idea of people flying here from other countries or crossing the Rio Grande and saying ``my child automatically becomes a citizen'' must end.

I think the practice of having people who are here illegally or anybody who is here who is not a citizen getting public benefits--and frequently those public benefits, particularly in the area of healthcare, are superior benefits to those which the average working American has. As a matter of fact, frequently, public housing today is superior to some of the housing that people who have to pay their own rent can afford. But I hope we step up to the plate and make sure that, with regard to immigration, there are no public benefits.

And finally, with so many people flooding across the border, I hope we aggressively fight the idea that the least important part of our upcoming appropriations bills is Homeland Security.

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

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 17 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, May 17, 2019, at 9 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the crisis at our southern border.

Obviously, we have a big problem on the southern border. If you have been paying attention to what is on TV, at the beginning of the year, about 50,000 people were arriving here every month. We are now, we believe, at 100,000 people illegally entering this country.

One of the reasons this is happening, it is not surprising that people from other countries think the United States does not enforce their immigration laws. Many local governments are sanctuary cities, sanctuary counties, or even sanctuary States, sending the clear message to people in other parts of the world: the United States does not enforce their immigration laws.

Sadly, even in my home State of Wisconsin, the Governor of Wisconsin pulled the Wisconsin Air National Guard off the border, sending the message that a Governor of a State does not apparently believe we should be spending money enforcing our immigration laws.

The chief executives of the biggest city in the country and the biggest State in the country have both made it clear that they will provide, or want to provide, free medical care to people who come here.

By the way, I should point out that, right now, at a time when so many Americans have huge deductibles, they are almost better off being here illegally and getting the free medical care than our citizens are.

In any event, it is not surprising that we are flooded with people who want to come here.

Another evidence of that is this body's refusal to appropriate enough money to build the wall. Now, in the last week--at least, it has been put out there--we have the majority party's suggestion or guidance for where we are going to spend money in the next budget.

Now, Madam Speaker, given the crisis at the border, you would think the biggest increase in the next budget compared to the 2020 budget would be at Homeland Security--but, no.

So the people back home understand, when we pass our annual appropriations, when we fund the budget, we break it into 12 different subcommittees, subcommittees like Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies; subcommittees like State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs; subcommittees like Defense and the subcommittee in charge of protecting our southern border, Homeland Security.

Of the 12 groups that this body is going to vote on, which classification is getting the smallest increase in this budget? Homeland Security. One more time, the Congress itself is sending the message that we do not take our immigration laws seriously.

It is time for us to send the message to people abroad that they should be taking our immigration laws seriously. After all, given the complete irresponsibility from so many politicians up here, it doesn't surprise me people think we don't take our immigration laws seriously.

What can we do?

Well, recently FAIR came out with a report in which they guessed that maybe over half the people who are in this country illegally are getting some sort of public benefit. When I went down to the border in Arizona awhile back and talked to Customs people who went through people's wallets and people's purses, they found evidence of people receiving public benefits who were not citizens here.

I am glad our HUD Secretary is beginning to look into the, I believe, large number of people here illegally taking advantage of low-income housing.

I want to point out, there is nothing wrong with legal immigrants coming here. Neither myself nor Donald Trump, who ran on this issue, want to decrease the 700,000 people who are sworn in every year as legal immigrants, and we do not want to decrease the 4 million people who are here on legal work visas. As a matter of fact, we said, if need be, we would even increase that.

But to have so many people come here illegally is, no question, a huge problem. I would suggest to President Trump, because you can't wait for Congress to do anything around here, that he send a message that, when Secretary Carson finds people in low-income housing who are here illegally, they should be deported.

I certainly have anecdotal evidence from back home that people who are here illegally are benefiting from SNAP benefits; and people who are, again, here illegally taking--not deporting everybody, but if they are taking advantage of our public benefits, again, they should return home and try to make a living in their home country or get benefits available in their home country.

The next thing I would like to see happen, I know it is something President Trump ran on--I think it is time he rings the bell--is ending birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is something that can cause somebody to become legal here whose parents are illegal.

We should not reward illegal behavior by having people come here illegally and have a child in the country; not to mention, it is not right to encourage pregnant people to just fly here and have a baby in this country and wind up having their family stay here legally by that way as well.

One thing that intrigues me is that apparently Canada is looking to get rid of their birthright citizenship law, one of the few other Western countries that has it. It would be very embarrassing if Justin Trudeau's Canada gets rid of the antiquated birthright citizenship law ahead of Donald Trump's United States.

In any event, I strongly encourage President Trump to counteract the message being sent by so many other elected officials and make it clear that our immigration laws are to be taken seriously.

Please, Mr. Trump, send the message. Congress is paralyzed. Stand up not only to the people overtly discouraging and ignoring our immigration laws, but stand up to the Chamber of Commerce lobby and say that, in the future, we want our immigrants to be picked, merit-based immigrants, not whoever decides to break the law.

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

Madam Speaker, today I would like to address the status of abortion in America.

In the past 2 months, there have been two stories that show a significant shift, I believe, in America regarding the status of abortion.

In New York, one of our original 13 Colonies, they recently expanded the right to have abortions up to 9 months and, as a practical matter, left it to be okay for a baby born alive not to receive protection. The Governor of New York was so proud of this situation that he lit up the World Trade Center and people applauded in the Senate chamber.

In Virginia, another one of our original 13 States, the Governor came out for a bill that also allows 9-month abortions. The morally bereft Governor said that, if a baby was born alive, that baby would only be resuscitated if the mother wanted.

By the way, I want to point out here there is this myth out there that late-term abortions are only for babies who may not survive.

I once heard a speech from a woman who quit a late-term abortion clinic in Ohio. She was there only one day. At that time, there were six babies delivered. Five had no health problems whatsoever, and the other had either spina bifida--I think it was spina bifida. And, of course, many people live productive lives with that disease.

Only 10 years ago, Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia was convicted of delivering babies alive and killing them after they were born--perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands.

You can read about them in a book by that name, ``Gosnell.'' There is a movie out as well; kind of very interesting to see the mindset of the abortion industry.

But Gosnell was defiant. When they talked to him after he was convicted, as a practical matter, put in prison for life, he said, in the end, he would be vindicated. And I think when he said vindicated, he meant in 10 years that he felt America would come around to the position that it would be okay to kill a baby born alive.

Who would dream that less than 10 years later, Gosnell may be on the verge of being proven right, and that the moral compass of America had shifted so much that it would be okay to allow a born-alive baby to die.

How did we get here? There are a variety of culprits to blame. Part of it, of course, is the thinly disguised racism of our old friend, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. And I should point out that even Margaret Sanger, feminist hero, was opposed to abortion because as recently as 60 years ago, even among people of that ilk, that would have been considered something that you could never be for.

But she did want her organization to reduce people from races she considered inferior, and this was typical of the views of the early progressives.

We also have people viewing it also as a way to hold down the people that we consider undesirable.

Justice Ginsberg was quoted in the New York Times that she thought Roe was decided, in part, because of a concern about population growth in populations we don't want too many of. Now, she was subsequently allowed to say that that quote was taken out of context, but that was the quote that was listed. They kind of gave her a chance to try to walk that thing back; a chance that wasn't given Steve King.

Later, the same point was made by an article in the Harvard Journal crediting abortion with the reduction in crime rates.

Part of the problem is the usual weight of promiscuous politicians who would obviously be for abortion; people like the Ted Kennedys or Bill Clintons or Bob Packwoods of the world; and, obviously, there are a given number of men who have a vested interest in making sure abortion is always available.

Part of the problem is the pernicious influence of Hollywood. The ``Me Too Movement'' has opened up eyes as to the mindset of powerful people in Hollywood and that, perhaps, is one of the reasons why the popular culture would be all largely pro-choice to the extreme or pro- abortion to the extreme.

But still, why is it in America that we are such an outlier? John Adams said that this country--that the Constitution was put together for a morally and religious people. The Pilgrims came from Europe to found a more devout country. Yet, in Europe, a much less religious country than ours, the norm is no abortions after 12 weeks. You look around. Germany, 12 weeks; France, 12 weeks; Italy, 90 days; Portugal, 10 weeks.

How did America wind up, in States like New York saying, okay for 9 months?

And you look south of the border. Mexico, most of their states don't allow abortion to this day; and it is 12 weeks in the area of Mexico City.

So, we will have to look further why did this happen.

I had originally felt, with the advent of the ultrasound, America would become overwhelmingly pro-life. I had toured abortion clinics when the ultrasound was a little bit rare, and I could see the language that was used to mislead America as to what was going on.

