July 25, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 126 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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ISSUES OF THE DAY; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 126
(House of Representatives - July 25, 2019)
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[Pages H7451-H7457] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] ISSUES OF THE DAY The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I have a three-part series, and I would like to open at this moment and yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry), my good friend. Mr. PERRY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for offering me just a moment to talk about something that is very important to me. Madam Speaker, I rise today at a time when the United States and the international community must step up efforts to combat money laundering. Money laundering is a critical source of funding for terrorist organizations and drug cartels like the ones that my good friend from Florida might be talking about tonight. These are drug cartels and other organized crime rings. It is used to disguise profits from or financing for illicit activity. Money is moved in a variety of ways across borders and through the global financial markets to evade detection by law enforcement--global financial markets just like ours. While exact numbers can't be determined, estimates suggest that annual sums of money laundering are in the trillions of dollars--trillions. Money laundering facilitates a broad range of serious underlying crimes, including the financing of North Korea's and Iran's nuclear proliferation networks and the activities of terrorist operations. Money laundering also plays a significant role in drug, human, and wildlife trafficking. In today's world, money launderers rely on both new and old methods. The crime is conducted through shell companies, bulk cash smuggling, gambling, cyber-related methods, and investments in mobile commodities, including things that you might not think about, like gems and real estate--yes, real estate. For example, we have recently seen a rise in money laundering through luxury real estate purchases. Some people come to me and say there is a housing crisis. Well, when money launderers are inflating the cost of housing by laundering money through overpaying for a property, that is a problem for vulnerable populations in the United States. These real estate purchases happen in major U.S. cities as well as international cities like London and Dubai. Madam Speaker, money laundering threatens political stability, democracy, and free markets around the globe, and we must take steps to counter it right now. I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding to me. Honoring the Memory of Rosewood Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I am entering into the second phase of my Special Order. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Rosewood and reflect upon the tragedy that happened in 1923. Rosewood was a small, rural town in my district. It is in northwest central Florida, in between Otter Creek, Chiefland, and Cedar Key. It was built around the pencil mill and turpentine industry. It was a mixed town of Blacks and Whites. In 1915, it had a population of approximately 355 people. The town had started to become segregated. The neighboring town of Sumner was developed at the time and was primarily White. In January of 1923, a young White woman claimed that a Black man had assaulted her. The accusation started a riot, ultimately resulting in the burning of the entire town and the death of countless members of the Rosewood community. Within hours of the violence starting, many survivors fled to the surrounding woods, where they hid and waited for a rescue train that was sent there to take people out of the area of violence. At the end of the week, only one building remained standing, and to this day, the death toll is still unknown, and no buildings remain. The story by the young White woman was found to be a lie. She was the Black man's lover. Her significant other beat her, and she lied and blamed the young Black man to save face. [[Page H7452]] The Rosewood massacre, which occurred just outside of my district, is one that went nearly forgotten for over 60 years because of the destructive nature of prejudice and hatred caused by the survivors who lived in fear, rarely sharing their stories, even with families and close friends. I firmly believe that in order to learn from our history, we have to make an effort to remember it. We should memorialize these events, and that is why we put up plaques. We put up markers or statues, lest we forget it, and within a generation or two, the mistakes of the past are repeated because the next generation will grow ignorant of the struggles of the past. When the stories of Rosewood first started recirculating in the 1980s, it brought in a new level of awareness to the State of Florida and the understanding that we, as a society, cannot be complacent in senseless acts of violence. It even inspired a movie in Hollywood to illustrate the ugliness of the past hatred and the violence. Violence and prejudice have no place in our society, and we have a duty to ensure that this type of tragedy never happens again. Today, in Rosewood, a marker stands just off the highway memorializing the town that never returned. Survivors and their descendants have shared their stories, hoping that Rosewood's memory would not be erased. One of these is a constituent of mine, Ms. Lizzie Jenkins, who has been working on this tragedy for the last 25 years. Her goal and ours is for individuals to remember and to never forget the hatred, the racism of the past, and to honor those who suffered in the past so future generations do not repeat the pain, suffering, and mistakes of the past. She has a dream to accomplish this, and that is to create the Rosewood Museum. Madam Speaker, it has been almost a century since the Rosewood massacre. By remembering and learning from this tragedy, we can work towards a future full of acceptance. Knowing Ms. Jenkins, I can confidently say that there will be a Rosewood Museum. Solving the Problem at the Southwest Border Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I would like to move on to the