Speech #1040269083

This is the first time in 10 years. But I say to my colleagues. tonight there is a real need to address the House on an issue that I have worked on for several years. In fact. a large portion of my tenure in Congress has been devoted to addressing the unchecked flow of illegal immigration coming into this country. a problem that is facing California probably more severely than any other State in the Nation. California. by most accounts. is the home of over half of the entire illegal population in the entire Nation. We have half a million students that are illegally in this country. Not the children of illegal immigrants. but those that have illegally entered the country themselves. that their own status is illegal in this country is what is crowding our classrooms. Twothirds of all the births in Los Angeles County operated hospitals. publicfunded hospitals that are completely paid for by the taxpayers. over twothirds of every birth in the last 6 or 7 years. the mother has no legal right to be in the country. As Mr. BURTON said. 26 percent of our entire Federal penitentiary population is made up of illegal immigrants. not for immigration violations but for hard crimes. murder. rape. robbery and mainly. to a large degree. drug trafficking. and so on. This is an issue that we have to address. We have worked hard and we have worked long. I would like to first say thank you to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working in a bipartisan way to aggressively address this issue. In March of this year this House passed a historic immigration reform bill addressing many of the problems that we face in this Nation. It passed this House in a bipartisan way 333 to 87. Mr.