In the abortion industry, they don't use the word ``abortion.'' They talk about ``procedures.'' They don't even use the word ``fetus,'' much less ``baby.'' They use the word ``tissue.''

But I felt the ultrasound would overcome that language that I felt was one of the reasons abortion was still so common.

So who else can we blame?

Obviously, politicians have dropped the ball. Obviously, we have horrible judges who can look at the Constitution, a document founded for a moral and religious people, and claim that when our forefathers put together that Constitution, they apparently expected abortion to be legal, and abortion being illegal for so much of this country's history.

To a certain extent, when you look at the judges, I think we have to blame the law schools, you know. Americans, whatever polls you look at, bounce back and forth between what people would say is 50 percent pro- abortion, 50 percent pro-life.

I wonder, in the law schools, the law school students, the law school faculty, what those numbers are, which is maybe one of the reasons why so few of the judges seem to be able to get the appropriate answer here.

But where I would like to put the attention is, where are the churches?

You know, it must be kind of difficult to be a minister or a priest. You have got to come up with 50 or 52 different topics a year to talk about.

Now, we have a situation going on in this country where we peaked out at over a million abortions a year, and we are still over 600,000. You look what is going on in Virginia, and you look at what is going on in New York; and it seems to me there is fertile ground for the priest or minister looking for something to say.

Nevertheless, I have taken to spending the last few weeks kind of talking to people at random as to how often in the past year, when the priests and ministers are looking for 50 different topics to talk about, how often they have addressed the abortion issue.

It is not unusual, as a matter of fact, I would say the majority of people I talked to who go to a church, it is not brought up at all. I mean, I will tell you, it would be very difficult to come up with 50 different topics a year. But how you can come up with 50 different topics a year, and with 600,000 abortions in this country every year, and not deal with that?

But I think a lot of the blame has to lie there. Whenever there are great tragedies in human history, I think people expect the clergy to step up and provide some moral guidance.

So I end this speech by saying three things:

First of all, I ask the pro-life groups not to give up.

Secondly, I ask the politicians to bring forth bills like the Born- Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which, by the way, in itself, shows some weakness, and we have a relatively weak bill. And that is, I guess, what our pro-life position is today, or the bill we can bring to the floor.

It is kind of sad that we didn't even get a final vote on that in the Senate, but the bill should be brought up to educate America on the state of abortion in America right now.

And finally, and most importantly, I ask the churches to finally step up.

You know, I look on a calendar, and this June there will be five weekends. Okay. So your average priest, your average minister out there is going to have to think of five topics to talk about.

So I would like to ask the people of this country, and any clergy who happen to hear this speech, to devote at least one of those 5 weeks in June to this stain of over 600,000 abortions in this country every year, and ask yourself, what is the right or wrong thing to do?

And if you are one of those clergymen who, over the last year has not addressed this issue--see, I am making your life easier for you, you only have to think of four other things to talk about, rather than the five weekends in June--I ask you to spend one week in June addressing this issue and encouraging people to finally say no more of this scourge in the United States.

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

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 53 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, March 8, 2019, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the current committee meeting on our immigration problems and problems connected to the wall. I would like to spend a few moments updating the American people on the key issues and the status of the key issues that we ought to remember as that committee does its work.

I have spent some time talking with constituents in the Sixth Congressional District and, one more time, want to address their concerns, or maybe address some misconceptions that are out there regarding this issue.

The first thing I will address is the need to compromise. And it is true that, in this body, again and again, we must compromise. But I want to point out that prior to this committee, President Trump, has elected to--more than any other issue--deal with the immigration crisis, has compromised considerably.

First of all, on the issue of whether we need a wall--and we will talk about that wall. At various different times, various different people have suggested different amounts on the wall. Initially, people talked about 20 to $25 billion. The most recent or accurate estimate it would take--not to build an entire wall, but just to build parts of a wall in areas in which one could cross the border; in other words, areas in which the terrain does not form a natural border, would cost about $8 billion.

And I hope the negotiators who are Republicans will remember that $8 billion figure. I got it from the gentleman who was the head of the Border Patrol under the Obama administration.

President Trump, in an effort to reach some sort of compromise, has already gone down from $8 billion to $5.7 billion. I find that unfortunate, in that I toured the border about 3 weeks ago and, at the time--I know some of the wall that we so desperately need near Sasabe, Arizona, areas in which MS-13 has gone across the land, trampled across the land--and I have talked to the ranchers there, they will have to be told, sorry, we are building part of the wall, but not enough of a wall for you.

So already, that $5.7 billion figure is a big compromise.

I also want to point out with regard to time. People wonder why we are shutting down the government right now. Actually, we could shut down the government whenever people disagree on what should be in, what we call, an appropriations bill, but I think what people back home would call a budget. And every budget up here is a compromise. It contains hundreds of provisions. Every provision gone over, and maybe the Democrats want more of this; the Republicans want more of that.

In his first 2 years here, President Trump got budgets that contained very, very little for anything like a wall. This is unfortunate. President Trump, in particular, in a budget passed about a year ago, what we call an omnibus bill, complained what a bad bill it was. It was a horrible bill, but he signed it because he didn't want to shut down the government, which happens when both sides disagree.

So President Trump agreed to cave in to people that wanted to spend a lot more money on other things, in the interest of keeping the government open. But President Trump only gets a 4-year term.

For the first 2 years he signed appropriations bills without adequate money for the wall. Finally, in the third time around he said, look, I would be happy to sign a third year of appropriations, but this time, I would like money for a wall. He has compromised for over 2 years.

We had a government shutdown just 3 weeks ago because some headstrong Democrats, despite being happy to spend billions of dollars on other things, refused to give a little bit of money for the wall.

President Trump also extended the DACA program for another 2 years. And I will point out, that as well is something the Border Patrol was not thrilled about, because whenever you talk about extending the DACA program, it is kind of a magnet for people south of the border, because they believe we are not going to enforce our immigration laws anymore.

But, in an effort to compromise, President Trump agreed to extend the DACA extension for two more years. So there have been plenty of compromises already.

And my suggestion to the committee is that they bring in experts on how much it would take to really secure the border, and not be afraid if what President Obama's head of the Border Patrol said was right, and if we need $8 billion, then we spend $8 billion.

The next issue I am going to deal with is the cost of the wall; $5.7 billion or $8 billion--we will talk about the $5.7 billion President Trump has come down to--is a lot of money. But Congress spends a lot of money.

We should remember that the $5.7 billion President Trump wants is one-seventh the cost of foreign aid that this country spends every year. It is well under one-half of 1 percent of the overall Federal budget. It is actually about one-tenth of 1 percent.

President Trump has increased defense spending as President because our defense budget was too low to adequately protect our population. But the amount where he is asking for the wall is about one-twelfth of the increase that we will spend year after year after year on defense.

So you can see, when it comes to spending on anything but the wall, Congress has no time appropriating much more money; seven times the amount that we spend on foreign aid, and almost nobody objects.

All of a sudden, with the wall, oh, maybe it is too expensive.

The next thing I would like to address is, do we need a wall? What would happen if we don't have a wall?

Remember, I am talking about $5.7 billion for a wall. It really should be $8 billion.

First of all, about 90 percent of the heroin in this country comes across our southern border. Now, some people like to point out that the vast amount of heroin caught is at the points of entry, which is true. We have Customs at the point of entry, and they catch people.

In places where there is no wall, and I point to this area behind me near Sasabe, Arizona, people are not checked. We do not check vehicles. We do not check how much they have.

Occasionally, we are fortunate enough to catch people otherwise, but if you were going to sneak drugs across our southern border, would you try to go across a normal point of entry with plenty of Customs agents or out here in the middle of nowhere? Of course, in the middle of nowhere.

We are not serious about dealing with the heroin problem in this country or the fentanyl problem in this country unless we look to our southern border. We are not serious about securing our southern border until we get a wall.

Right now, at least 12 million people are in this country illegally, but the Border Patrol tells us they really have no idea how many people are in this country illegally because they don't count the number of people who are coming across in these open areas. They have told me it is entirely possible there are 20 million people in this country illegally.

Obviously, having so many people who are breaking the law just by being here is an unstable situation. When I talk to the Customs agents, they find evidence of EBT cards and evidence of Medicaid cards when people are walking across the border. Some of the people who are coming here illegally and, quite frankly, legally are illegally taking advantage of our welfare system.

If they are sick, they are certainly going to our hospitals, going to our emergency rooms, and running up the cost of healthcare for people who are here legally and paying their own way.