third portion of my Special Order. We are going to talk about how to solve the problem at the southwest border and how to move beyond border security. I just listened to an hour of people ranting and putting blame on this President for the hatred, the racism he has caused. I heard the Member on the other side talk about the ban on Muslims. We can't move forward and fix things if we use false narratives. There was not a ban on Muslims. President Trump put a ban on countries. In fact, they are the same six countries that President Obama put a ban on and recommended to put a ban on. There was never a ban on Muslim countries. I went to Indonesia on a codel, a bipartisan one, and there was a Member of this Congress from the other side who asked the Indonesian Prime Minister at the time: What is the sentiment in a Muslim country about a ban from our President--President Trump at the time--about the Muslim ban that he has placed on there? He knew good and well that President Trump didn't ban Muslims in this country. He put the ban on the same six countries that President Obama did, but there was no complaint. I bring that up just because, if we are going to solve the problems of this country, one that this body--look at it. It is empty. There are two Members of Congress in here, and they have been complaining--I am sorry. I stand corrected, Madam Speaker. There are three Members of Congress. But if we are going to fix this problem, it is going to take more than three of us. I am sure everyone agrees. They sit there and they give great speeches about how it is tearing our country apart. The President is tearing our country apart. What a shame this is, the hatred, the vitriol that is coming out of the White House, how people are being taken away from their families, and there are no toothbrushes or diapers, or they are sleeping on floors. I am just glad the other side is acknowledging that there is a crisis, but for the first half of the year, there wasn't a crisis. They refused to say there was a crisis. There was a Special Order here last week, and my good colleague, Mr. King, was here. We had other Members, and we had pictures from 2014 when President Obama was here. It was funny because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were railing about the crisis in 2014. {time} 1930 There have been times in this body when the Democrats had the majority in the House, the Senate, and the White House. There were times, and I was there, when the Republicans had the same majority, the House, the Senate, and the White House. It saddens me because this discussion about our having to fix these things, when both parties were in control, they didn't do it. What really saddens me is I see people using political opportunities for their next election. I heard a lot of that tonight. There were no solutions in that. We talked for an hour last week about the crisis at the border, the situation at the border, and the atrocities at the border. The drug cartels are profiting from this. We stay as a divided House. I implored President Trump--and I will do it again tonight--that he needs to call Congress back in session when we reconvene tomorrow, and I would do it every time this body goes on a break until we fix our border security and until we come up with an immigration bill. I want to move into what I really want to talk about. In order to move forward, we have to have solutions. I have been here for 7 years, and I have seen ``comprehensive'' come up in healthcare, and I have seen ``comprehensive'' come up in immigration. What I have learned is that when you put ``comprehensive'' in front of a cause, it doesn't happen. It is political speak that says it is not going to happen because the room becomes divided, and everybody uses it as a political tool for the next election. What I want to do is, instead of trying to do comprehensive immigration reform, I want to focus on a small bite of the apple. We have a proposal. We have legislation that we are working through the House in a bipartisan manner. We have shared this with over 40 Members of Congress in a bipartisan manner, and we have shared this with the Senate in a bipartisan manner. It is a guest worker program. The bill will be a guest worker program. There will be three silos, agriculture, hospitality, and construction. These are all positions that, in general, are in the lower-skilled fields. They are not rocket scientists, and they are not engineers. These are the skills that we need in our labor workforce for agriculture, for food security, for construction, and for our hospitality. In the past, we have not had a good program for people to come into the country legally and stay in the field that they have decided to work in. This bill will be under a banner, but there will be three separate bills. The first bill will be a guest worker program for agriculture, and that is what I would like to focus on tonight. America has the lowest-cost food of the industrialized world because our farmers can produce so well. But they can't benefit from that if we don't have the workers willing to go out and work in the fields. I was a person who, at the age of 15, worked in produce. We loaded trucks. The produce came in from the farm, and we loaded the produce. I did that to work my way through college. Yet, today, people said that domestic people, Americans, won't do that work. I disagree with that, and I think we put a stigma on that. In order to fix this, we have to have a labor solution, or our farmers won't be able to keep farming. The goal of this bill is to create a dependable, reliable workforce. The way this program would work is it would be in two phases. The first phase is that we create a prescreened pool of workers before they come into the country. We will have a relationship and an agreement between country A and our State Department. If we pick out a country, Guatemala, the Guatemalan state department will have a relationship with our State Department. When a person applies, he becomes what we call the applicant. The country he comes from will verify the person's date of birth and their residence. Then, they will verify that this [[Page H7453]] person has not been involved in violent crimes, drug activity, or gang activity. Once they apply, that information goes through the Department of Homeland Security. They do