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Immigration Reform

Date: June 8, 2004
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Immigration


IMMIGRATION REFORM -- (Extensions of Remarks - June 08, 2004)

SPEECH OF
HON. SAM GRAVES
OF MISSOURI
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2004

Mr. GRAVES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today still afraid for our Nation's security. Not because of terror alerts, but because our borders remain porous. The enforcement of our immigration policy is impotent, resulting in a continued flood of illegal immigrants across our borders.

It is time for the federal government to stop letting unchecked mass immigration undermine the wages, safety, and benefits in one occupation after another. It is time for the federal government to moderate immigration and to treat American workers, citizen and immigrant, with the respect they deserve.

Our constituents did not elect us to help cheapen the quality of their lives by importing foreign workers at six to eight times the historical average. There is no getting around the fact that when we cheapen labor with unchecked illegal immigration, we cheapen our neighbors, both citizens and immigrants alike.

If we moderate immigration in the context of an historical average, we will remain the most open society in the world, and begin to halt America's slide from a middle class, to a poverty class, society.

I call on my colleagues to join me in working to reform our immigration policies and to halt the cheapening of America's citizen and immigrant workers. Without real immigration reform, our borders will not be safe and our citizens will be at risk.

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