We believe, from the percentage of people who are here illegally in our Federal prisons, well more proportionately than the native-born population, that they are disproportionately committing crimes in this country.

Quite frankly, when you add up the cost of all these things--they show up; their kids get free education--The Heritage Foundation estimates that it costs more than $50 billion a year for illegal immigrants in this country. $8 billion for a wall, one-time money, as opposed to $50 billion year after year after year?

I am sometimes asked: Can America afford to build a wall? If we are losing $50 billion a year, we can't afford not to build a wall. Think how much stronger our economy will be when we are making sure that every immigrant who comes into this country is a good, productive immigrant.

Another reason we need a wall is that, for people who come across this sort of territory near Sasabe--and this isn't really the best picture--frequently, it is in desert, and rocky desert, not sandy desert, rocky desert. Thousands of people have been found around the Arizona-Mexico border after having died trying to get across this territory.

We are told that the cartels, which help people get across the border--in fact, are required to be dealt with to get across the border--mislead people when they get to the border. They point them and say this way to Phoenix, this way to Tucson, and it is maybe hundreds of miles further to get to Phoenix than they estimate. So the people are left to die of starvation or die, more likely, of dehydration.

It is a humanitarian crisis to continue to allow people to think that sneaking across the open parts of the current wall that has been built is the way to get in the United States.

In any event, we need a wall. We will continue to bleed money; we will continue to get people in this country illegally; and we will continue to get people who can only sneak into the country illegally rather than go across the normal points of entries unless we build that wall.

The next question that some people will ask is: Does this mean that we are anti-immigrant, because America is a country of immigrants? Yes, America is a country of immigration, but it is a country of legal immigration.

I will remind people that, every year in this country, 700,000 people are sworn in legally. Nobody is talking about cutting that number. A little under 4 million people come into this country on work visas every year, and a little under 2 million come in on student visas. Nobody is talking about cutting these numbers. Dozens of millions additional people come in on tourist visas.

With regard to the work visas or people who literally come in here legally and wind up being naturalized, what we are asking is, for the people who are trying to sneak off the border without checking in with the Border Patrol or Customs agents at the designated areas, we are just asking them to get in line and go through what everybody who is trying to come here legally is doing.

It is the height of irresponsibility to say that we are anti- immigrant when we are letting almost 4 million people come into this country every year on work visas and having 700,000 new people sworn in in this country, naturalized in this country. That is not the sign of an anti-immigrant President. That is the sign of a President who understands very clearly how important immigration is to our country.

By historic levels, it is very favorable to immigrants. We are going to have more foreign-born people in this country than at any time over the last 90 years. Again, that is not the sign of a President who is anti-immigrant.

The next thing I will point out, some people think: But can't people come into the country another way? Well, it is true. I suppose no system is 100 percent effective. But the one thing I am going to say is that we do have a lot of walls, and walls do work in other places we put the walls.

We have some pictures here of walls. Here are some walls in Sasabe, Arizona. There are spaces in the walls that aren't good, but when they build this sort of wall, whether they build the wall between Juarez and El Paso or a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, the walls have been very effective.

Here you see the wall between San Diego and Tijuana, a very effective wall. People are not getting around that wall. It decreased illegal crossings at that place over 90 percent.

Here is a wall in Israel between Israel and Egypt, because Israel was having a problem of people sneaking into their country illegally. So Israel built a wall. Well over 95 percent successful, nobody is getting across the wall anymore between Israel and Egypt, showing that the wall is successful.

Other countries with successful walls, a wall that was largely built with U.S. taxpayer money--which I will point out people who are not going to vote for this wall had no problem voting for--is the wall along the Jordan-Syria border and part of the border

with Iraq, because it is important for Jordan not to let terrorists into their country. That wall has been highly successful in keeping Jordan safe.

Another country that built a wall is Hungary, which shares a border with Serbia. They were afraid of other people coming from south of Hungary, in essence invading their country like people right now are trying to invade the United States. So they built a wall. Hungary has found that that sort of wall has been very successful in keeping out immigrants who they don't want to have in their country.

There is a reason why President Clinton wanted a wall between Tijuana and San Diego, and there is a reason why Israel and Hungary and nine other European nations have walls. It is because walls work, and that is the clearest way to prevent people from crossing into the country illegally.

There is another benefit to walls, too, that people don't take into account. It sends the message that the United States is serious about our immigration laws.

We will talk for just a second about border security and the degree to which we have to build a wall to send the message that the United States is serious, because you hear from time to time in this body that certain people say everybody wants border security. Well, that is funny, because there are all sorts of politicians in this country of both parties--I will include President Bush in this--who do all sorts of things that would indicate that we do not intend to enforce our borders.

Both the Governor of California and the mayor of New York have said that we should be providing free medical care to illegal immigrants. Does that sound like they want border security? It sounds more like they want to be a magnet for illegal immigration.

Dozens of sanctuary cities and sanctuary counties, and in the case of California, a whole State, set themselves up as areas in which local officials will not ask whether people are here legally or illegally. That is like a magnet to people south of the border as they hear American elected officials, in essence, say: Don't worry about the immigration laws being enforced in our city or our county or our State.

Those people do not want border security.

Keith Ellison, a former Congressman, now attorney general of Minnesota, says that natural borders create an injustice. In other words, there is a larger crowd out there who doesn't even know we have a country. They say everybody can come in. Who cares.

These are powerful people, and the people south of the border who want to come here illegally are listening to them.

The Oakland mayor, another powerful person, when ICE tried to wrap up over 100 people, criminals, in the Oakland area to send them out of this country, she alerted the public to the fact that ICE was in the area trying to enforce our immigration laws on criminals. Why would a mayor undermine ICE, which is trying to evict criminals from this country? The reason is simple: They don't care about border security.

Americans have to realize, for are a lot of elected officials out there, it is come one, come all. It is not let's pick our million or 2 million or 3 million people who are coming into the country every year. It is let's let everyone come into the country.

Those people are increasingly powerful, and their message is to ignore immigration laws, which is another reason why we need a wall.

Putting up a wall everywhere where we need a wall, there are a few natural barriers in which it is not necessary, but I would say we need at least another 300 miles of wall. To put up that additional 300 miles of wall and improve the wall we already have sends the message that people like the mayor of Oakland or the Congressmen who want to get rid of ICE do not speak for the American Government. We are serious about enforcing our immigration laws.

Now, the question is--and I don't want to tar all Democrats; I have a lot of Democrat friends. But why is the vast majority of Democrats not willing to compromise on this wall? Why are these Democrats who in the past had no problem voting for a wall when President Clinton was President, and they had no problem voting for additional wall when President Bush was President--and a lot of that appropriation when President Bush was President wasn't spent until President Obama was President and he was improving our walls. But why is a wall now immoral when the wall wasn't immoral under President Clinton or President Bush or President Obama?

The answer is twofold. One, sadly, is political. A couple of weeks ago, eight Democrats voted in a way that I think they would be okay with a wall, but that is not enough. Part is, sadly, political. Some people don't like President Trump, and they don't want to see him succeed.

Worse, we have an increasing radicalization within too many elements of the Democratic Party. I have been around long enough to remember when I think Democrats in this Chamber--I wasn't here for it--but like I said, where they would have quickly voted for appropriations for a wall under President Clinton. But this Keith Ellison new breed of Congressman type is quickly getting a vise grip on some members of the Democratic Party.

For that reason, votes that they would have taken in a heartbeat in the 1990s, or in the first decade of this century, or even 7 or 8 years ago, they will not take anymore. They genuinely believe in some sort of world in which anybody who wants can come here, and it won't affect the long-term safety of our Nation.

That is preposterous, but we have to remember, that is more and more common.

And I would look for the Democrats or anybody who comes down here to speak as to why it wasn't mean-spirited, it didn't send a bad message to build a wall under these other Presidents, but it does now.

So to, one more time, go over the points that have been made for people to remember:

President Trump has compromised and not built a wall for over 2 years--really breaking the heart of a lot of his supporters.

He has dropped the amount he wanted from, originally, $20 billion all the way, now, down under $6 billion, such a small amount that there will be big gaps in that wall because of his effort to compromise.

President Trump has even tried to bring other issues into the debate by extending DACA, hoping that this sweetener would cause other people to move a little bit on their negotiating point. It didn't.

I will digress for just one second while I talk about that DACA.

The third thing to remember is that that wall is one-seventh the cost of foreign aid in this country.

Is that too big of an amount? Is that something we can't handle? That is not true.

