Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to add another family to the list of what we are calling ``homeland heroes.'' These are people who have faced incredible odds and very, very difficult times, who live on the border, northern and southern borders of this country, and are really in the middle of a war zone. And I do not use that term just figuratively. The things that are going on on our borders and the way these people are having to deal with them are truly worthy of note here on the floor of the House.

Tonight, I want to bring to the attention of the floor of the House Tom and Betty Jo Kuykendall. They own and operate a ranch only 34 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border of Douglas, Arizona. Their children and grandchildren have stayed in the ranching business and all live on nearby ranch lands.

The Kuykendalls are the heart of a 6-generation ranching family. For over 6 years they have lived in a war zone, as I say. All three of their grandchildren have been either threatened or physically attacked by illegal trespassers on their own property. When I say trespassers, I am not talking about folks who just are out for a Sunday walk. These are people coming across their property from Mexico and coming into the United States illegally.

It has been over the last 6 years that something has happened dramatically and caused a dramatic difference, I should say, in the life-style of the people on that border. There have always been people coming from Mexico across that border, many of them illegal; but they have been in relatively few numbers. They will stop and ask for a job. The Kuykendalls in the past have offered jobs to these folks. They have gone on and come into the interior of the country. But in the last 6 years something has happened.

They are now coming across that border in hundreds, in fact, in thousands. The Border Patrol estimates that over a thousand people cross that border every single night in the area of the Kuykendall ranch. And what happens as a result of it? Well, their property is essentially destroyed. I was privileged to be a guest in their home, the Kuykendalls, and this is not too long ago, just several weeks ago. And, frankly, from their front yard, we could see people crossing their property, people coming into the United States illegally and crossing their property. You can see it any time of the day or night. It is, of course, more evident, more observable in the evening when the numbers become significantly higher than when there are people coming through in the daytime.

The Kuykendalls have had their dog poisoned because it had committed the crime of barking at the illegal trespassers when they came close to the ranch house. So their dog was poisoned. Illegal aliens have been caught trying to steal their horses, vehicles and ATVs on more than one occasion. One of the children's horses was stolen and found 3 days later several miles away.

A group of illegals accosted the Kuykendalls in their truck, beat on the truck and threatened them and ran only when a Border Patrol came on the scene. Some of the illegals who were apprehended were later proven to have criminal records as felons here in the United States, records of crimes ranging from murder to child molestation.

The Kuykendalls have personally observed and photographed drug smugglers crossing their land dressed in dark camouflage clothing and carrying assault rifles. The land itself is littered with discarded plastic bags, water bottles, and clothing items. The Kuykendalls' fences are torn down, gates are destroyed, water lines are cut, and unauthorized trails blazed by illegal immigrants while they trample the range land into bedrock.

These tribulations are typical of what all the ranchers in southern Arizona are experiencing to one degree or another. They suffer from a daily assault on their property and implicit assaults to their safety.

Tom and Betty Jo Kuykendall are trying to earn a living and raise a family by managing a ranch, which is hard work even in the best of circumstances. All of these assaults and intrusions on their property damage their property, cost these ranchers money, money for repairs, for lost cattle, for damaged equipment, money many ranchers simply do not have; and several of their neighbors are now taking up bankruptcy.

The Kuykendalls have lived and worked under these outrageous conditions because we, this government, refuse to take the steps needed to secure our border. Unofficial numbers, as I say, from the Border Patrol say over a thousand cross every evening in that area.

They know that that is actually a very conservative amount.

I hope that this Congress will take the steps necessary to secure the border. By failing to do so, we are betraying not only the Kuykendalls, but the liberties of every citizen affected by a growing tide of illegal immigration flooding across our borders day after day.

I salute Tom and Betty Jo Kuykendall and their children for their efforts in defense of their land, their property and their way of life and add them to the list of homeland heroes.

Madam Speaker, as we rightfully address the issues that are confronting us overseas and the possibility of sending American troops into harm's way, I think it is also important for us to think about those people who are here in the United States, those citizens, who every day, as a matter of fact, face almost warlike conditions at places on our borders, a place on our southern border especially, that I think there is no other way to describe the activities down there, with the number of people coming through that border illegally. That it is a battle zone, and there are people there who daily deal with this particular problem. I am periodically going to bring several of these folks to the attention of the House.

Today I would like to identify Mr. Roger Barnett and his wife Barbara, who own a 22,000-acre ranch located only 2 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona. Mr. Barnett also owns and operates a towing and propane gas business with branches in Phoenix, Tucson, Wilcox and Sierra Vista.

Almost any evening after dark, Mr. Barnett can get in his truck, ride a short distance across his own land and personally witness groups of 20, 30, 40, 50, even 100 illegal aliens crossing the property. Sometimes, of course, they cross in daylight also.

Mr. Barnett, his brother, and his wife have personally been responsible over the course of the last year for detaining, calling the INS, and being able to actually take off of his property over 2,000, I say 2,000, people who are trespassing, who are coming across his property illegally and, in fact, coming into the United States illegally.

Now, of course, that in and of itself is a challenging experience for anybody who lives on that border, but along with it goes a whole lot of other problems that are created. Mr. Barnett and all of the other ranchers in the area find that their fences are cut. They are constantly, and I mean constantly, challenged with the responsibility of going out and repairing the fences that have been cut, trampled, gates left open, cattle disappearing, cattle being butchered and eaten right on the spot by the people who are coming through. The water on the property being damaged, the water wells being damaged; the amount of trash that accumulates on these properties is enormous, and it accumulates at something called layover sites and these are simply sites where a large number of illegal aliens will gather and they will prepare to be picked up by a truck, by some sort of vehicle in a road not too far away from the site. They discard all of their belongings because they want to pack as many into these vehicles as possible, so they will discard all of the trash that they have been carrying with them and

certainly a lot of the water bottles, even articles of clothing. It is a place of enormous trash and human waste, as a matter of fact. This also gets into the water on the ranch when, after a rain, it destroys the wells; it becomes something that the cattle cannot drink.

The trucks and the buildings on this gentleman's property, as well as many people in the area, have been vandalized. The grasslands needed for food for the cattle are continually trampled by the aliens crossing and making new paths across the land. They discard, as I say, water bottles and trash and plastic bags. The cattle eat the plastic bags and die.

Recently, Mrs. Barnett, Barbara, was driving her truck near her home and saw three illegal aliens crossing her farm. She called her husband, and he and his brother came out and tried to locate them. After following the trail for a period of time, they found a stash of 220 pounds of marijuana hidden in the mesquite bushes.

The Border Patrol has told him that some part of his land is used every single night by drug traffickers, but the Border Patrol does not have the manpower to stop it. Lately, these illegal groups have been coming closer to his ranch house using a creek bed hiding spot not 100 yards from his home. A few months ago, he found a group of 30 and called the Border Patrol to come and get them.

This is happening day after day after day to the people who live in this area. This is not a unique story. I identify these people as homeland heroes, because they are fighting a war on their own land, on their own property, and on the border of the United States; and they are doing it certainly without the help of this government. They turn to their own government, to the Federal Government and say, what can you do? How can you help? What is happening to our property and to our lives? Our lives are essentially being destroyed.

They have to travel everywhere armed. They keep a rifle by the door, a loaded rifle by the door in almost every one of these houses up here because of the number of vandals that have come in, the number of times they have personally been threatened. People have been accosted. Their cars have been stolen, hijacked. The illegal aliens will put rocks up on the dirt road, stop the vehicles, and then hijack the vehicles.

Again, this is something that they put up with every single day. Madam Speaker, what would we do if that was the way we had to face every single day of our lives? I mean, would we not turn to somebody for help and say, what is going on here? This is incredible. This is, by the way, a relatively recent phenomenon, maybe 4 or 5 years. It is a result of a whole lot of things, including the fact that the Mexican Government has chosen to help move people into the United States illegally to serve some of their own needs in the country, Mexico, that is to say.

These are travesties, Madam Speaker, and they cannot be justified in any way, shape, or form. These people are homeland heroes. I want to bring them to the attention of my colleagues, and I will continue to do so.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I brought forward to the House a picture and a little story about an individual who died on the border last August. His name was Chris Eggle. Mr. Eggle was an employee of the United States Government acting in the capacity of a park ranger down in the Oregon Pipes National Park in Arizona. He was killed in the line of duty by people who had come across the board after being involved in some sort of drug altercation where three others were killed in Mexico.

The point of my presentation yesterday was to explain to the Members of this body that we have, in fact, a war zone on our southern border, and to a certain extent, on the northern border.

Today, unfortunately, I have the sad occasion to bring to Members' attention another young man named Jorge Salomon Martinez. Mr. Martinez was brutally murdered in Mexico just a short time ago. He was a Border Patrol agent working for the United States. Mr. Francisco Javier Rosas Molina, who is 18 years old, is in custody, and the Mexican authorities continue to search for others that they say have probably fled across the border into the United States.

Mr. Martinez had apparently met Mr. Rosas Molina earlier in the week near the border town of Naco. They began to party together and converse, and Salomon had originally identified himself to the group as a member of the Border Patrol, as employed by the Border Patrol. Then they met some other people and Rosas Molina evidently told the other members of the group that Mr. Martinez was indeed a Border Patrol agent, and what happened next is described as the following.

He said that is when Rosas Molina identified him to the others as a Border Patrol agent, and that appears to be the reason that they killed him. Martinez was beaten and his head bashed in with rocks. His Ford pickup was stolen along with other belongings, including a gold chain and a medallion. A passerby discovered the body early Wednesday and notified Mexican police. Later police received a tip about the slaying and robbery of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The caller led agents to Rosas Molina, who had the agent's truck and medallion. Rosas Molina has admitted involvement in the slaying.