a background check. They do it on their international database, and they do it on the domestic database. If that person clears the database, then that information goes to the USDA. We moved the agriculture labor workforce from the Department of Labor to the USDA, where it can be better monitored to fulfill the needs of agriculture. That person does not come into the country until a job is open. The employer in this country, an agriculture producer, still has to advertise for domestic help. When that position is not filled, the producer can ask for that worker to come in. That worker comes in under the agreement that they are going to work in the agriculture sector. They have to be a minimum of 18 years of age. It is not chain migration. If they have family members who want to come in, they, too, can apply, but it applies to them individually. Once they get accepted into the program and come into the country, they become a participant. At that time, they get issued a guest worker identification card that we call a GWIC card. That GWIC card will have 15 digits in there for security. In addition, it will have the initials ``AG,'' designating that that is an agriculture worker permit. When the worker comes in, they now have been allowed into the country legally. The work permit goes on for 5 years. That means they can stay in this country for 5 years at a time. They have to work a minimum of 75 percent of the year in agriculture, but it allows them to move back and forth to their host country seamlessly because we have an agreement between two countries. The person can travel around the country to work a seasonal crop. In Florida, our citrus harvest is done usually by mid- to late June. That would allow that worker to go from that farm up to New York, Maine, or Washington State to work crops. He also has the ability to go back home. That permit is good for 5 years at a time. He can renew 4\1/2\ years into it, and he can do this indefinitely. There will be a cutoff age. We are recommending approximately 50 or 55 years of age. There is a fee of $2,500 for that. The second part of this program will be dealing with the people here who came in illegally. Our proposal would allow a person to apply to this program under the understanding that the Federal Government is not here to deport them. The Federal Government is here to give them a way that they can get into a program and have legal residence here. During that period of time, when the applicant is applying, there will be a waiver over that person, meaning that he won't be deported. A background check will be done. If DHS says this person is okay, then he can enter this program. If that person has minor violations--a fender bender, didn't return a book to the library--he will have a period of time where he can get straight with the legal system. Upon completing that, he enters into the guest worker program and becomes a participant. He, too, pays a fee of $2,500. That is to go for running the program. In addition, there will be a fine for coming into the country illegally. What has been proposed is approximately $1,500 to $2,000 for the first time they apply to the program. Every year a person renews, 4\1/2\ years into this program, there will be a $2,500 fee, and that is subject to change as the times change. As a person comes into the program, they get issued the guest worker identification card, which is called the GWIC card, and that will be embedded biometrics. We gave the list to the DHS to pick out what they think is necessary from facial recognition pictures, DNA, fingerprints, and retinal scans, all that they can choose from. We asked them to put enough of those biometrics in there so that card is secure. In addition, it will have a 15-digit code that will be a hack-proof, secure card. As I said, there will be the initials ``AG,'' designating that person as a guest worker in this country in agriculture. He is allowed to get a driver's license. If he passes the test in a State, then he will get a guest worker driver's license. It would not be used for voter registration. It is something to give that person a driver's license so that he can work on a farm. If that person who is here illegally gets accepted into the program and has a family who came in with him illegally, as he is applying to the program, there is a waiver over his family. If he gets accepted into the program, or they get accepted into the program, his family is also good to stay in the country for 5 years at a time, provided the participant renews 4\1/2\ years into it. If his children came in illegally, then they are protected until the age of 18, at which time they have to make a decision to apply to one of the programs. There will be three sectors. It will be agriculture, hospitality, and construction. At that point, again, as I said, that person can move around the country. They can work crops wherever they choose. They can go back home knowing they can get back into this country. E-Verify will be a component of this, and it would work such that, as a person enters the program, their data is already in DHS. When they go to start their job, the employer puts their smart card, the GWIC card, into a reader. It identifies the person, a positive identification. We have eliminated probably close to 100 percent of the fraud that occurs with the current system. We request that the individual worker has to check into a Federal office on a monthly basis. Every town in America has a Federal office, either a courthouse or a post office. Part of the $2,500 fee goes to pay for the equipment in there. It would be inexpensive equipment. It would be the same equipment that we use when we go to do a retail sale like at a big box store. You put your card in there; it reads it; and it tells DHS and USDA where this person is. The employer also is required to use E-Verify. This will be seamless because he is pulling people out of a pool who are already prescreened and who are in the E-Verify system. They go through this system. E-Verify will become mandatory once we get 75 to 80 percent of the expected population that we need in our guest worker fields. At that point, all employers will be using the E-Verify system. The beauty of this system is that we have given a portal for people to come into this country legally. We have given them a way to stay in