The next thing to remember is, when other Presidents were building the wall, there were no objections around here. All of a sudden, in 2019, when President Trump is President, in part due to the radicalization of some Members of this body and in part due to personal dislike of President Trump, too many people are willing to continue to allow people to stream across the border with drugs, violent people with disregard for their fellow citizens, not to give President Trump a win, and, in part, because their ideology has switched and they really don't need a wall at all.

The next thing to remember is walls work. If anybody questions, walls work.

Look at the wall between San Diego and Tijuana; look at the wall between Israel and Egypt; look at the wall between Serbia and Hungary. In all cases, these walls were working.

And if you talk to the Border Patrol today, as I have, the Border Patrol and Customs agents will tell you we need a wall. The people who are down there, who are experts on the topic, know that that wall will work--not 100 percent, but it will work a lot better than what they have now.

I should point out, they want a smart wall; they want a wall with some sensors on there; and they want a wall with a road.

One of the problems we have right now enforcing our southern border is that, without a road, given the rough terrain, even if we find out somebody is sneaking across the border, the Border

Patrol could not get there on a very timely basis because their vehicles can't move there.

Here, we have an example of a wall with a road that the Border Patrol can get up and down on.

Here, we have an example of a wall without a road, which makes it very difficult to stop people on a timely basis.

And then the other thing for people to remember, when people talk about their problems with the wall, there are a growing number of politicians out there, local or Federal, who really don't want border security. They would be pretty happy with coming across the border now.

Now, as far as looking down the future on this issue, one of the things that scares me is, with all these people fighting against the wall, it is going to take more resolve, because that is only one of the issues that has to be tackled for us to secure our borders.

Right now, our asylum laws are very flawed. People are trying to come into this country, sometimes with other people's children, knowing that if they say the magic words and that they are at risk, we will have to let them in this country until there is some sort of court proceeding that they almost certainly won't show up for.

So after we are done with the wall, or maybe as part of the wall negotiations, we have got to do something with our asylum laws to prevent anybody who either has a child or is borrowing somebody else's child from trying to come in this country.

Another problem we have: We have got a problem with people coming in this country for welfare. As I mentioned, the Customs agents see that.

We have people coming into this country because of relatives, what in most cases would even be referred to as shirttail relatives, but they are taking advantage of that to come into this country.

In any event, we have people who are becoming citizens on birthright citizenship. And people are coming in this country 8 months pregnant, having a child so that their family can come into the United States. There is another loophole that very few countries have that we have to close.

So this wall which President Trump has been fighting for for over 2 years is only the first step of many steps that we absolutely have to do to save our country.

I plead with the American public, ask people from both sides of the aisle: Remember that Bill Clinton built part of a wall. Remember that people had no problem voting for a wall under George Bush, and remember that even Barack Obama improved part of the wall.

And I ask the people on the other side--I hate to say ``on the other side,'' but people on the other side of the aisle, other than those who have already changed and said it is okay for a wall:

Pretend it is the 1990s or the first decade of this century and somebody else was President, when a little more old-fashioned values ruled the show and we wanted to be a country of laws, and vote like almost everybody on that side of the aisle would have voted in the 1990s or the first decade of the century. Vote for $5.7 billion--or better, a full $8 billion towards the wall so that we can secure our country, at least insofar as a border can secure our country. After that, we can tackle the problems with the asylum laws and other flaws in our immigration laws, tackle birthright citizenship so that we are determining who can come into our country in the future, because immigrants have been so valuable, historically, but we should aim for every immigrant being a good immigrant.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 52 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, February 8, 2019, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, we have another weekend gone by and another speech of our President on the issue of illegal immigration and what to do with the wall on the southern border.

I take this opportunity, after spending the weekend talking to several constituents of the Sixth Congressional District, to deal with some misconceptions in this debate.

The first misconception I would like to talk about is whether Donald Trump can compromise, because there are some people out there who feel that the delay in opening the government was because this, admittedly, type A individual could not compromise.

The shutdown was caused because we had not passed an appropriation bill that both, I can say, sides, both the pro-wall and anti-wall people could agree with. President Trump previously--this is his third year--signed two appropriation bills funding the Department of Homeland Security and the rest of the government without getting a wall. It was not until the third time that President Trump and Congress could not reach an agreement on the Homeland Security bill. And I will point out that was largely because Congress couldn't get along, not President Trump.

After a delay of over 30 days, President Trump has, one more time, compromised. He compromised to allow 3 more weeks of the government to be open on the promise, or the implied promise, of the Speaker that she will, in good faith, negotiate about a wall.

President Trump, during this time, also agreed to an extension, a DACA extension, which the border patrol, quite frankly, would disagree with, because they feel it will encourage more people to be optimistic and come here illegally across the border. He also extended temporary protected status, another thing which may or may not be right, but was a further olive branch towards people, who, so far, would refuse to vote for a budget with the funding of a wall.

In any event, I think, if you look at the past, President Trump has been more than willing to compromise, signing bill after bill in his first 2 years, despite not making due on his number one campaign promise, extending temporary protected status, a DACA extension, and now a 3-week extension.

You can say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but you cannot say he is not willing to compromise. I think very, very many people feel he has compromised more than enough.

The next question is: Do we need a wall? Is a wall necessary? And the fact is it is. We need a wall because we need secure borders.

First of all, as has been pointed out, 70 percent of the heroin in this country, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths, comes across our southern border. Some of that heroin comes across points of entry, and at the points of entry, it is not unusual to catch people sneaking in heroin. Some people have made something of the fact that not a lot of heroin is caught in the 60 percent of the southern border that has no barrier at all up.

That is because there is no barrier. We have no idea how much heroin is coming across there, but common sense will tell you, if you wanted to sneak illegal drugs in this country and have a choice between going across a regular point of entry with perhaps dogs and border control agents or somebody out in the middle of nowhere, you would go somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. It is hard to tell me that anyone cares about the heroin crisis in this country if they do not want a wall.

The next thing to look for is all the people sneaking into the country. The border patrol itself will tell you they have no idea how many people are coming across the border. We can say, at a minimum, we have 11 or 12 million people in this country illegally, but for all I know, talking with somebody from the border patrol today, it could be 20 million.

And the question is, if we are going to let more people in this country, are we going to let people in this country who are sneaking across the border or people who are coming here legally?

Another problem with people coming here legally, I would argue, is they may be more likely to use welfare or that sort of thing when they come to the country. Talking to the customs agents, I have found evidence, when they looked at people's purses, when they looked at people's wallets, of evidence of people using EBT cards or Medicaid cards, taking free goods from the American taxpayer.

People are committing crime. One can see when more walls are built on the southern border; crime goes down on the other side of the wall. A large percentage of people who are in Federal prisons are illegal immigrants, which is not surprising, given that they broke the law to come here.

It is a dangerous way to get in. Thousands of people have been found dead trying to sneak across areas not at a point of entry. And having been down in the desert in Arizona, I can easily see why that would happen. People are giving children to other people to come across the border, knowing it is easier to stay here if you come with children.

Obviously, that is a dangerous thing. As President Trump says, it is a humanitarian crisis not to shut off the flow of people who are coming across the desert hoping to get to America.

Finally, it is a huge cost to the American taxpayer. Something is said about the almost $6 billion President Trump is asking for a wall. A variety of different organizations make different guesses as to the cost of illegal immigration every year. It is probably more than $50 billion. It is not surprising when you take into effect the free healthcare, the free education, the welfare given out, and the cost to our criminal justice system.

In any event, do we need a wall? If we care about heroin, we need a wall. If we care about the cost to government, we need a wall. If we care about people who are hurt by criminals who come across the border, we need a wall. And I should point out that, right now, that border is controlled by the drug cartels in Mexico. We need a wall.

The third issue I would like to address is there are some people who feel that Donald Trump is anti-immigrant or America is becoming nativist by requiring a wall. That is not true. Every

year, in this country, over 700,000 people are sworn in legally to become citizens in this country. Almost 4 million people are given work visas to come into this country. Another close to 2 million people come into this country hoping to be students or to become students in this country.

All we are asking, if people want to sneak across the border, is do it legally. Get in line to be one of the 700,000 people who are going to be sworn in legally. Get in line to be one of the almost 4 million people who get work-type visas to come here.

I think compared to other countries, quite frankly, there is no comparison. You look at other countries--Mexico, Germany, countries like that--you will find the number of people that they are allowing to naturalize into their country is percentage-wise much less than the United States of America.