The purpose of the slaying, as it appears from the evidence gathered, is because Mr. Martinez was a Border Patrol agent. He is not the first Border Patrol agent to be killed in the line of duty on the border, he is not the first Border Patrol agent to be accosted. It happens all too frequently. It is because our borders are war zones. We were are in the process of debating whether or not, and the President is in the process of determining whether or not to send Americans off to fight a war in the Middle East. Without discussing the merits of that particular decision, I will tell Members there is a war going on on our borders. People are being killed on our borders. Troops are needed on our borders.

Our homeland needs to be defended. These people need to be defended. They need to be trained, and they need to be protected. We have to make a decision as a Nation as to whether or not we want borders or not. If we choose not to enforce our borders, we should move away from them and let people come into this country at their will. We should stop this process of sending a few people down to our border, put them into harm's way, and then refuse to actually secure the border.

Mr. Martinez, before him Mr. Eggle, and others, are examples of this kind of policy, this policy that puts people at risk without really having a desire on the part of this Nation to defend those borders or to protect our people on those borders.

Mr. Speaker, our hearts go out to the family of Mr. Martinez. Our prayers go out to that family. I hope that we will not forget his face or his story.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce two homeland heroes. They are Robert Eggle and his late son, Chris.

Chris was a brilliant young park ranger in the Organ Pipes Cactus National Park in Arizona when he was brutally murdered by an illegal alien who had crossed into the United States after committing two murders in Mexico. Chris was in the front lines on a battlefield we pay far too little attention to. He gave his life in service to the country, and certainly deserves the designation as homeland hero.

But I want to introduce another homeland hero, and that is Chris's father, Bob, the gentleman here in this picture to my left. Mr. Eggle is an incredible individual with whom I had the opportunity to spend some time in Arizona just a couple of weeks ago. He has become an incredibly articulate spokesman for the cause of homeland security. He understands fully that that security begins with the security of our border.

Mr. Eggle and several others, as well as Members of the House, including the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) endured the trip to the very spot in Organ Pipe Cactus National Park where his son was killed. And I say ``endured the trip'' because, as anyone can imagine, this was a difficult undertaking for anyone, especially the father of the murdered victim. But Mr. Eggle's stoic character was a true inspiration for all of us who were with him that day. He was an inspiration as we traveled to the spot where his son was killed. He was an inspiration as we stood and he led us in silent prayer for his son.

Mr. Eggle does not, understandably, does not want his son's death to be forgotten by this Nation. He wants to make it an example for others. He wants people to understand that there are many folks on the border like Chris, who put themselves in harm's way every day to try to protect those borders. But he also recognizes that we are in sort of a halfhearted war on those borders because we really do not fully support the men and women who we send to defend them.

Chris was not trained to deal with terrorists. Chris was not trained to deal with people coming across that border with AK-47s and carrying tons

of drugs and all the things we know go on along that southern border. It is, in fact, a war zone. If anybody does not believe that, they should go to Cochese County and spend some time there, spend some time with the rangers, spend some time with Mr. Eggle.

Mr. Eggle stated recently, ``I gave an eye for one war, now I have given my son in another. What is our President going to do about the war on our borders?'' This is an excellent question, Mr. Eggle. It is one that should be asked not just of the President of the United States, but of all the Members of this body, because we have essentially abandoned Mr. Eggle. We have abandoned the people who live along the border to the ravages of what I believe can be called nothing less than an invasion. Their homes are being destroyed. Their families are being destroyed. Their lives are being destroyed.

Chris Eggle's life was taken. Bob Eggle lives to tell us the tale and to help and to ask us to remember. That is the least we can do for Mr. Eggle, a true homeland hero.

Mr. Speaker, it will be interesting as times goes by and as we begin the debate on the budget, which will come up in a relatively short order, it will be very interesting to hear our friends on the other side who have spoken so long and eloquently tonight about the issue of prescription drugs and the problem with the President's plan. It will be interesting to hear how they address the problem with the budget. My guess is, it is just a guess, of course, when the budget is presented, it will be attacked by our friends on the other side of the aisle for being too high and having too much of a deficit attached to it.

I ask, I wonder, Mr. Speaker, if it would not be appropriate for all of us to think about the fact that the plan that is being put forward by the other side is one that would, oh, say a trillion dollars I think is the last we have seen that would attach to it in terms of cost. And my guess is again we will not hear much about that when we discuss the budget.

At any rate, tonight I do want to talk more about a different issue than the budget. I want to talk about, of course, the issue of national security and the issue of immigration and how the two actually connect to each other.

A great deal of debate is ongoing in the country about the activities that the United States will be involved with in a relatively short time perhaps in Iraq, whether or not we should be and whether or not the President is right to, in fact, address this issue in the way that he is choosing to do so. And that debate is appropriate and it is healthy in our Republic. Some aspects of it are healthy. But the one thing that I seldom hear being discussed by anyone, frankly, on either side of the issue of the United States involvement in Iraq is the actual threat that is posed by the action that we will take in that part of the world, the threat to our homeland, the threat to American citizens here in the United States. And the threat is real.

No one, for instance, believes that our armies will be defeated in Iraq. No one thinks that we will fail in the desert of Iraq. Saddam Hussein does not think that we will fail there. No one believes that that is where the final victory in this huge endeavor we are involved with will be won. It is very possible, it is even predictable, I think, that various aspects of this battle against terrorism will be fought in a variety of places around the world, and we will experience casualties in places other than the desert of Iraq.

And those casualties may very well be here in the continental United States.

We know that Saddam Hussein and others have called for a greater level of terrorist activities be committed against American interests should we commence hostility in Iraq. And we know that that may very well be the commencement of hostility, that is, may very well be a catalyzing agent that will bring together many of the disparate forces in that part of the world in what is often referred to as a jihad against the United States, and we must be prepared for it. And we have heard how FEMA has put out various pieces of information and on the FEMA Web site people can go to it and figure out how to protect their homes and figure out what to do if they are at their business and something happens, some sorts of attacks occur, biological, chemical or nuclear. And we are preparing the Nation for this eventuality. We talk about it a great deal, and we should because it is a true possibility. It is, in fact, a probability.

Now, we know that and we talk about that on the floor of the House, and we encourage Americans to be vigilant, and we ask them to take measures to protect themselves against these kinds of terrorist activities which we anticipate in the United States of America on our ground. It is amazing to me then that there is such a silence, almost one would say a deaf silence, emanating out of this body, out of the administration, certainly out of any sort of aspect of the media by and large, I guess I should say, some aspect of the media. Do pay attention to what I am going to say and suggest that it is, in fact, something Americans should be made aware of.

But we hear very little discussion about the fact that our borders are porous and across them come people not just looking for a job, although many and in fact most do come that way and for that purpose. But many others come looking to do us great damage. And we talk about, we do pay lip service to things like the creation of the Homeland Defense agency and the reconfiguration of the INS and the Border Patrol within that umbrella agency we are calling Homeland Defense; and that I suppose is supposed to salve the concerns, that is supposed to make us all feel better and more secure: the fact that we are arranging the deck chairs, and that new boxes are being constructed with new names in them to oversee agencies with really important-sounding titles, all dealing with homeland security.

But, Mr. Speaker, I just came back from a trip to the border, to the southern border; and I will tell you and I will tell anyone who will listen that our borders are not secure, that our homeland is not secure, even though we have an agency for that purpose. It is not secure. It is incredibly vulnerable. People still by the thousands come across those borders at their will. Again, most I am sure are doing nothing more than looking for the kind of life, a better life that our, perhaps your grandparents, certainly mine, came here for. They are coming illegally; and, therefore, they should not be given any sort of sustenance here. We should not encourage that. We should not reward that kind of activity. And I do hope that we will begin to understand that you cannot create a sieve on the border that allows only those people who are looking for a better life to come through it illegally, while simultaneously stopping those people who are coming here to kill us. I do not know how to construct such a sieve. I do not believe anyone does.

Yet that is exactly what we are trying to do today. We are trying our best, and the government really should be given credit, certainly the administration, for the diligence that they have exhibited heretofore, that we have been able to see actually, perhaps stop certain activities and events from occurring, and we should praise the efforts of our various intelligence gathering services and parts of the homeland security agency, because there are things that I am sure could have happened to the United States, very bad things that have been stopped by their diligence, and I commend them for it.

Their job is overwhelming. It is made immensely more difficult because the borders are porous. We have embarked upon this interesting strategy that says we are going to try to find the people who have gotten into the United States and are here trying to do what they were sent to do, the literally thousands that we have been told are here in these sleeper cells, just awaiting orders to execute some act of terrorism against the United States, and we apply a great deal of our resources to that end, to trying to find them once they are here and stop them from doing what it is they are going to do.

We do not do what is, I think, most logical thing, the thing that our constituents ask us to do every time I think almost any of us go home and have a town meeting. Somebody usually, certainly in my town meetings, will bring up the issue of border security and ask why we are not trying to stop them at the borders, why we do not try to stop the people from coming into the United States and doing bad things, why is it that we are concentrating on trying to do something about the ones that are here now, and here is the answer. It is an ugly answer, but it is the answer.

The answer, Mr. Speaker, is that if we were to actually do what is necessary to prevent people from coming into this country to create havoc and to commit acts of terrorism, we would essentially end illegal immigration, and therefore, we will not do that. We will not secure the border. We will not defend American lives or property because it would end illegal immigration, and Mr. Speaker, there are many people in this body, there are people throughout the government that recognize the political peril that might develop as a result of doing what I suggest.

There are large segments of the American population who could be offended by us securing our own borders. I do not understand how that could be. I do not understand how any American, any American regardless of the hyphen, what word we put before the hyphen, I do not understand how any American could say please do not defend our borders because if you do, fewer of my countrymen would be able to come in. Because if you feel that way, then that it is your countrymen that we are keeping out, then you are not an American, of course. You are connected, at least mentally, to another country. Politically, emotionally, linguistically, whatever, you are connected to another country and your concerns about our borders should not be taken into consideration.