this country for up to 5 years at a time. Then, we give them a way that we can monitor bad players who sneak into the country or employers who are hiring people here illegally that suppresses the wages of domestic workers. If an employer hires people outside of the system once it is mandatory, when they get caught, it is a $2,500 fee the first offense, per offense per individual. If it is a repeat offender of an employer, then that fine will go up, and they are subject to jail time. The beauty of this is if a worker leaves a guest worker program in either agriculture, hospitality, or construction, and they try to work in a different sector and are found out by the people who are doing the inspection, they have given up their right to stay in this country on a guest worker program. The things that we hear back about that is that people voluntarily enter this program. They have agreed to work in agriculture and agriculture only or one of the other sectors. If they work outside of that, they have agreed that they have broken that. This is a policy that is self-policing when people get found out. For the people who choose not to enter any of these programs, they are here illegally, and they will be dealt with according to the laws on the books. We are asking to have sequencing done on this, and the first part of that is we have to agree on border security. It is interesting because I hear this fight over border security, but when I go on trips and talk to my colleagues on the other side, they always tell me that they agree with border security and that we have to have border security. If we agree to it, let's do it. Again, this body is empty other than us three. I think the President should call us back. Let's get border security. [[Page H7454]] Let's get this done, Madam Speaker, so that we can move on to the next thing. We have to have enforcement of the laws on the books. We are providing a guest worker program for the majority of the people whom we need in our labor force for lower skills. The third part of the sequencing is that we can deal with Dreamers and DACA down the road. We can't do that until we do border security and have a way for people to come into the country legally, to work in this country legally, and to take that group who came in illegally and put them in a legal process. Madam Speaker, this is something we have shared with probably close to 60 people in a bipartisan manner. We have shared this with agriculture groups from all over the Nation, from California to Maine, New York, Washington State, Florida, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and from every sector in agriculture, from dairy to pine, timber, fruits and vegetables, citrus, and fruits and nuts. Everybody tells us this is the most commonsense reform they have seen. We have shared it with ranking members of different committees on the Democratic side. They said this is something they plan to help support. I am excited because of the bipartisan nature in the House. We have shared this with Senators, and the Senators are working with us to make this happen. Our goal is to make this happen this Congress. We are looking for people to go to our website, https:// yoho.house.gov, to get more information. We have a short video that covers this. If we do nothing, we are going to have a repeat of the last 30, 35 years, when Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 3.5 million to 4 million people. {time} 1945 This body has sat there and argued and blamed the other side for inaction or blamed the other side for hatred and racism or blamed the other side for wanting to give everybody amnesty. If we do nothing, this problem will grow and grow and divide this Nation more. This is the time to act, and I would hope people would come back to Congress over the break and let's get something done. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), my good friend, to say something. Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho) for yielding to me, and I appreciate very much the work that is done by Dr. Ted Yoho here in this Congress. I would like to have the Members know, Madam Speaker, that Ted Yoho gets up every day and grinds away with an eye towards making America great again and putting us in the right place. And I recall a meeting that he called together here, kind of an off-campus meeting about how we are going to save America from a Congress that doesn't seem to want to look to the horizon, let alone over the horizon. There is a lot of common sense that has been put together in this immigration policy, and I want to carefully evaluate all of the components of it. I know that we are in discussions right now about how it might even be improved a little bit, but I am open to this discussion, and I think he has brought up some very important points. I will add one that I hope can be incorporated into this, to take the E-verify mandatory piece of this and expand it into a bill that I have had before this Congress a number of years. It is called the New IDEA Act, and it would work actually seamlessly with what has been described here tonight in that I incorporate the language in it, which is this: When an employer--we put together a committee, a three-way team, the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and require them to work together for the cause of enforcing immigration law and, in addition to the penalties that have been suggested here, deny the deductibility of wages and benefits paid to illegals. I would give the employer safe harbor if they use E-verify, but if they are then using illegal labor, the IRS, in a normal audit, not an accelerated audit, then would come in, run the Social Security numbers and identifying information of the employees who are listed in the tax forms through the E-verify program. If they can't be verified, the IRS then could deduct the wages and benefits paid to them, remove it as a business expense, which puts those dollars, wages, and benefits paid to illegals into the gross receipts where they show up as net income. That makes it taxable. When we first did this math, it would be, if you would take a $10-an- hour illegal and deny the deductibility of that under the old tax policy, it would take us to a $16-an-hour illegal. We also would have interest and penalty, and there is a 6-year statute of limitations. Madam