It is incredibly open-minded, and with open arms, that the United States continues to let these large numbers of people come into this country to naturalize, to become students, or to work in this country, and nobody is talking about reducing those very large numbers. All we are saying is: Don't skip in line.

The next issue I hear people talk about is: Do walls work? If you build a wall, will it prevent people from coming across the border?

We can look at the southern border already, and we can look at walls around the world.

Look at the southern border. In the 1990s, we built a border wall between San Diego and Tijuana. People crossing at that point dropped 92 percent, an incredible success.

We have built other walls, walls near El Paso, walls near Tucson, walls near Yuma. All of these walls currently built have reduced illegal immigration by over 90 percent.

Look around the world in other countries building walls. Israel built a well-known wall around 2010 between themselves and Egypt. Before they built the wall, they were having about 1,500 people come across their border illegally. After they built the wall, bit by bit, that number has dropped all the way down to nothing. That is a pretty good success rate, going from 1,500 a week to nothing.

You don't hear those people saying: Oh, people are sneaking across. They're going over the wall or going under the wall.

No, a well-done wall reduces immigration almost entirely.

Right now, 10 EU nations in Europe, countries similar to ours, have walls. Hungary built a wall on its border with Syria and had a 90 percent drop in the number of people crossing the border, another example of a very successful wall.

The other thing I will point out, having spent last week down on our southern border, the Border Patrol, every one of them who I talked to, says they want a wall. They live with it every day. The Border Patrol would not want a wall if it was not effective.

The next thing I would like to point out is the cost of a wall. President Trump is asking for $5.7 billion. $5.7 billion is a lot of money. But now we have to put it in context with what we are spending in other parts of our budget.

What President Trump is asking for is one-seventh the cost of foreign aid that we spend year after year after year, and all the people who are keeping the government closed because they refuse to vote for a wall, they have no qualms--or almost all of them have no qualms--about voting for seven times as much every year on foreign aid.

It is about one-twelfth the increase in defense spending under President Trump, one-twelfth just the increase. For the protection of our country in the future, I can think of few things that are more important than stopping the invasion from south of our Nation.

It is about 0.1 percent--one-tenth of 1 percent--of our overall Federal budget, and about four-tenths of 1 percent of what we refer to as the discretionary part of our budget.

So while $5.7 billion is a lot of money, when you look compared to the other money that Congress appropriates again and again, year after year after year, they usually don't object to the money being spent on other things.

Now, you hear it said that walls are immoral. I will point out that I think this is a new and rather silly argument. I think keeping heroin out of this country; I think keeping a potential criminal class out of this country; I think making sure that our future immigrants are people who stand in line coming here are not considered immoral. But I will detect a little bit of hypocrisy of people who make that argument.

I mentioned a second ago the wall between Tijuana and San Diego, which was built during the term of Bill Clinton. I am sure, if you go back and check the papers of the time, when Bill Clinton felt it was necessary to build a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, nobody said it was immoral.

Later on, more of the wall right now was built on an appropriation passed when President Bush was President. Some of that wall, or improvements in the wall, were built when President Obama was President.

I have a feeling, if we go back, we won't find anybody saying the wall was immoral when it was built by President Clinton or President Bush or President Obama.

So one of two things is going on here. Either we have partisanship rearing its ugly head, and people are perfectly happy to vote for a wall under other Presidents, or some people, both Republicans and primarily Democrats, are becoming a lot more radical since parts of the wall were built in the 1990s or the zeros or the teens.

The next thing I would like to deal with is that you sometimes hear it said by people who have kept the government closed by their refusal to build a wall that everybody wants border security. Sadly, that is not true.

You would feel any citizen with common sense would want to enforce our borders, but if you look, the Governor of California has said that he wants illegal immigrants to be given free medical care in his State. The mayor of New York has said much the same thing.

There are over 500 sanctuary cities in the United States of America. A sanctuary city is a city where the local mayor or city council has said that we are not going to ask citizens in our jurisdiction whether or not they are here illegally.

Look, if you have a city, or a county, or a whole State like California that has become a sanctuary city, those governors or mayors or legislators or city councils of course do not want immigration laws taken seriously.

In the last 2 years, a bill was brought forth to try to end sanctuary cities. A few Republicans voted against the bill, and all but three Democrats voted against the bill.

I try to put in my mind, what would cause someone, if they really cared about enforcing the border, to say we have no problem with counties or cities, in essence, putting up a sign to say: We are not going to ask people whether they are here illegally.

The point is that, obviously, there are a lot of people out there who don't care about border security. We have several Congressmen getting elected on the platform of saying that they don't want to fund ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Why would somebody not want to enforce the immigration and customs authority and, at the same time, want to have our borders taken seriously?

The answer is, they don't want our borders taken seriously. There are a lot of people who believe, as the Minnesota Attorney General and former Congressman Keith Ellison say, that national borders themselves are an injustice. They want the idea of a separate United States of America, I guess, to permanently change.

You may think it is ridiculous to say that the idea that we shouldn't have national borders is a disgrace, but this has become, sadly, mainstream among the left wing segment of the political class.

The Oakland mayor recently sent an alarm, telling people, including particularly people with a criminal background in Oakland, that ICE was going to make a sweep and try to pick up criminals. Why would she do that if she wanted our immigration laws enforced?

The answer is, more and more people are getting elected in this country who do not want immigration laws enforced.

Now, I have a few more suggestions for President Trump. I think it is unfortunate that we have not built the

wall yet, but having talked to some members of the Border Patrol, perhaps, in some ways, it is a blessing in disguise.

The $5.7 billion that President Trump wants will be nowhere near enough to secure the entire border. It will secure more of the border than now, and it will be a big step in the right direction. That is true. But I think perhaps President Trump, now that they have kind of bit his hand after he has compromised and compromised and compromised, rather than build for just $5.7 billion, should try to increase the size of the wall, so that we are covering all of the easy entry points on the southern border, which would take about $8 billion. I do feel it is important enough to secure our borders that that would be an appropriate thing to do.

There are other things that, having been at the border, are suggested. We are right now not making anywhere near a good enough effort to see if cash is going from the cartels back from north of the border to south of the border. I would ask President Trump to include cash-sniffing dogs that can detect this cash. If people try to sneak across the border without declaring that cash, that cash can be taken, and it can be very devastating for the cartels.

We could use more density meters for cars, in which you can detect whether there are drugs within cars. That is another thing that would help our Border Patrol become more effective.

Finally, he can try to engage people, if there are any people out there who care about our borders, about the ridiculous asylum laws. I don't know if everybody is aware out there--not enough Americans are aware--that anybody who comes to the southern border can say they are fleeing from violence or religious persecution and, after being detained briefly, they eventually will be let go for a court date, which might be years in the future. As long as that law continues in effect, we will continue to have millions of people stream across the border.

I want to look here at some of the walls that we already have, walls that were built by other Presidents and proved to be very effective.

Here we have a wall in San Diego built by President Clinton. It is not an immoral wall. It is a very effective wall that has decreased illegal border crossings in the San Diego-Tijuana area by over 90 percent.

We have another wall here that ends in Nogales, in the Arizona area. I think this wall was built under President Bush. It might have been somewhat improved under President Obama, another very moral wall that is protecting people on the north side of the border.

I want to point out another reason why we need the wall. I talked to some ranchers in the area. They came across the Salvadoran gangs that we know are so brutal, and they fed them. They weren't harmed. But can you imagine living near the border where we have people crossing the border, either south to north or north to south, who are members of the violent El Salvador gangs?

Here is another picture and a wall near Sasabe and another point where the wall ends. This is an area in which, even if President Trump gets the wall he wants, they will not be funding an extension of this wall. It is one of the reasons why we should ask for a little bit more than $5.7 million for this wall.

I will point out that the new walls they build will be better than walls in the past. We can make walls higher than this, and we can make walls in which we have sensors designed to track people coming up, and walls in which we have flat areas on top of the wall that would be very difficult to climb over. It will be very difficult to get over these new high-tech walls.

In any event, here is another picture of a wonderful wall in Sasabe. We just wish the wall was a little bit bigger.

Here we are going to look at another couple walls that countries feel are effective.

Here we have a picture of where a wall is in Jordan. The feeling is that the United States may have built part of that wall to protect the poor Jordanians from terrorists coming across. I don't remember anybody objecting to that wall.

Here we have the wall in Israel that was built and has cut illegal immigration coming across the border from Egypt down to literally zero.