Anyone who believes themselves to be an American, it seems to me, would be willing to say, and in fact, they do in huge number, please protect the border, please stop people from coming into this country to do us great harm because it may be me, it may be my family that is the casualty and the casualties of the next terrorist activity, and because they have some sort of connection to our country, to the United States of America, because they want to see us survive, and they recognize that the world in which we live today is the world that does not, in fact, exist easily with things like open borders.

The world in which we live, the kind of world we have lived in this United States for a couple of hundred years where we felt so secure from the problems of other countries, the oceans protected us and that we could defend ourselves by sending armies to other countries, that world is gone. It no longer really exists.

Our Nation is at risk because our borders are porous, and no matter how many times somebody stands on the floor of this House or in front of the cameras at press briefings and says something like we are doing everything possible to defend the people of this country, no matter how many times they say it, it simply is not true. It is not true.

I can tell my colleagues that anyone who lives on the border, northern or southern, will tell you that the border is porous and across that border is coming thousands, thousands of people over the course of a year, millions of people, and that they will also tell you, by the way, Mr. Speaker, that their lives are being essentially destroyed, that their way of life is being destroyed, that their ranches and farms and homes along that border are being destroyed, literally and figuratively, destroyed.

We spoke to rancher after rancher in Cochise County on the border with

Mexico, and they talked about having lived there for generations and how something different was happening in the last 4 or 5 years where they have always had the issue of, in the past, illegal immigrants coming across their border or that border and on to their land, and it is a few here and there, and they would give them food. They would give them jobs many times frankly, and these people would either move on or move back to Mexico at certain points in time, and it really was not much of a problem frankly.

Something, they keep saying, has happened in the last 4 or 5 years, something very odd and very disconcerting, and what they say is that it is not just one or two people coming across. It is, in fact, hordes of people, thousands of people coming across the border, destroying the fences, depositing litter throughout the land and in areas that were heretofore pristine in nature. They are now essentially the local landfill, but there is no EPA to govern the problem and to constrict the use of this particular land.

People will come to what are called pick-up sites, Mr. Speaker, and they are all over the land in this area. There are places where people will cross into the United States illegally, continue on foot to a particular spot inside the United States where there is a road, and they will congregate there, sometimes in the hundreds. Over a period of time, maybe thousands will congregate in this particular area, waiting for their truck, semis, various other forms of transportation to get there, pick them up and take them into the interior of the United States.

The land becomes essentially destroyed where these sites are. There is so much trash that a person literally has to be careful as they walk through there because of what they might step on or what they might touch. I mean thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of water bottles and trash and plastic bags because people are told they must discard everything. They must discard their backpacks, jackets, coats, shirts, whatever, get into these whatever kind of transportation is made available to them with as little as possible because they need more room. So they do not let them take in anything that they are carrying and they have to just simply drop it at that point.

The land is devastated. If this happened anywhere else in the United States, the Sierra Club would be going crazy. We would be hearing from them on the floor of this House every single day. Somebody would be getting sued. I guarantee my colleagues that. The cameras from ABC, NBC and CBS would be there every night saying, look what these people are doing to our land; they are destroying this property.

Yet, I really have not seen that kind of exposure of this particular problem. I have certainly not heard the Sierra Club or any of the environmentalist organizations out there in the United States condemn this activity and try to do something about it and suggest that maybe the government ought to take some action.

The trash that is deposited is not only unsightly and becoming something that becomes very dangerous at certain points in time, but it is also, of course, something that these ranchers have to put up with, and it becomes an economic liability for them because cattle eat the trash. They try to consume the plastic, and of course, it will kill them in a short period of time.

The human feces that is deposited in this area, oftentimes a rainstorm will occur in that, especially in that part of the country it occurs quickly. These arroyos fill up. The human waste is washed down. It gets into the water supply for cattle and eventually for human beings. It is a very dangerous situation, very ugly situation.

I talked to ranchers who spend most of their day trying to repair their fences instead of actually conducting the ranching operations that are necessary to keep them afloat. Many of these ranchers are in bankruptcy.

Then, of course, there are the even more dangerous aspects of this, because the people coming across the border, many of them are carrying drugs, illegal narcotics into the United States. They come with backpacks, 60 to 80 pounds on their back. Sometimes they come guarded by people carrying M-16s or various other automatic weapons. They come across the land in, again, droves, thousands. We have pictures of them.

These are very dangerous people. These are people who do not simply drop everything and run when they are confronted by either a rancher or a border patrol. They will want to many times shoot it out with them, and they have done so.

Even some of the people who are not necessarily directly connected to the drug trafficking have become very indifferent in their nature, very aggressive, very antagonistic to the ranchers in the area, have threatened them physically, have assaulted them, have broken into their homes, their barns, the buildings on their ranches, have vandalized the wells, have threatened the family members. Person after person we speak to is armed. Children go to school armed, 13- and 14-year-old kids. Their parents are afraid to send them that far alone or unarmed.

Ranchers have to keep shotguns or other firearms by their door, and as one rancher said to me, nobody should have to live like this. We have lived here for generations. Nobody ever locked their doors. Nobody ever locked their cars. This was the idyllic and picturesque rural life that most people thought existed in this country.

Everything has changed on the border. The government of Mexico has decided to move as many people into the United States as possible, as I was told by Juan Hernandez, who was the head of something called the Ministry for Mexicans Living in the United States, a newly-created ministry in Mexico. He was at that time the minister, and when I asked him the purpose of such an agency, I had never heard of such an agency before, he said, well, no, it is new, and I am the first minister, and the purpose is essentially to increase the flow of people into the United States from Mexico. I said, why do you want to do that? And he said there are several reasons.

He was very, very candid. I must tell my colleagues I was astounded by how candid he was when he said, well, the reason why we are trying to get as many people into the United States as possible is so that eventually we will be able to affect American policy vis-a-vis Mexico just by the number of people who exist there. He said, of course, these people send money home to Mexico. It is called remittance and it accounts for almost 30 percent of their GDP. It is a very important function. It is a very important part of the Mexican government and the Mexican economy.

It also serves another purpose, although he did not claim this, but it is certainly accurate to say that because of Mexico's enormous growth rate in the last 25 years, having doubled their population, they are now, and because they are still looking, they still have an economy is that is anything but robust. They have a huge unemployment problem and they have lots and lots of very young people who are unemployed, and as certainly we know, what that means throughout anywhere, any country, it means instability.

And so they want to move these people out of Mexico and into the United States.

Some people would even suggest that there are other reasons, that term ``reconquista'' is more than just an idle phrase; that people actually believe that they can reconquer that part of the United States, the southern part of the United States, by simply moving people into it. Well, there are many reasons why we are seeing this enormous number of people coming across the border, and Mexico may very well have their reasons for encouraging the flow into the United States. But we have absolutely no reason to accept this state of affairs except for the fact that we fear the politics. We fear the political reaction to any action we take to secure the border, both northern and southern.

Well, that is simply not good enough for me, Mr. Speaker. That is not a good enough reason for us to abandon our borders. Because it is imperative, I think, for any nation, in order to call itself a nation, to be able to control its own borders; and we do not do that. We do not wish to do that, and we suffer the consequences: increased costs for American citizens.

There is always this debate as to whether or not massive immigration of

legal and illegal workers, low-paid, low-skilled workers into the United States is a benefit to the country. Well, I will tell you to whom it is a benefit. It is a benefit to those who hire low-skilled, low-wage workers and pay them very little. Those folks do, in fact, get a profit from this migration activity and from the fact that our borders are porous, and they can therefore hire people who are desperate. That is profitable for them, but it is costly for the United States.

Many very reputable studies have been conducted that are designed to identify the actual costs. A lady at Vanderbilt University, a very well-respected economist, has stated often that the result of massive immigration into the United States of low-skilled, low-wage people creates profits for some, but costs for the many. And there is absolutely no way that the United States benefits in the aggregate from having millions of people here for whom housing is necessary, schooling is necessary, hospitals are necessary, and prisons are necessary.

Twenty-five percent of the prison population in Federal prisons is made up of people who are noncitizens in this country. It varies from State to State as to how many noncitizens end up in State facilities or in local lockups, but it is a significant number. And these are very expensive costs. And they are not paid back by the ``taxes that are paid by the people coming in.'' First of all, even if they were paying taxes, of course, we would recognize these are low-skilled, low-wage people.

At one of these pickup sites I mentioned before, Mr. Speaker, that we were going through a couple of weeks ago on the border, we saw some paper, well, there was paper and stuff everywhere; and I happened to look down and there was a 1040, a Federal income tax form that someone had filed, and it was deposited in the rest of this trash heap in this pickup site. I picked it up and we were looking at it and it was a Mr. Delgado. And Mr. Delgado had filed taxes, a tax form for the previous year, in which he claimed, and I cannot remember now because I do not have it with me, but I think it was $8,000 or $9,000 in income that he had paid $1,100 or $1,200 in taxes. But of course he also claimed $2,400 in unearned income tax credit. So he got a refund, of course, of almost double what he paid.

And this is not unusual. It is costing us not just the money that every city and State and the Federal Government has to put out for all the services and the infrastructure, but it costs us in terms of the tax claims that are made by the people who come in here and work often illegally. And my colleagues know as well as I do how this happens. Tax ID numbers are assigned. The IRS could not care less whether a person is legal or illegal. They will assign a tax ID number, and that is really all one needs to then make a claim for an income tax credit.

So there is that one side of the immigration issue. There is this economic dilemma that we face and certainly an economic hardship that is placed on Americans to support massive immigration into this country. Then there is this other side, there is this thing we call the national security implications of massive immigration.

And before I go to that, Mr. Speaker, I do want to talk about something else that is occurring. We are about to perhaps embark upon some action in the Middle East, and we are looking for friends around the world. We are very interested in getting countries in the Middle East to help us out. We have heard a lot about Turkey and the fact that we had offered them, well estimates go from $12 billion to $30 billion in aid, essentially a bribe, to have them allow us to station troops there. Their parliament recently turned down that request from the United States to station troops there, so this has caused a lot of consternation.

