Speech #1090100594

Much of it has been legislation that has been in the works for a number of years. And I think what I will try to do is maybe unravel this coming backwards across the way we passed it and work my way back into the legislation a little bit. But I want to take up first the immigration reform and point out that in this debate that we heard today in this resolution that came forward. which was H. Res. 612. the continuous message from the other side was about being antiimmigrant. antiimmigrant. But it confuses the difference between an immigrant and an illegal immigrant. In fact. I know of no one in this Congress that is antiimmigrant. I know of many Members of this Congress that are pro the rule of law. And that is the distinction that we need to draw the line with. And I take us back to where would be if we went back even 10 years. but say go back 25 years. in a time when we did not have very much Illegal immigration. It was a smaller percentage of our overall population. it was smaller in numbers. smaller in percentage. and it was not a very significant problem. It was something that was somewhat manageable back then. And back in that period of time. if we had been able to control our borders and watched as we needed more employees in certain sectors of the economy. we would have seen a number of things happen that would have resolved this need that we keep hearing from business about labor. They say that if we deported all of the illegals. our economy would collapse. and we cannot get along without them when perhaps 4 percent of our workforce in America Is an illegal workforce. And if we lose 4 percent and retain 96 percent. I cannot believe that this resilient country could not find a way to bounce back from that and accommodate the difference.