Now, looking at these walls, these effective walls in the past that have been built by other Presidents, and thinking that I do not want to have another shutdown in 3 weeks, the tremendous inconvenience for the government workers, the inconvenience for people who are relying on the government for inspections and that sort of thing, I will ask my colleagues who refused to vote for a border wall during the last shutdown to just imagine, stop and think for a minute, and pretend that, instead of President Trump, we have a President Clinton, or a President Bush, or a President Obama, and maybe, to help you pretend, you can pretend that the border wall is not there to protect the residents of Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona, but it is there to protect the residents of Jordan.

Just like in the past, when you voted for bills to protect the residents of Jordan, or voted for Presidents to build walls other than President Trump, just sit back, close your eyes, and pretend we are building a wall to protect another country, or building a wall at another time, and just vote ``yes,'' so that we don't have to go through another shutdown, and so that we can protect American citizens from drug lords and protect them from people coming across the border out of line, to be fair to those people who are coming to this country legally.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 30 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, January 29, 2019, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to address the current government shutdown and the status of the government wall.

It is kind of a frustrating issue to address, because there is so much misinformation out there. The first thing I will address is the unpaid employees. We can pay the unpaid employees, particularly the employees who are working, if we would pass a bill now. We do not have to end this whole thing.

There is a wonderful bill, H.R. 271, introduced by Congressman Brooks--I am a cosponsor--that will immediately pay all of the current, working Federal employees.

I do not have the power to put that bill on the floor, because I am just a regular Congressman from Wisconsin. But the majority leader, if you see him, could put that bill on the floor any time. And if the real concern here is for the Federal employees who work in our airports, who work in the Coast Guard, who work in our prisons--many of whom I know and are great people--if these people really cared about them, that bill would be on the floor next Tuesday and winging its way to President Trump's desk by this time next week.

It is a mystery to me why, when so many politicians purport to care about the Federal employees, they will not bring forth this bill to pay them without having the whole issue solved.

The next issue I am going to address is these people who say President Trump cannot compromise. I don't know whether they haven't been paying attention the last 2 years, or whether they just love to make things up.

For the public to understand, under normal circumstances if we are going to build a wall, the wall is in what we call an appropriation bill, or what people back home would refer to as a budget. President Trump ran on the wall, and the wall is necessary, and we will talk about that in a second. Nevertheless, President Trump would have wanted funding for this wall in some budget.

For his first 2 years, President Trump was sent budgets by Congress, or spending bills by Congress, that did not contain a wall. That was frustrating to him, but because he did not want to shut down the government, and did not want to penalize the government employees, President Trump, particularly, with a big omnibus bill about a year ago, signed big spending bills without a wall because he compromised.

You will recall that originally people talked about this wall being $20 billion. President Trump is now asking for $5.7 billion. In the last week, I have taken time to meet with the former head of the Border Patrol. I have been on the Arizona border, and it disappoints the experts in the field, the people on the border themselves, that Donald Trump has compromised so much as to want only funding for a fraction of the wall.

So I would say, coming down from $20 billion to $5.7 billion is a big compromise. I would say twice signing entire appropriations for his first 2 years in office without the wall, is a big compromise by President Trump.

President Trump, last Saturday, also decided to extend DACA, and decided to extend temporary protected status on people. Now, what I found out from listening to the Border Patrol is that when you talk about DACA, insofar as the President talks about it, it encourages more people to come here from south of the border because they will assume DACA is a permanent thing, and that more and more people will be added to it.

But, despite the fact that it might have been irresponsible to talk about DACA and extending it again, President Trump, in an effort to compromise, decided to throw these other policy items in the mix on Saturday.

I sometimes slip, instead of calling President Trump the Commander in Chief, I call him the compromiser in chief, because he has given so much to twice sign annual bills without funding for the wall and asked for funding for only a fraction of the wall.

When I was down on the border, I saw places where the wall needed extensions. President Trump is not asking for enough money for the extensions that the Border Patrol needs. But in the interest of compromise, President Trump has asked for $5.7 billion. I will talk in a second about how much money that is. I know for me, $5.7 billion is a huge amount of money. But let's talk about what other people are willing to vote on around here.

Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion for the wall is about one-seventh of what we spend every year on foreign aid. I never hear Congressmen come up here and rail against all the money we are spending on foreign aid and how we could do wonderful things if we only kept that money at home. But all of a sudden, with one-seventh of the cost of foreign aid, we have a battery of people on the other side of the aisle saying we could do so many better things with that money, when in the wink of an eye, they are going to pass appropriation bills spending seven times that much, year, after year, after year, after year on foreign aid.

President Trump greatly increased the defense budget--more than I would have liked. I complained about it a little bit. The funding for the wall would be about one-twelfth of the increase--not the total budget--the increase in the defense budget under President Trump.

Again, I objected. Almost nobody around here, however, objected to this large increase in the defense budget. But now it comes to the wall, and all of a sudden, they can't bring themselves to vote for it.

Is this a crisis? You bet it is a crisis. Like I said, I was down on the border last week in Sasabe, Arizona. First of all, we have a huge cost to the government at the border. People are coming across the border using our medical facilities. The Governor of California has outright said he will be happy to have all of the immigrants. I guess everybody in the Western Hemisphere can come to California and have the government, which to a certain extent means the Federal Government, pay for medical costs.

Madam Speaker, 90 percent of the heroin comes across the southern border. Now, you hear people say that most of that is at selected points of entry. But the reason most of the heroin comes in at selected points of entry is because we are not catching virtually anybody between the points of entry. They are just walking in where there is no wall.

I don't know--given the huge number of people who die of heroin every year--that we can say that not putting walls in the gaps in the current system is not something that is necessary and not something that we need to do to solve that heroin crisis.

There are a lot of parts of that heroin crisis, but when that amount of heroin is coming across south of the border, part of the answer is to complete the wall.

We are getting more and more children on our border. What is going on right now, so people understand, is parents are sending their children to the border. And if the children come to the border, which is all the easier, because they may have somebody escort them to the border, we will take those children and deliver them to a relative around the country.

I would say if a child is taking the hazardous trek, albeit helped along the way, to come to the United States, and the parents are sending the children with somebody who may not be their relative, sending their children because once the children are here, the children can say they are living in America, and the parents can come here under the family rules and join them; it is a huge crisis.

Other people coming and trying to get between the points of entry are frequently found dying. I have been told--I haven't confirmed it--that in the Tucson sector alone, in the last 15 or 16 years, over 2,000 people have been found dead of dehydration, starvation, and what have you. That is what you call a humanitarian crisis.

The overall cost on our overburdened government--different people can argue how much illegal immigrants cost this country. The Heritage Foundation--some people may not agree with them--feels it is over $50 billion a year.

Madam Speaker, when it is costing us $50 billion a year between the healthcare costs, the welfare costs, the education costs, and the criminal justice costs, how can you not spend $5.7 billion to begin to solve this crisis?

The next thing to address, it is sometimes said, and people say it to my right, that everybody wants to do something about the border. I question that, given what other people are saying.

It may surprise Americans out there to know that there are a lot of people out there who buy into the idea that the United States can be kind of like Europe and we can have open borders and everybody can walk wherever they want.

How do we know this? All around the country we have sanctuary cities in which mayors or sanctuary counties in which county executives or, in the case of California, a whole State in which local officials are forbidden to ask people whether they are here legally or not. The only explanation for that is Americans are electing people around the country who do not believe in borders and who are perfectly happy to have tens of millions of people come across our southern border, some good, some not so good.

But, obviously, these people do not believe in border security. If you believe in border security, Madam Speaker, the Governor of California would not be openly inviting everybody to come to California for free medical care.

It is clear that a lot of people out there do not want a closed border.

Another piece of evidence for that, Madam Speaker, is you have Members of Congress saying we should get rid of ICE and get rid of immigration enforcement. People who publicly say we should get rid of immigration enforcement--even though it is a preposterous idea, of course--border security is not a priority for them. They are the type of people who, on examining the situation, can see no reason why we cannot accept 5, 10, 15, or 20 million other illegal immigrants across the border.

By the way, one other thing I found out talking to Border Patrol is nobody knows exactly how many illegal immigrants are in the country. Madam Speaker, you sometimes heard it said 11 million, 12 million. It could be 15 million, or it could be 20 million. We really aren't counting, and the people on the border, Border Patrol themselves, will admit that they don't know how many people are coming across the border.

Now, Madam Speaker, the next thing you hear is: Oh, I care about border security. I just don't believe in the wall.

Why don't I believe that? I don't believe that they really care about border security because walls work.

Now, behind me, I have pictures of four parts of a wall in other parts of the world.