But they are not the only government that is trying to hold the United States up in order for them to agree to allow us to do what we think we need to do for our national interest and for the interest of, in fact, the civilized world. Our friends to the south have been negotiating with the United States, because of course we need their vote on the Security Council in this resolution that is coming up. It is widely reported that some bargaining has been going on between the administration and Vincente Fox's government. The issue is, well, what is in it for us, is the way I think it has been put. What is in it for Mexico? What are we willing to give them to get their vote on the Security Council?

This is the same government, Mr. Speaker, the same country whose president came here and addressed a joint session and talked about the need for trust. He used that word over and over and over again, I remember. We have to trust each other. We have to trust Mexico especially, he said. Well, in that vein, then, he is suggesting that some quid pro quo is necessary for them to support our resolution, or the British resolution in the Security Council; and what they are asking for is another push for amnesty for all the people living here illegally, all the people from Mexico living here illegally.

I do not know, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what arrangements have been made to get their vote; but I would suggest that this is not the action of a friend, of a nation that we are supposed to be able to trust. And I also assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I will certainly do everything in my power to stop any effort to provide amnesty for anyone here illegally, Mexicans or anyone else. It is the worst kind of public policy.

Just before I came on the floor, I was talking to someone who was telling me about the fact that he is engaged, and he is trying to get the person to whom he is engaged here in the United States. It is a lengthy and difficult process, and he is of course doing it the right way. It is going to cost money. It is certainly going to cost a lot of time, and it is a big inconvenience. And I wonder what we would tell him and anyone else who is actually trying to do it the right way if we were to in fact then grant amnesty to the, what, 10 to 13 million people here who have done it the wrong way. What message does that send to all of the law-abiding citizens of this country and/or law-abiding prospective citizens to this country? It tells them they were suckers; and that is it, that they should have simply snuck in.

Why would someone not just sneak in? Why would anyone go through the hassle? And by the way, when we go down to the border, the border patrol will say every time, please do not even mention amnesty. Because every time we say amnesty up here, this flood they are trying to deal with turns into a tidal wave. It is terrible public policy, Mr. Speaker, and I will do anything I can to try to stop it.

Again, I do not know what arrangements have been made. I know it has been widely reported that this is the kind of thing that is going on. The fact that the borders are porous is more than just an obstacle to those of us who want to adhere to the rule of law and encourage people to come into this country legally, to enhance the idea of national sovereignty. It is more than just a little obstacle along those lines. It is also a very severe and significant threat to the existence of the United States of America.

Across these borders come people, as I have said before, with ill intent, and they can come across at their will. And many people are coming from areas of the world that are certainly known to spawn the terrorists about whom we are so greatly concerned. In fact, on the border they also have a term for that. They always refer to these people coming across, this new phenomena, by saying there are so many OTMs. That simply means ``other than Mexicans,'' coming across the southern border.

But it is not unique to the southern border. I guarantee it is happening on our northern border also. Many people are being reported, hundreds, sometimes more, who are actually coming from countries in the Middle East. And what we are noticing recently is quite a number of people coming up through Brazil in what is something called the tri- border region in South America. This is an interesting phenomenon, Mr. Speaker. A very interesting phenomenon, because it is something we hear very little about.

In a paper, from which I am going to quote here, it is called ``Tres Fronteras,'' which means ``three borders,'' and that is why I say we refer to it now mostly as the tri-border area. It is Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil in South America. It was submitted by Lawrence J. Martines, a member of the IACSP, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, and a variety of other organizations. It is entitled ``The Nexus of Islamic Terrorism in Latin America.''

It starts off: ``Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay once held the title of the contraband capital of South America. A seedy border town surrounded by jungle, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. Millions of dollars in drugs have passed through Ciudad Del Este down the Parana River to the Rio de la Plata and eventually reaching the Atlantic seaboard. Upriver came illegal booze, jewelry, and black- market cigarettes. The narcotrafficantes and all-purpose smugglers fueled the economy of the region. According to a U.S. State Department document, thanks to Ciudad Del Este, impoverished Paraguay had both a higher consumption of whiskey than Scotland and a record supply of foreign cigarettes and jewelry.

``In the mid-1980s, a demographic shift began in South America,'' and this is the part that is quite interesting and something hardly anyone talks about. ``Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Southwest Asia began flooding into the region, including the Tres Fronteras. By 2001 the Muslim population south of the Panama Canal had skyrocketed to an estimated 6 million. Over a million currently live in Brazil, while Argentina plays host to 700,000. Much of the remainder live in Paraguay, Chile, Peru and Bolivia. In Ciudad Del Este, over 23,000 Muslims, mostly Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians, now control the economic and political life of the area which extends across the border to the city of Foz do Iguacu on the Brazilian side of Parana.

``Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, and under major prodding from the CIA, police officers from the three adjoining nations swept into the area to scour for evidence that the tri-border region may have evolved into a haven for Islamic extremists. Paraguayan police rounded up numerous Arab immigrants and Paraguayan citizens who they claimed to have links to international terror groups. Among those arrested was Alejandro Weiss, the former Paraguayan consul to the United States of America. It was discovered that consul Weiss had sold over 300 passports, visas and cargo shipment authorizations at $8,000 a piece. These documents went to Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian citizens suspected of terrorist connections. These individuals and their cargoes have since melted into the rapidly growing Arab community within the tri-border region.

Skipping to the end, On November 21, Otto Reich, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere made the following statement. ``We have information that there are numerous people helping the Hizballah organization in the tri-border area. This includes financially helping terrorist groups in the Middle East.''

``Footnote: When taking a hard look at Islamic extremists in Latin America, one should not ignore Mexico. Within the last year, a former Mexican immigration official in Ciudad Juarez was imprisoned because of his involvement in smuggling hundreds of Iraqis and Palestinians into the United States of America since 1996. These Arabs apparently traveled up the land bridge from South America. Further, within the same time frame, Matamoros police arrested a migrant smuggler accused of sneaking numerous Pakistanis into the southwestern United States.

``One must conclude from all this Islamic extremist activity south of border that we must increase vigilance at our back door. The threat is clearly aimed at our homeland via the geography of our hemispheric neighbors. Continued sneaking of terrorists into America through our porous southern flank is a given, unless there is a major military or law enforcement presence implemented there in the very near future.''

While we were down there and in other briefings I have had from Border Patrol agents and from the INS, they will show you the number of people that they have arrested, and they identify them by country of origin. Over the last year and a half, it is fascinating to see what is happening, because there is the typical number from Mexico, and then they go through all of the other countries from which we are grabbing people that are coming into the country illegally.

In the last year and a half it was weird because Brazil just went off the charts. What is the idea there? What is happening is this. Brazil and the tri-border area is home to this group of Islamic extremists, they provide the transportation network that brings these people up through Mexico and into the United States. They come from all over the Middle East, they come through that tri-border area. They are culturated to a certain extent, and then moved into the United States. We have gotten all of these people with these Brazilian passports. It is a very odd thing.

But the point I am making is this: The folks that are coming into this country are not just looking for a job cutting your lawn or replacing your roof. Some of them, many of them, are coming to replace you, your very existence. They are coming across porous borders, and the only way that it can ever be dealt with is, I reiterate, to provide a major military or law enforcement presence on that border, northern and southern. It means the commitment of our military assets to a task that one would think would be the most logical task, the first task, to protect the homeland. Homeland defense.

There are 37,000 American troops on the border between North and South Korea. South Koreans tell us that they do not want them. There are demonstrations all of the time against American troops there. Mr. Speaker, I would certainly look long and hard at any proposal to bring those troops back home and put them on the border where I know they are wanted, and that is our border between Mexico and the United States and Mexico and Canada.

There are Muslim groups in Canada. When we were on the northern border, we were told about a Muslim group in Calgary, Canada. Odd as that might sound, that is what we were told by the Forest Service officials that were playing host to our group. And the reason they identified this group was this group was responsible, perhaps not all 25,000, but the Muslim population in Calgary that was responsible for the transportation of the narcotics of the drugs into the United States. They put them together here to make methamphetamines. And then the money that was garnered from this illegal trafficking in narcotics went back to this group in Calgary, Canada, and was then used to support terrorist organizations all over the world.

We were told that there is something like 100,000 Muslims in other major cities in Canada, including Vancouver. Again, an odd thing. Muslims in Canada and Brazil, yes, it is happening. It is documented. It is pretty peculiar, I agree, but it is a fact of life. It is not a fact that we want too much exposure on however because if most people in the United States understood this, knew this, there would be a call to do something about it, and their government would supposedly respond to that. I do not know that they would do it, but I know there would be a call to do it.

Mr. Speaker, I have never seen a greater divide between what the people of this country want and what this government is willing to give them than in this area of immigration reform. The people want it. We are not willing to give it. Why? Because of the politics of the issue.

What do we do instead? We not only open the borders and keep them open, but we encourage even more people to come across. States are now providing various amenities, benefits to people to come here and live illegally. The Mexican consul in the United States is going around lobbying cities and States to get them to accept the matricular consular. It is a card handed out to Mexican nationals. They have every right to do that, but then the Mexican consul has gone out and asked cities and States to accept these cards as an ID for the provision of benefits and services, and many cities and States have agreed to do that.

That means that we are running a variety of immigration systems in this country. The Federal Government is saying here is what we give you. It is called a green card when you come into the United States legally, or a visa. And a city is saying I do not care about that, I will take this card given by the Mexican consul.

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if an American consul official would go to a State official in Mexico or Canada and say would you please help me help people that are here illegally violate the Federal law, would you please help us. Well, there would be an international incident. The governments of Mexico and Canada would file a protest saying what are your consuls doing in my country trying to get people to break the law. That is exactly what is happening in America. Yet we have taken no action against it.