Here we have a wonderful wall which cut illegal immigration by over 90 percent in the San Diego-Tijuana area. That wall works.

I was in Nogales, Arizona. Here is a wall that was recently refurbished, and that wall works. Unfortunately, as you will notice, the wall ends, and the Border Patrol and the ranchers who live near this area, one of whom I recently talked to, said all of a sudden MS-13 showed up and they had to give them dinner at the ranch. These people desperately want this wall to be extended a little bit.

Here we have more wall in Sasabe, Arizona.

Here we have a wall that has cut illegal immigration down to almost nothing in Israel.

I was not able to find a wall, which has also been successful--I have got to get a picture. We will be back next week with a picture of a wall between Jordan and Syria.

Madam Speaker, you might say: Why are you talking about a wall between Jordan and Syria? Because a lot of that wall was paid for by the United States.

Now, why did the United States have no problem funding a wall in San Diego or a wall in Sasabe or upgrading the wall in Nogales? Many of my colleagues on the right side of me here had no problem voting for these walls. But there is something different about these walls from the walls President Trump wants. These walls were proposed by somebody other than President Trump.

When it was President Clinton proposing to build a wall in San Diego, people didn't say it was immoral to have a wall.

When President Obama was extending or upgrading the wall in Nogales, Arizona, people didn't say: ``President Obama is an immoral person. Walls look bad.'' You never even heard about it. I didn't know about it until a couple weeks ago.

When you have a wall going up in Sasabe, which desperately has to be extended, that wall was built under President Bush, under appropriation bills, and not a peep. Nobody said it was immoral when President Bush built a wall.

So, Madam Speaker, now we get down to, I reluctantly conclude, because I have to wonder when you have these other successful walls around the world, when we have no problem voting for walls for Jordan for goodness' sake, why, all of a sudden in this large budget--and every budget has things in it we don't like. Why, all of a sudden, do we go through all this heartburn, put all these Federal employees through financial distress, why do we do it when, in the past, we have built walls all the time? I have to conclude, sadly, part of it is some people want President Trump to fail.

The fact that not building a wall means all that much more heroin across the border, it means many more people sneaking across the border or escorted across the border by the Mexican cartels--and, by the way, today the Mexican cartels run the border.

So to come in this country means you are hostage for awhile to the Mexican cartels, which may be one of the reasons why they don't do a very good job of protecting the women down there. It is why it can be very expensive for people. It is why people who try to escort you across the border who aren't a member of the cartel, if they are caught, will be killed and, apparently, in some cases, skinned alive. But we don't want to stop the current situation.

Again, the folks back home will have to wonder: Why can people build a wall in Jordan, why can we let President Clinton build a wall in San Diego which is very effective, why can we let President Bush build a wall, why can we let President Obama upgrade our walls, but all of a sudden, President Trump becomes President and we have to have a shutdown because we can't vote for a budget with a wall in it?

I have voted for spending bills under chief executives who were Democrats and Republicans, and I usually agree with the Republicans, but it never occurred to me to vote against a spending bill because I didn't like other policies of the chief executive.

So here we have it, Madam Speaker. We will refresh your memory one more time: walls work. They work in Israel; they work in San Diego; and they work in Nogales.

We have paid for many walls both in this country and in other countries; and other countries build walls, and they are successful.

If we do not build a wall, we will continue to have people starve as they try to come in here inappropriately. We will continue to have bad people come across the border who commit crimes. We will continue to have people come across the border who are here for our generous welfare benefits.

This is something that didn't occur to me until I got down to the border and talked to Customs. They said that, when you look in people's wallets and you look in people's purses, they find food stamps--EBT cards--in those purses. In other words, people are coming here to get our welfare benefits.

It would be much better if we completed the wall and funneled people through the normal entry points so we could keep some of the criminal element out of the country, so we could keep people who are coming here just to take advantage of our generous medical systems--all with Federal dollars going into this that our Governor of California and mayor of New York are so eager to give away--so we can solve this crisis.

All it takes is somebody to be willing to pass a budget, a budget that is too free-spending otherwise, by the way. I don't like all the excessive spending in the budget, but every budget is a compromise, and we are willing to build the wall.

I hope, in the interim, that my colleagues who at least are pretending now to care about the Federal employees will bring a separate bill to the floor, which they can do at any time. A wonderful bill, H.R. 271, Mo Brooks, a great guy, bring that bill to the floor so we can pay the Coast Guard, we can pay the guys and gals working in the Federal prisons, and we can pay the TSA guys. So, Madam Speaker, even if you don't feel like spending anything on the wall today, at least they can get paid for the work they are doing.

Madam Speaker, you are crying crocodile tears if you do not cosponsor those bills and bring those bills to the floor but then claim that you have sympathy for the Federal employees. We do not have to solve the other issues to get these people paid.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support life.

Mr. Speaker, 46 years ago when I was a senior in high school, it was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, or the U.S. Supreme Court felt, that the United States Constitution required abortion be legal in this country, despite the fact that, for much of the past century, every State in the Union felt that abortion should be made illegal. This decision directly led to the deaths of over 40 million children who should have been living a full life.

John Adams said that our Constitution was meant for moral and religious people. How can a country built for a moral, religious people living under our Constitution allow this to happen?

We know how it happened. About 10 years ago, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg let the cat out of the bag. This decision was meant to prevent the growth in populations we don't want to have too many of, the progressives' dream.

But how did the progressives get their dream? Some politicians sometimes talk about science and say we don't take into account science enough around here.

It is interesting that, in 1973 when this decision was reached, we didn't have ultrasounds. Now, with ultrasounds, it is more apparent than ever that every new baby in that womb is a unique individual, with its heart beating, with its feeling pain. Nevertheless, we continue to ignore that science and continue to allow this horrible stain on our culture.

Indeed, right now, the United States is one of only seven countries to allow late-term abortions. There we are, in the same list as North Korea, China, and Vietnam. I guess you can kind of look back and see why, in the sixties, the progressives would talk about Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh and why they wanted the Communists to win in Vietnam. This is probably one of the reasons, the type of country that they like.

Our forefathers wanted this country to be a country that would shed a light on the world. Nevertheless, we appear to be going backwards. The new majority recently brought a bill to the floor to allow the United States to pay for abortions abroad again.

Is this what we want America to be known for: the United States telling

countries all around the world that abortion should be legal and the government should be paying for abortion? What a stain on the moral record of the United States of America.

This is the week of the March for Life. I would like to thank all the people from the State of Wisconsin who are there and come here diligently every year, hoping the people in this city, both the justices and the politicians, realize that this murder of almost a million people a year must end.

I would like to thank them and hope that this is the last year that we have to continue this debate and that, finally, by this year, this time, we one more time think that life is precious and our government will not continue to allow the premature snuffing out of life.

Madam Speaker, I know we have had a lot of people talking today on the issue of the shutdown. I thought I would like to give a little different talk, or a little bit of explanation, as far as what is going on here, to the American people.

The first thing that offends me is when people imply that the position of the President is that he is anti-immigrant. Every year, in this country, we swear in 700,000 new people to become citizens of this country--700,000. On a per capita basis, that is, for example, twice what Germany swears in and over 50 times the number of people who become new Mexicans each year.

We should not apologize for swearing in 700,000 new people, and President Trump has made no effort to reduce that amount. He is just saying people who want to come here illegally should get in line and be one of those 700,000.

I also want to point out, in addition to that, we let in another million people every year, primarily because they are relatives of other people who are already here. We let in over 180 million people for other reasons, including about 70 million people, every year, who want to work here.

There is no reason why anybody should, under any circumstances, as President Trump let's these things go on, say that he is anti- immigrant, or anybody who wants to build a wall is anti-immigrant, because that will not affect these very generous numbers.

Now, let's look where America is compared to historically. We, right now, have a higher percentage of people born in other countries in America than any time since World War I, and those are people who we can confirm. It is very difficult to get accurate numbers on the people who are here illegally, for obvious reasons.

We have had an increase in the number of people who speak a foreign language at home, and that is wonderful. I am sure all of our ancestors, or most of our ancestors, at one point spoke a foreign language. But it is nice if, over time, we accept enough immigrants that, at any given time, most of us are speaking a common language.

The number of people who spoke a foreign language at home in 1980 was about 11 percent. It is now 21 percent.

Again, these numbers have not caused Donald Trump to ask for a cut in legal immigration. The American people should realize Donald Trump and the people who want a wall are pro-immigration.

But the next question is: Do we have a crisis?

First of all, about 80 percent of the heroin in this country comes across our southern border. Now, some of it can be prevented by a wall, some can't. But the huge number of people who are dying around the country, to me, makes this a crisis.

We are getting more and more children at the border. Why are we getting more children? Because, I think, the word is out, particularly in Central America, that if you come to America with children, you are going to be able to find a way to get in. We need a border wall, not only to prevent people from coming in, but to send the message that America is treating its immigration laws seriously.

People who sneak across the border, who are, after all, breaking one law, while very few are horrible criminals, of course, are going to bring a given number of people who break the law. We believe, in the last 10 years, illegal immigrants coming across the border have, during their lifetime, been charged with over 1,000 homicides. We have enough high crime areas in America as it is without letting people come through here without being appropriately vetted.

There is a huge healthcare cost to allowing our borders to be open because, of course, people come here without health insurance. Now we have the Governor of California openly saying that he wants to give free healthcare to all illegal immigrants.

People disagree on the cost of illegal immigration to our country, but when you add up the healthcare and the welfare and the cost to the criminal justice system, organizations easily come up with costs of over $50 billion a year.

Donald Trump is asking for under $6 billion for the wall, and that is one-time funding to build the wall. The cost of illegal immigrants is over $50 billion year after year after year. This is a country that already is over $22 trillion in debt. Can we really afford to be the healthcare provider for the entire Western Hemisphere?

There are people who feel that Donald Trump has to compromise more, that he is being hard here. Donald Trump is not a perfect person. I have talked to him about some of his tweets, but Donald Trump has been very patient here.

I don't think the American public knows or understands exactly why we have a shutdown. If we are going to fund a border wall, it is going to have to be part of an appropriation bill, which I think people back home would refer to as a budget bill. We don't refer to it as a budget bill, but I think people back home would say it is part of a budget bill.

President Trump has been President now for 2 years. He has signed many appropriation bills, and, obviously, he wants a wall. But because he does not want to shut down the government, for 2 years, he has been signing appropriation bills without funding for the wall.

Finally, in his third year, he has had to say: I am tired of signing appropriation bills which include much spending that he doesn't want, all sorts of provisions that are higher spending than President Trump wanted, but, finally, he had to say: I am tired of signing appropriation bills without getting my wall.

I think that is a reasonable position.

When we talk about the wall and the inability--I want to say we have good news here. About an hour ago, I noticed that eight Democrats left the door open. They were bipartisan toward building a wall, and I would like to thank those eight people for reaching across the aisle. But I have to wonder why we can only get eight Democrats to appear to say that it is okay to fund the wall.

We have to remember that there is a very effective wall in the San Diego area that was built when President Clinton was President. It is well known that when President Bush was President, the second Bush, we built still more of the wall, and at that time prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Chuck Schumer voted for the wall. Why is the wall now immoral?

And, by the way, some of that wall funded during George Bush was built during President Obama's term.

Why was it okay for Bill Clinton or George Bush or Barack Obama to build a wall, and all of a sudden we hear it is immoral for President Trump to want to add to that wall?

I am not sure. I think part of it is a sad and unfortunate move to the left by not all, but by many Democrats who more and more are, whatever they say, for open borders. I think some of it is just pure party politics. They want to go ahead and let more people in here for 2 years just to embarrass President Trump.

But again, the American people should remember that for 2 years Donald Trump signed appropriation bill after appropriation bill. He wanted the wall. He didn't get the wall.

Finally, he is saying: I am sorry. I desperately want to open the government, but I am going to ask members of the Democratic Party to do what they did under President Clinton or President Bush or President Obama and let me build more of the wall as well.

Now, some people will claim that this is an expensive wall, and I agree that $5.7 billion is a large amount of money. But then we have to look at it in comparison to other things that this body funds without objecting.

The amount of money we are spending on this wall is about one-seventh of what we spend every year in foreign aid. A few people complain about that, but the vast majority of people in this body have no problem with voting for over $35 billion a year in foreign aid.

All of a sudden, we are told that when it comes to building the wall for one-seventh of that amount, one time, and they spend this amount on foreign aid year after year after year, all of a sudden we are told this is too much money.

And something I thought was a little excessive, there was a large increase in the defense budget last year, a little larger than I would have liked. The wall would cost about one-twelfth of the increase in defense spending since President Trump became President.

It is about one-ninth of the increase--not the total, one-ninth of the increase--in nondefense discretionary spending, and it is less than one seven-hundredths of our overall budget. Is that really too much to spend that amount of money when we are spending so much money in other places?

The next thing I would like to address is this idea that the wall won't work.

Under President Clinton, we built a wall between San Diego and Tijuana, and the border crossings at that time dropped 92 percent. It would be a great victory if we got the number of people coming here illegally every year to drop 92 percent. I would not say that is nothing.

I look at the border wall that Israel built when they were having a huge problem of people coming up into Africa and breaking the law by coming into Israel. Israel was getting about 1,800 new people a year coming into their country that they didn't think should be coming into their country. How many people came into their country in the last year? None. That border wall caused the number of people coming into Israel to drop from 1,800 a year to nothing.

There are other walls around the world. There is a wall between Jordan and Syria and Iraq that has been somewhat successful in keeping ISIS out of Jordan. The interesting thing about that wall, it was, to a certain extent, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. It baffles me that people around here have no problem paying for a wall for Jordan to protect itself, but all of a sudden if Donald Trump wants to build a wall for the United States of America, we can't get it done.

Seventy countries around the world have walls. Ten countries in the EU states have walls. These countries are not building walls because they don't work. They build walls because they do.

The next thing I will address, frequently people get up here and they preface their talk by saying everybody wants security. That is not true. There are, sadly, a lot of people around here who are for open borders. We just heard a speaker prior to me imply that building a wall was racist, which certainly implies that preventing people from coming into this country is racist, and they do not want to have this sort of security.

Keith Ellison, the new attorney general for Minnesota who used to be part of this body, recently said: I don't believe in borders.

And this kind of thinking that maybe we don't need borders, maybe we just need one big country around the whole world, is more well known than one would think.

There are sanctuary States, counties, and cities all around the United States. If people believe in border security, why, if you were a mayor, why if you were a county executive, why, if you were a Governor, would you say: We want a sanctuary State or sanctuary city where we can't ask people whether they are here legally or not?

And that would include people in charge of doling out welfare benefits. It would include law enforcement. Obviously, people who run these cities and States do not think border security is an important thing, which is kind of scary.

In the last session, we took up bills trying to sanction cities and counties that are sanctuary cities or sanctuary counties so they don't open themselves up and, in essence, beg people from other countries to come here.

By the way, this includes the three largest cities of the United States: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

When Republicans tried to prevent this, I believe there were only three or

four Democrats--and I love my Democrats, but there were only three or four of them who would stand up against sanctuary cities. That sure sounds to me like they don't consider border security that important.

We have a new wave of people coming in saying that we don't need ICE. We don't need immigration enforcement. They are on record with this. Several people have signed on.

Maybe I am wrong, but to me, if you are saying we want to get rid of the agency that enforces immigration, I think we can say there are a lot of people in this body who really don't want any immigration enforcement.

In summary, I would ask the American people to look beyond some of the main talking points in the mainstream media. We are letting 700,000 people here legally. We are not anti-immigrant. And that is before you talk about the tens of millions of people who are let in this country every year to work.

This is a crisis. It is a crisis with regard to cost.

It is a crisis with regard to the change in our fabric as we let people in here who commit crimes up to and including murder.

It is a crisis insofar as we let people in here who wind up, some of them, adopting a welfare lifestyle, which will further erode the morals of America.

Donald Trump has been very patient, waiting 2 years and signing bills with much more spending than he wants because he didn't want to shut down the government. I would now like to ask, in this third year, more than just the eight brave Democrats to stand up. If you want to, you can close your eyes and pretend that Bill Clinton or George Bush or Barack Obama was President, because we know then you wouldn't have a problem voting for it and open our government.

I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the Federal employees who thought their jobs were secure and that every month they would be getting a constant paycheck. But because of playing hardball, treating Donald Trump differently than you would treat President Clinton or President Bush, we have a problem; and that is we do not have an appropriation bill that is an appropriate compromise like funding the wall would.

And let me point out, even President Trump's request of $5.7 billion is a huge compromise. Several months ago, we were told we needed $20 billion or $25 billion to fund the wall. Now we are dropping to $5.7 billion. That is a huge compromise.

Please give Americans the protection that Israel or dozens of other countries around the world have. Please allow us to build the wall.

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

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 42 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, January 17, 2019, at 9 a.m.