We have not even filed a protest. In fact, we do not want this to be known. It is happening in State after State. Colorado, my State, to its great credit, has passed through the House and through at least one committee in the Senate a bill to ban any acceptance of the matricular consular by the State and any local entity in Colorado. I hope States throughout the United States take this example and move forward quickly. I have introduced legislation to stop the Federal Government from doing this. Why would there even be opposition to this? Why would we be saying that we would accept for identification purposes anything but a U.S. or State government issued document? But we are doing it to accommodate illegal immigrants into this country because, Mr. Speaker, that is the only people that in fact need this card. The only people who need a card for identification purposes are people who are here illegally. Otherwise, you have something from our government. It is called, as I say, a green card or a visa. But if you are here illegally, you do not have that so you need this other card, and we are accommodating that. States and cities are doing it. Even the Federal Government is abetting it because we have not spoken out against it. We have not demanded that the Mexican consul stop this activity.

The State House in Washington last week, I think, passed a bill giving instate tuition. If Washington goes ahead, they will join several other States, Utah, Texas, California, I cannot remember, I think there is another State, that have done that. I wonder if they recognize, and, by the way, this is something I hope that they hear, Mr. Speaker, that in 1996 this Congress passed a law saying that if any State does that, if they give instate tuition to illegal residents in this country, then they have to give that same rate to everybody who applies, all outstate applicants have to be given the rate that they give to an illegal alien applying. So that will end outstate tuition for anybody wanting to go to Utah, California, Texas and Washington, anybody in the United States who chooses to leave their State and apply to any of these States for college; and if they are told that their costs are going to be much higher than the State resident, they could sue. I would certainly encourage them to do so because, of course, this is an activity that is designed to thwart the will of the Congress and the Nation.

How many immigration systems are we going to run in this country? And they are given driver's licenses and they are out lobbying for this. And everybody will say, But these people are just coming for jobs. Come on. It is good for the country. No, Mr. Speaker, there are major, negative implications to massive illegal immigration. Where are the ears to hear this? Why have we not as a body risen up and reflected the will of our constituents and demanded that these governments stop trying to infiltrate into the United States, stop trying to send their people in here illegally? There is a process to come into the United States legally. It is not the act of a friendly nation to encourage people to come across our borders illegally.

Michelle Malkin, I cannot say enough about her as an author and observer of the political scene, has written a book called ``Invasion'' to describe this phenomenon, and it is an invasion. It is the accurate word to describe what is happening to us. In order to stop it, we need to put our military on our borders to defend our Nation against this invasion. I do not know, Mr. Speaker, how we can look our constituents in the eye, any of us, when we go home if we have not done everything possible to defend the country. That includes using the military assets of this country for that purpose.

We do not have to place people arm in arm across the border. Technology now allows us to, in fact, monitor large tracts of land, be able to address the issue when it occurs, someone crossing a border; we have sensors that can identify a person as opposed to a deer or an animal coming across. We have drones, unmanned aerial vehicles we can use on our borders. I have seen it work. We tried it on the northern border for a 2-week stint, 100 Marines using three drones and two radar stations controlling 100 miles of border in some of the most rugged areas of the country. We can do it. It is not an issue of resources. People will say, it just costs too much. A Member of the other body indicated, and he is from Arizona, that we could not put troops on our borders because we are about to go to war. I would suggest that there is a problem there, because we are at war in a way, in his own State, I should say. Therefore, those troops could be, I think, appropriately used there.

Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that I know is uncomfortable for many to deal with; but it is nonetheless a real issue, something that needs to be dealt with by this body and by the American people. I appreciate the time that has been given me this evening to bring it to the attention of this body.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 48 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, we have had a number of discussions in the House over the last several days dealing with the issue of the possibility of a conflict in the Middle East and the efficacy thereof, and whether or not it is in the national interests of the United States to embark upon this venture, whether a preemptive strike by the United States is justified, whether or not our sending men and women into harm's way is appropriate. And this is the place, of course, where that debate should be carried on. Throughout the United States, of course, around water coolers and in offices and around dinner tables, the debate continues. It is certainly appropriate that it goes on here.

I just want to reflect upon something that happened not too long ago in Denver, Colorado when I was asked to speak at a rally, and the rally was organized by people who wanted to show the armed forces, especially the Armed Forces of the United States, that the American people believe in them, that the American people trust them, that the American people admire and respect them, and that we know we place our safety in their hands. We know that we place this great Nation in their hands, and we know that, in fact, we place the western civilization, in fact, in their hands. Its survival will be determined by the actions of people like those that we are sending off to the Middle East.

So it was billed in the newspapers as a pro-war rally. And I was asked to speak at this rally, and I indicated to the people in the audience that I thought that it had been misidentified by the press. And that in fact I knew no one, I really cannot tell my colleagues that I have ever met anyone who was, in fact, pro-war, just pro-war.

I do not know anybody like that. There may be people out there who live for the idea of risking life and limb or taking someone else's in the act of war, but I just do not know them; and I do not know that anybody at that rally could have been so classified or identified. Nonetheless, that is the way the press billed it, a pro-war rally.

As I said, I think it has been mischaracterized. I know why the organizers asked me to speak and why I am here, because it is a pro- America rally. I am here, as I said, to lend my voice to those that have already spoken who have indicated their strong support for the actions of our government and for the people who are going to serve and are serving in the military.

But I said that also it was interesting to me because there were many other rallies that had been held up to that point in time, certainly many here in Washington, many on the Mall, and they were organized for the most part by the Workers' Party and similar groups. The people who spoke at these rallies were people who said little about the issue of the advisability of peace in the Middle East, but they did say a lot about what was wrong, in their minds, anyway, with America.

I quoted from some of the speeches that had been made right here in Washington on the Mall at these rallies. The quotes were those that reflected the sort of atmosphere that prevailed at these ``pro-peace rallies.'' I suggested that they were also misidentified by the press as pro-peace rallies, just as we were misidentified by the press as a pro-war rally; and that most of the discussions and most of the people exhorting the crowd were not really interested in just the concept of peace and the need for it, but they talked mostly about the problems with America: that America needed ``regime change''; that America needed a ``revolution''; that President Bush was, well, I will not go into the kind of epithets that they tossed out against the President and against our system. Also, they led chants of Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, at these rallies.

When we read what they said, when we read this, we came to the conclusion that there was something a little bit different; that maybe it was not just a pro-peace rally, but that perhaps their real concern was America itself, this Nation and everything it stands for. I indicated that I believed that those rallies could be more accurately identified as anti-America rallies.

Now, not everyone, of course, who attends such a rally could be identified as anti-American. Many people went there, I am sure, because they just simply wanted peace and believed that the foreign policy of the United States vis-a-vis Iraq was inaccurate, was incorrect.

But the organizers of the rally and the people who spoke at these rallies were for the most part unconcerned with the actual issues that we are confronting here with regard to Iraq, and they were much more concerned with what they considered to be the problems with the United States, with our system of government, and essentially with who we are.

Now, shortly thereafter the newspapers in my State carried several stories about the rally, and about what I said. I was characterized as someone who said, if you are not supporting the war effort, you are un- American. Of course, that was not accurate; but it is certainly not the first time that my statements or anyone's, especially those of us here in this body, have been mischaracterized in the press.

But it made me think about the way in which so many Americans have been inclined over the last several decades, really, to look first at what America's warts are, America's problems, America's shortcomings, without being even the slightest bit interested in what America's values are and what America represents for the world.

I was intrigued by a number of things in this particular debate, not the least of which is the attention we pay to people like movie stars and entertainment, people in the entertainment business. We focus on them.

As I was coming over here, I was listening to something that was referencing an actor. He was on the radio, and I think it was simulcast on television. I got to see just part of it, actually, before I came over. This actor was talking about what his opinions were with regard to the war. He was, of course, very critical about the United States and our actions.

Now, this particular actor has every right to, of course, express his opinions, as does the postman, as does the waitress, as does any other citizen of this country. What is intriguing to me is the attention that we pay to that particular point of view by these people, who admittedly have no particular expertise that differentiates them from any of the people that I just mentioned in their walks of life: the waitress, the postman, the cab driver.

As a matter of fact, I remember reading something a little bit ago about a cab driver here in Washington, D.C. when ex-President Clinton was addressing a group at Georgetown University right after 9-11. Mr. Clinton suggested in this particular speech that the reason the United States had suffered such a blow from these terrorists was because of the way we had treated Native Americans in the past and because of the history of slavery in the United States. That is why we essentially deserved what we got. This is from an ex-President.

Now, it is understandable that the media would cover his interpretation of the events. He was, as a matter of fact, of course, an ex-President of the United States, emphasizing here, to my great relief, the prefix ``ex'' before the word ``President.''

In Washington there was a cab driver, and by the way, this was reported in

the press, of course. I read this story about a gentleman getting into a cab. He saw on the front seat of the cab the newspaper, and it was turned to this particular article about the President's speech, about the ex-President's speech.

The person getting into the cab said to the cab driver, I see you read about President Clinton's speech. The cab driver said, yes. He said, what did you think of it? The cab driver said, I thought it was baloney. He said, these people do not hate us for what we have done wrong; they hate us for what we do right.

Now, I heard that, this particular little vignette, I heard it in a speech that was given not too long ago by the individual who was actually the person getting into the cab. I thought to myself at the time what an interesting and, I thought, profound observation. That was my opinion of that cab driver's observation. He said, you know, we do stuff right. We help people. We have such freedoms in the United States, freedom of speech and the press and freedom of religion, especially freedom of religion, and freedom of the sexes to vote and to share the rights afforded to all citizens; which is not, of course, the case with people in other parts of the world, people in other civilizations, who do not allow that kind of thing to exist in their societies.

This cab driver was observing that our system was better and that we do it right. That is why they hate us. That is why we got attacked. I thought, what a very profound observation.

Now, I will tell the Members that that little story, of course, appeared nowhere that I know of in the press, in the national media. Perhaps there was no reason for it to be reported, because, after all, this was a cab driver in Washington, D.C. What was his expertise? He talks to a lot of people, that is true, but not really a person that we would say, well, yes, gee, whiz, that is the guy we should listen to because of his great acumen, great experience, or whatever.

Yet, interestingly, the press pays a great deal of attention to people in the media, people in the entertainment world, I should say, who come forward with their pronouncements about what is right in terms of our foreign policy and what is wrong, actors like Sean Penn and actress, although she does not want to be called an actress because that distinguishes a gender difference, actresses like Susan Sarandon, actors like George Clooney, and this guy, Mike Farrell. The closest he has come, I think, to being involved in any sort of conflict was his portraying a doctor on the TV series called ``M*A*S*H.''

These people are given a lot of attention and great air time. People listen to them and say, gee, whiz, that is how they feel. I know I am intrigued by it, because of course they are all, without exception, everybody I mentioned, and far more than that in the entertainment industry, being extremely liberal, they are, of course, opposed to our actions in Iraq.

Now, I do not remember any of them saying a thing about our going into Yugoslavia. I do not remember anybody condemning President Clinton, ex-President Clinton, for tossing missiles around when he felt it appropriate, and actually pursuing a war in Yugoslavia that was against a country that posed absolutely no threat to the United States whatsoever.

No one ever suggested in their wildest dreams that Milosevic was a threat to the United States. He was a bad guy, no doubt, but what was his threat to the United States? Yet we in fact carried out a war against him. All of these people stayed silent, if I remember correctly. I do not remember them being quite so vocal, or vocal at all during that period of time.

But this war against a madman in Iraq, against a person that I have never heard anyone, even these people, suggest is a reasonable individual with whom we can ``do business,'' these people rail against the United States and we pay attention. The media pays attention.

But I suggest that they have absolutely no more cache on this issue than the cab driver here in Washington, D.C. I happen to, of course, agree with his interpretation, but I do not think I ever saw him on television talking about it. He has exactly the same, or in fact one might say, because of the many people that he sees during the course of the day, and here in Washington, D.C. he may be transporting people in various capacities that discuss world issues, so he may be more politically astute than anyone in Hollywood. Yet, of course, we will never be talking about him because he is not a national figure, and because he happens to actually take a different point of view than the liberal left-wing anti-American sentiment that is expressed by the folks I just mentioned who are actors and actresses, noble profession that it may be.

Certainly, I am not capable, not qualified, to make any sort of comment that anyone would take seriously about their acting abilities, or about the movies in which they appear. I do not know. I must admit, I had to ask somebody in the Cloakroom for some of these names, because I remembered some of the movies, but I could not remember the names of the individuals.

And so if I were to go out and talk about what their movies were like, I mean I have that right to express my opinion and to either pay for the tickets or not, but I do not expect that the press would surround me and say, What do you think about the qualities of the movies these people make? Because, of course, it is of no consequence to the world what I think about their abilities. Why would it be of consequence to the world what they think about whether or not the United States should go to war? They are entitled to their opinion, absolutely, but why does anyone pay attention to it is the question I guess I raise.

And it gets me to a point, you know, as I sat here listening to the discussion from the gentleman earlier about his resolution that I sort of recognize some of the fault of the United States in terms of the way they treated Japanese Americans or my ancestors, Italian Americans or German Americans who were, in fact, interred just like Japanese Americans were, and what a bad decision it was at the time. Certainly I will not argue that it was a good decision. But I remember I just started thinking to myself how interesting it would be if one were to run a resolution saying is it not great that the United States of America, this great republic, this great system, unique really in the world, is such a place in which the children of people who were interred can become Members of the Congress of the United States, and how wonderful it is that we can reflect upon our past and take the actions that are appropriate in terms of apologies and that sort of thing. But again, few, if any other country, would ever, ever think about that. And I wonder why we should not celebrate that aspect of America as much as we condemn and dwell upon the warts.

But there is a philosophy in this land that has permeated our society, certainly permeated the media, the entertainment industry, the textbooks in our schools, the academic communities in the United States. It is sometimes referred to as multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and it has achieved a stature far, far higher than it deserves from my point of view. It does permeate American society and it is reflected by the kind of things that we see and hear all of the time, from people who are not just looking at the United States with some degree of objectivity and making determinations as to the good things we do as opposed to the bad things we do and what is good about America as opposed to what is bad.

They only focus on what is bad not just on America, but about western civilization, of which we are, of course, the leader. And they dwell upon and they are obsessed with the problems, the mistakes, the inadequacies of western civilization and of American society in particular. And we teach our children that there is really nothing unique about America, that it is just one of those places people happen to be, nothing special. In fact, in fact, if it is different at all, it is different because of how bad it is, how ugly is its history: slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, mistreatment of immigrant groups, all of which of course have some degree of truth, but pale in comparison to what we have given in this world, pale in comparison to the wonderful things western society, civilization, and America in particular have given to this world. Certainly the rule

of law, certainly the idea of the value of the individual, certainly the idea of the freedom of worship.

But these things are never discussed as values. They are never taught to our children. Certainly in the last 20 or 30 years anyway, they are not taught to children as being values worthy of their allegiance. It is surprising to me sometimes that there are still those people, and thank God for it, who are willing to risk their lives for what so many of our forefathers gave theirs. And so it is this peculiar obsession that so many have with the negative side of America and of western civilization in general that propels them, I think, to the street; even to the point of taking the side of someone like Saddam Hussein who has exhibited the most, the same characteristics, the same traits and has committed the same atrocities as some of the greatest devils that have ever beset the world in human form, including Stalin and Hitler.

But people are so wrapped up in this anti-American, anti-western civilization, multiculturalist concept that they can not bring themselves to think about the possibility that action, even to the point of taking violent action in the form of a war, may be necessary to rid this world of an evil so great that it threatens the very existence of our own society; because, of course, to many of those people, evil is not something that really exists in the world; that everything is relative and the other forms of government, the other systems of governments, are all equally good or equally bad, but certainly nothing is worth fighting for or risking one's life for.

Now, the reason why I address that issue tonight is because it does play a role in what I think is another huge problem that we have face in this Nation. And that is the need for our society, for western civilization to be coherent in the way in which it identifies itself and the way in which it projects its philosophy to the rest of the world. Put simply, Mr. Speaker, Americans have to know who we are, what we are all about, what are the principles that hold us together, that binds us together, and dwell on those and think about those as opposed to dwelling upon and thinking of only those things that tear us apart as a Nation and, again, as a civilization.

Because I do believe, Mr. Speaker, that it is a clash of civilization with which we are involved. I believe that western civilization is at risk. It is at risk from what we might call fundamentalist Islam, perhaps more appropriately, extremist elements in the Islamic community. And I believe that it is a war that is fought both with arms, with the force of arms in places like Afghanistan, in the Philippines and Iraq, but it is also fought with the force of ideas. And that to be successful in this battle we not only have to field the best Army which, of course, I believe we have, with the best equipment, which I believe we can provide them; we also have to field individuals capable of defending western civilization in an intellectual arena.

It is a war of arms. It is a war of ideas. And our civilization is threatened. Our ability to actually be successful in this clash will be determined not just by the valor exhibited on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else that we determine these brave young men and women need to be deployed, but our success will be determined by the way in which we project the ideas of western civilization and defend them. And we need to understand as a society, as a civilization, as a Nation, we need to understand who we are, what it is we are all about, where we want to go, what our history is, a common history. I think it is imperative for us to be successful.

And that is why oftentimes I take the floor of the House, evenings like this, on special orders to exhort my colleagues to think about another aspect of this problem, and that is the degree to which massive immigration into the country combined with this philosophy of multiculturalism can be and, in my estimation, is a dangerous, dangerous phenomenon.

Massive immigration into the country unchecked, massive immigration that is combined with this, that is combined with this philosophy I describe as multiculturalism does not help us develop a coherent society. It does not help us develop a strong intellectual base of support for the ideals of western civilization. It pulls people apart rather than pulls them together. We have a tendency to vulcanize our society rather than bring it together as one United States of America, both geographically and intellectually and emotionally.

Immigration is a very, very significant problem. And it goes far beyond the issues of jobs that may be being taken by people from outside the country, although that is a significant issue. And believe me, if your job has been taken by someone from another country, then it is the most important issue to you. And I understand that. But the problems that arise as a result of this kind of massive immigration combined with this bizarre and rabid multiculturalism that pervades our society are such that I think that they actually pose a great and significant threat to the United States of America and, in fact, to western civilization.

I think that the need is great for at least the debate of this topic. It is a topic that we eschewed, that we have avoided, that we have attempted to move aside because it is uncomfortable. That is true. The debate over immigration and its effect on our country at this point in its history needs to be undertaken, but is very, very uncomfortable for many Members of this body and certainly many people throughout the country. But I believe with all of my heart that debate needs to be undertaken.

There are these more esoteric aspects of it that I have tried to address here, and then there are some very practical and very dramatic effects of massive immigration that need to be explored also.

Mr. Speaker, last week a couple of the Members of this body and several members of the Arizona State legislature accompanied me on a trip I took down to Cochise County, Arizona, which is on the border, of course, of Mexico, to observe firsthand what was happening there and to try to bring back to the people that serve in this body and to the rest of the United States a picture, perhaps a little bit different than the picture of illegal immigration that is portrayed by the local media in the various cities and States of the people of the people here in the Congress of the United States.

I know that in my own city, Denver, Colorado, the media enjoys the presentation of the concept of or the reality I should say of illegal immigration. It always presents the picture of illegal immigration as one of a very benign sort of concept and that the people here, those people who are identified as illegal immigrants into this country are just folks looking for a job and willing to do a job that ``other Americans will not do,'' and that they are, generally speaking, beneficial to the country from the standpoint of our economy and from just the standpoint of the type of individuals that make up the Nation.

That is the picture of illegal immigration that is portrayed by the media in many of our districts; but if we go to the border, almost any point of the border, southern or northern border, of the United States, we will find a completely different picture, one that is hardly ever portrayed in the press. We will find a very ugly picture, a picture of violence, a picture of criminal activity revolving around the importation of illegal narcotics, a picture of threat to the national security of the United States as a result of having porous borders across which people are coming, some of them with the intent to do great harm.

That is a different picture entirely and one, as I say, we hardly ever see; but it is absolutely as real as the one that is presented in the local media of many of the newspapers and television stations and radio stations of the folks of the hometown of the folks who actually serve in this body; and so I wanted to go there and show people a different picture, another picture that I think they should see.

We went to the Coronado National Forest for the first day, and we looked at the environmental degradation in that forest, brought about by the fact that thousands and thousands and thousands of people coming into the country illegally every single week come across that national forest and do enormous damage to it from an environmental standpoint. They drive across in vehicles creating roads,

``roads,'' of course, where there should not be roads. They walk across, and the impact of thousands and thousands and thousands of feet on pathways that are created does enormous damage to the environment, very pristine environment, a very delicate environment in the southwest part of the United States, a desert environment.

They start warming fires. These people, undocumented illegal immigrants, start warming fires in the night, walk away from them in the morning; and they, of course, during this draught are devastating. When I was there last, when I was in the Coronado National Forest little over a year ago, I left on a Sunday morning. By the time I returned back to Denver, Colorado, a fire that had started that morning by an illegal alien had consumed 35,000 acres of the Coronado.

The trash that is distributed throughout the forest is enormous, are enormous, monumental. It is hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash discarded by the people coming through there, so much so that one would think that the Coronado National Forest should be renamed the Coronado National Dump because that is what it looks like. Yet, of course, and interestingly we have never seen or ever heard the Sierra Club or any other environmental organization in America take issue with this problem.

One can talk to the forest supervisor. One can talk to anybody who works there, the parks people, the forest service people, and they will tell my colleagues what is happening to that forest as a result of porous borders, as a result of people being shoved out of Mexico by their own government, across the borders by the thousands and into the United States.

We went the next day to Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, just adjacent to the Coronado, also a scene of environmental degradation that is truly disturbing. All of the same problems of the Coronado but it is also the site of the death of a park ranger by the name of Chris Eggle, E-G-G-L-E, Chris Eggle, 28 years old, killed by two Mexicans coming across the border escaping from the crimes they have committed in Mexico, several other murders that they had just committed in relationship to some sort of drug deal, drug situation.

Chris was ambushed by them and killed. His life ended at 28 years old in Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, and we went there to that site with his father, Robert Eggle. Mr. Eggle has relived this event now three or four times. He has gone down to the national park to see where his son was killed and to relive that event, and he does so because he believes that his son's death cannot be forgotten nor should it be in vain, and it should not in either case. It should not be forgotten, and it certainly should not be in vain.

He talks about the need to secure our own borders. He talks about the need to prepare and train the people who have to deal with the invasion that is occurring on our southern border so that the next person confronting someone coming across the border armed with AK-47s will be a little more able to defend themselves than poor Chris was.

Then we went the next day to a ranch house, a ranch owned by the Kuykendall family, B.J. and Tom Kuykendall, wonderful people who have lived there for generations, and they brought their neighbors in from all over the county, people who had also lived there for generations and who for generations had dealt with the issue of some degree of illegal immigration, peopling coming across the border periodically. They would seek them out for food. These ranchers would give them food, would sometimes give them jobs; but it was never an issue, never a problem, no big deal.

In the last 4 or 5 years something has changed they say. It has become not just an annoyance; it has become a threat to their very existence. Their ranches are being destroyed. Their cattle are being killed. Their homes are being broken into. Their families are being intimidated. Their entire way of life is being threatened, and they ask, where is my government? Who is here to protect us? What is happening to our life?

Thousands of people we have on videotape, thousands of people crossing those borders, tearing down the fences, breaking the water wells, destroying the property, bringing with them tons of trash, depositing human waste in amounts that are certainly dangerous in terms of the health issues that they represent, bringing with them diseases that we cannot even treat, we do not have means to treat. We do not have the antibiotics to treat some of the most virulent forms of tuberculosis and something called Shakas disease, all these things being brought across by people into the United States.

We are witnessing an invasion. It is an invasion that is being prompted by the Mexican Government to satisfy some of their needs, as was told to me by a Mexican official by the name of Juan Hernandez who was the head of something called the Ministry for Mexicans Living in the United States. And I asked him what is the purpose of such a ministry. It was just created about a year and a half ago, and there were two other Congressmen with me, two other Members of the House who were with me, in Mexico when we visited him.

By the way, Mr. Hernandez is a very, very sophisticated gentleman, very urbane, very competent and articulate and a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and interestingly serves or served on the cabinet of Vicente Fox, an American citizen serving in Mexico on the cabinet of the Mexican President, an interesting situation. He said, the purpose of my agency is to increase the flow of people into the United States, of Mexican nationals into the United States. I said what do you want to do that for, knowing in my heart of course exactly why.

Because he had been so forthcoming, so candid, I thought this is great. I have hardly ever heard anybody be so candid about the designs of the Mexican Government vis-a-vis immigration policy; and he said the reason is simple, the more people we have in the United States, the more possibilities there are for us to influence your policy vis-a-vis Mexico, and he said there is the issue of remittances.

``Remittances,'' for those Members who do not know, Mr. Speaker, is just a term that applies to the money that is sent back home to Mexico from people living outside of Mexico, working outside of Mexico, and it actually amounts to a huge amount of money. Some 30-some percent of the Mexican GDP is a result of these remittances. Mexico has also experienced an enormous population growth, almost doubling in 25 years; and they have a stagnant economy because they are stuck with a socialistic economy which is combined with a completely corrupt system from the cop on the beat to the highest levels of government, and that combination makes for a lousy economy, and always will, regardless of NAFTA or free trade arrangements of any kind. Because of that, of course, they need to get some of those people out of there because they are very young, they are unemployed. That is a destabilizing factor and why not send them north.

We, on the other hand, have chosen to accept this policy on the part of our southern neighbor and ``friend,'' that ``friend'' by the way who is threatening a ``no'' vote in the security council against the resolution that we are presenting to bring Saddam Hussein to bay. They are threatening a ``no'' vote until we agree to some sort of attempt to provide amnesty for all the Mexican nationals living in the United States illegally. That is their quid pro quo. That is what they want.

These are our friends in the south. Now whether they are going to stick, whether we are going to be able to get them to vote ``yes'' or not soon in the security council remains to be seen, but this is what they are presenting to us as being their demands, like Turkey asking for several billion dollars for the right to provide American troops some air space and flyover opportunities.

He said that, and he went on to say, Mr. Speaker, another fascinating thing as far as I was concerned, an immensely incredible statement. He said it is not two countries we are talking about. It is just a region. It is not two countries he said. It is just a region. That may be his true opinion. It is the opinion I think of some of the colleagues with whom I serve here, that the borders are really not significant. They are not of importance, they are anachronisms, and that they should be

erased for the purposes of allowing for the free flow of goods and services and people. It is a libertarian point of view that is expressed on this floor and by several Members of this body.

Mr. Speaker, I want to engender that debate with those folks. I do not want them just talking about it in the halls or with me individually. I want that debate here on this floor in front of the American people. I want to know whether this government, whether this government believes that, in fact, borders are necessary or not. I want to know the opinion of this government because I think I know the opinion of the people of this country, but I may be wrong. I may be in the minority. Maybe it will turn out that, in fact, borders are determined to be by a majority of the people in this body and the President of the United States, they are determined to be irrelevant and that we should allow for the, again, free flow of people, goods, and services.

If that is a decision that is reached through the process that we have established for making policy in this country, so be it. I am a ``no'' vote, but so be it.

What I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues, that what is happening is that that is the direction we are moving. That is the de facto sort of arrangement we are going to achieve, an open borders policy. But it will never be as a result of a debate or a particular piece of legislation where people have to vote yes or no. It will always be done in an incremental fashion. And the people in Cochese County will suffer the consequences. Their lives will be ruined. Their ranches will be destroyed.

But they will just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the sacrifice that this country will make as a result of our commitment to open borders. Because, of course, the people coming across those borders are not just people who are strewing trash all over the land, breaking fences, poisoning wells, breaking the pipes on wells and allowing all the water to drain out, invading ranch houses, threatening and in fact assaulting ranchers, pulling up these rock barriers on the highway to stop the cars to then carjack the people. It will not be just those people coming across to do ``jobs no one else will do.''

And, by the way, along those lines, about a month ago in the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, a Denver newspaper, there was a very large article about a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant that I have been to several times, called Luna Restaurant. It is in my old stomping grounds in north Denver, and I know it well. There was an article, a strange article, because it was talking about the fact that this restaurant put an ad in the paper for a waiter, a $3-an-hour waiter position. Three dollars an hour. Of course, with tips, you get more. That first day that the ad went in the paper there were 600 applicants for the job. One day, 600 applicants.

Now, do you believe, Mr. Speaker, that every one of those 600 applicants were illegal immigrants wanting to do a job that no American would do? I do not think so. I think there were plenty of American citizens looking for that job. But nonetheless, nonetheless this is what we hear all the time; that that is the only thing we have going on; that these are just people coming to do jobs that no American will do and, therefore, we should not be concerned about what is happening on the border, and we should not be concerned by the Kuykendalls or the Barnetts, or any of the other people who have lived there for generations and who are trying to sustain themselves on that border. We should not be concerned about them. We are going to sacrifice them for cheap labor for the Republicans and for potential votes for the Democrats.

That is why we refuse to secure our borders. It is a political decision of this body to not secure the borders because of the fact that it will harm what we believe to be a political base, a power base that we either want to get or that we have at the present time, and all the time these people are coming across those borders, yes, mostly with no ill intent, most with the same purpose of my grandparents and perhaps yours, who came to seek a better life. But across those porous borders also come other people, people with much more dangerous motives. And you see, Mr. Speaker, we have not figured out a way to create a sieve on the border that effectively siphons out those people who are coming across with no ill intent and keeps out those who have other purposes in mind. We do not know how to do that.

So, therefore, the border is open and we are fearful of closing it. Because if you close the border, if you seal your borders and only allow people to come in legally, then you stop the flow of illegal immigration. And the country of Mexico becomes disturbed by that, because now they have to deal with the problem of unemployment, the problem of their own sinking economy, and the fact that the United States Government may not be quite as sympathetic to their particular concerns. So they do not like the idea of closing those borders and they, in fact, make demands upon the United States to keep those borders open and let their people come through. They even provide buses for them, observed on our side of the border through binoculars; buses that come up to the border and unload people who walk across into the United States. These buses are part of a governmental project, a governmental agency.

We do nothing about it because we are fearful of the response. We do not like the possibility that the political ramifications in the United States to either party might be detrimental. So we put this Nation at risk, we put our very lives at risk, and we damage not only our national security apparatus and we place upon those agencies given the responsibility for internal security issues, finding out who is here to do us harm, we place upon them enormous burdens of trying to identify people in a sea of people who are here as immigrants. This is not good for the United States.

Beyond that, I go back to the original part of my discussion here this evening. It does something to us, Mr. Speaker, in our inability to create a society that has a singleness of purpose and an understanding of exactly who and what we are. I had the opportunity to have lunch not too long ago with a Catholic bishop in Denver by the name of Bishop Gomez, a very fine gentleman who happens to disagree with me entirely on this issue. And he said to me at lunch, Congressman, I do not know why you get so exercised about this. He said, you know, for the most part, these people coming here from Mexico today, they do not want to be Americans. They do not want to be Americans. He was thinking that would alleviate my concerns. I said, well, of course, Bishop, that is the problem.

The other thing is, the agency I mentioned earlier, the Ministry for Mexicans Living in the United States, the other thing that was stated by Mr. Hernandez in that very candid conversation that we had was that part of his responsibility was to work with the Mexican nationals who had come to the United States to make sure that they retained, as he said, a connection to Mexico, a political, cultural, linguistic connection to Mexico. Because they want them, he said, to continue to have that loyalty to Mexico. Otherwise, pretty soon they are not sending home the kind of money that they are today, and also they are not agitating for any sort of change in American policy to Mexico if they essentially go native. That is really what he was concerned about, that the Mexicans would come here and essentially become part of the American mainstream, integrate into the American culture, become Americans.

But as Bishop Gomez says, that is not their intent. That is not their desire. They are here to get a job, make some money, send it back, perhaps go home later. Well, you see, many people could have come here over the centuries for that same purpose, without any strong desire to become American, but in fact this country forced them into it. There was no such thing as a multiculturalist philosophy that permeated American culture. We did not allow for people to remain segregated for all that long. We required, in order for them to, as my grandfather had to do, in order to achieve anything in this country, he had to do a couple of things. One was to learn English. And my grandfather, and perhaps yours, and certainly most people that I know, their grandparents came here with a strong desire to separate themselves

from the past and from the countries from which they came. No desire to hang on to that. A desire to become American.

And there were obstacles put up sometimes in this country. You know, we were antagonistic to immigrants many times. But over the course of time, and with a strong desire to integrate, what we saw was this infusion of people into the American mainstream that made us a great Nation. Diversity, in fact, can be a good thing. But unity is also a good thing. E pluribus unum, out of many, one. Not out of many, many, which is today's concept, today's admonition.

So I think this issue of immigration has many implications, far far greater than, as I say, are discussed most of the time with regard to issues like jobs and other things. This will determine, Mr. Speaker, I believe, not just what kind of country we will be, that is divided or united, but this issue will determine whether we will be a country at all; whether we will be a Nation at all. That is why it is worthy of our debate on this floor and in this House.

We are challenged by a variety of things in this world, and our ability to succeed will be based almost entirely upon our ability to defend, understand and, therefore, defend the principles of western civilization. And I think it is something worth thinking about. And as I say, Mr. Speaker, I may be wrong. I may be totally wrong; completely, 100 percent, wrong. I want the debate, however. Is that too much to ask, I wonder? And let us determine the course of our Nation. Let it not happen in a way that does not allow for the intelligent analysis of the events and their implications. Let us think about who we are, what we are, where we are going, and what we have to do to get there.

We can certainly allow people into this country from all over the world, from Mexico and Africa and Asia and Europe. We can allow them from all over the world, but we have to determine how this will happen and it has to be a process that we determine to be governed by the rule of law. How you come into this country should be a factor of the laws that we pass in this body, and that is all I ask. That is the plea I make tonight. It is for the United States, it is for Western Civilization, and for the threats that I see that are aligned and arrayed against it.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 14 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 27, 2003, at 1 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, today we have successfully debated and passed a bill to provide an extension of unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who find themselves out of work. This is a laudable activity for us to be involved with and I was proud to be able to support that particular piece of legislation.

I find, however, that we are soon going to be debating another piece of legislation that is referred to as an economic stimulus package, and during the course of that debate we will undoubtedly be talking about the number of jobs that need to be created in the United States in order for our economy to get moving again. All of these things I support and I believe need to be done, but I also believe that there is something which has been left out of the equation and left out of the discussion when it comes to jobs and providing economic benefits for American citizens. I underline the word ``citizens'' because what has happened over the course of the last decade is that we have allowed into this country, illegally we have allowed into this country between 8 and 13 million people. We do not know for sure, of course, because they came without our permission. They came across the borders. We are told that they are here working and taking jobs no other Americans would take.

Mr. Speaker, I get many, many letters from people in my district who are out of work and they tell me that they would take any job available to them. There are steelworkers out of work, factory workers up and down the East Coast, all across the rust belt, these people are willing to take any job available; but, of course, other people have gotten there before them. But, who are these people? Up to 13 million of them are people who are not citizens of this country.

We import them. Of course it is true that many businesses hire people who are here illegally, even knowingly hire people who are here illegally because they believe they will work for less, they will work under conditions that perhaps other people would not. We take advantage of many people. They are oftentimes manipulated by unscrupulous employers once they get here.

This is all bad, it is all illegal, but we ignore it and we suggest that we have to do something else to provide jobs for people who are here. But why do we not look at the fact that if we secure our own borders, if we ask people who are here illegally to return to their country of origin, that we would immediately provide millions of jobs for American citizens? Only we would not have to spend another dollar; we would not have to appropriate any more money.

Today it was 7 or $8 billion for the extension of unemployment benefits, but doing what I ask, and that is to secure our borders, to identify people who are here illegally and deport them. This does not really cost all that much. That is what the Federal Government should be doing. That is our role and responsibility, to secure the border, to know who is coming into this country, for how long and for what purpose. We choose not to do that. We choose not to do that because there are political implications there, and there are political ramifications of such a decision. If we were to actually defend our own borders and control the process so that people coming into this country would do so in a legal process, we would, of course, diminish the flow of illegal immigrants. That would upset the Democrats because they would say that this would impede their ability to gain potential voters, knowing that many immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, would flock to the Democratic Party.

On the other hand, we have the Republican Party which says that if we were to secure our own borders, if we were to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country, that would impede the ability of businesses to hire cheap labor. Both of these reasons are, I think, bogus. They do not reflect what we should be doing in this body and, that is, to uphold the law. We should be demanding that the INS, we should be demanding that this administration uphold the law and that we address the issue of border patrol, increasing border patrol and also putting the military on the border which is absolutely necessary in order for us to achieve any degree of security on our borders and on our coastline. That is imperative. But we refuse to do it. We are fearful of doing it.

At the same time, there have been attempts on this floor, there have been attempts in this body to provide amnesty for people who are here illegally, to reward people who have come here illegally and give them the opportunities that are usually provided for people who have gone through the process, who have spent the time, who have spent the money, who have had the brain damage of having to go through sometimes years of bureaucratic wrangling to come into the country legally. They have waited in line. They have done it the right way. But we keep proposing to give people who have broken the law, who have snuck into the country, we keep proposing to give them amnesty. What does that concept tell everybody who has done it the right way? It tells them that they were essentially suckers and that they should have simply snuck into the country, we would eventually give them amnesty and they would get all the benefits that anyone here legally would enjoy.

Speaking of those benefits, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you about another phenomenon that is going on throughout the country. There is a process, something called the matricula consular. This is a card, an identification card that is being handed out by the Mexican Government to Mexican nationals in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleagues for their diligent work in bringing this piece of legislation to the floor. It is certainly an admirable goal that we seek to achieve here today, trying to bring some relief to the people who find themselves unemployed in this economy, and I intend to support the legislation.

I must, however, say that there is a bit of irony here that I wanted to bring to the attention of the body, and that is that we are debating what we should do to help people who are unemployed. Again, appropriate. But we have steadfastly refused as a body and, as a matter of fact, as a government, to debate one other aspect of this, and that is the fact that many people are unemployed today in the United States because there are people here from other countries, here illegally, I should say, who have taken jobs. It is not just those jobs that we hear about all the time from people who say, well, there are jobs Americans will not take. I assure my colleagues, we can go to any factory town in America, we can go to any of the States that are identified in this bill that have significant unemployment, and we can find out whether or not people are willing to accept jobs that ``others will not take.''

I assure my colleagues, American citizens are willing to do so, citizens who are willing to take jobs that are being taken by people with H1B visas, people who are willing to take jobs from people who are here, as I say, illegally, and are working in menial jobs

with low wages. There are still many American citizens willing to take jobs that are being taken by between 8 million and 13 million people who are here illegally; and we refuse to debate that point while we come here today, of course, to do again, what I say is the right thing to do, and I will support it. But it is just an irony that I wanted to bring to the attention of the body. There is an aspect of this that we steadfastly, both sides, both parties, refuse to debate, and that is a shame.