Speaker, I got to this conclusion by asking the question: What agency, what department is most respected, and maybe even most feared, by the American people? Since I have been drug through audits a few too many times, I will tell you that the business people, the employers in this country, they don't want the IRS looking into their books, and they don't see that they can negotiate much of a compromise with the IRS. So I think giving a 6-year statute of limitations on that, you accumulate that liability, and it makes it far more likely that employers will voluntarily go in and clean up their workforce. That is something that, had that been done years ago, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in today. The labor situation that we have, it is a bit more complex down in the southern part of the United States than it is up in the heart of the heartland where I am. And that is that we seem to be able to find the people to climb in the tractor, in the combine, or in the trucks and get our crops in the ground; we get them back out again; and it is a little smoother up that way. The labor situations that we see in places like Florida and California and Arizona, all those States, and many more in particular, that is a different kind of a situation. What I would suggest, though, is that temporary workers be required to be bonded. I introduced legislation to do that, and I hope that is something we can discuss, as well, is incorporating it into this proposal. I pointed that out to the President in a meeting in the Oval Office sometime back. He seemed to respond very favorably to that suggestion. I pointed out that he actually has the authority to go forward with a bonding program now. And so I noticed that, a few weeks later, he issued an order that directed the executive branch to do the research and put the pieces together so that they can activate a bonding program. But think of it this way: Whether you are going to be a guest worker in the United States or a visitor to the United States, you need a visa to come to America to do that. So when you apply for that visa, you post your credit card, just as if you walked into a hotel and they say: Your room is paid for, but we need a credit card so we can hold for any incidentals that might come. You post that credit card on your visa application to temporarily come to America, and if you go back under the terms of the visa, then, fine, the hold is released on that credit card; but if you overstay your visa, then that credit card is charged for that fee, and that fee goes into an enforcement fund in order to enforce the immigration laws we have in this country. We need the rule of law restored in the United States of America. No place, in all of our law, is it less respected than it is in immigration law. And as I listened to some of the rhetoric over here on the floor tonight, it still is breathtaking to hear how intentionally the terms ``legal'' and ``illegal'' immigrant are conflated so that the very meritorious legal immigrant who respects our laws, that meritorious legal immigrant is conflated into the same term with the one who has disrespected our laws. The one who has disrespected our laws gets assigned the same merit that exists for those who respect our laws and want to come to America for an opportunity to succeed and to prosper. But I make another point, Madam Speaker, that I don't hear in this dialogue on immigration, and that is that America has a unique vigor. We have a unique vitality. We have a can-do spirit. And a lot of that vitality, vigor, and can-do spirit comes from the legal immigrants who have had the aspiration to come to America. [[Page H7455]] And I would say that, if there is a family of 10 siblings, boys and girls together, if one of them has the ambition and the eagerness to respect our laws and come to the United States, the one who chooses to self-select to come here is going to be the one in that family who has the most ambition, the most vigor. That is one of the reasons why America is a can-do country, because we have gotten that quality of people who self-selected as legal immigrants to come to America. So I appreciate the gentleman's work on the immigration policy, and I look forward to examining all of the language there and have an open dialogue on this. But I also applaud the very diligent effort that has gone forth on this issue and many others. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding. Mr. YOHO. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), for the things he stands for. He is just a true patriot who loves America. The gentleman brought up a great point. The current system allows people to use the Social Security number. So you can come into the country. You get issued a Social Security, or people will eventually, as they come in, gravitate and get on an I-9 form. They will use a fraudulent or a fake ID number, Social Security number. They are a dime a dozen out there. There are people, counterfeiters, out there doing that. What happens is it gums up the system. It is like an accounting nightmare, and it creates confusion for the people who are supposed to regulate this. So it gets to a point where they can't even track the people because there are so many fraudulent numbers. Where there is confusion, there is inertia, and that is why nothing gets done. And I think you look at the current system, because it is not workable. The H-2A was designed for seasonal agriculture workers, but we do not use it that way because it is not enforced. They are supposed to come in for 10 months, and then they go home. But the current system is you can get a waiver, and that waiver can go on for 3 years. And if it is not enforced, they forget about the waiver and they just kind of fall into the society, and nobody knows where they are at. The beauty of this system is there is an identification number. We are proposing 15 digits in length, with the designation of ``AG'' in there, agriculture, plus the smart chip in there that has the biometrics. So we separate guest workers from the rest of the population. So we have a database of just guest workers that will be a lot easier to track. It will be a lot easier to know where people are. As people have to check into the system, the onus is on the worker. They can check in at their place of employment. They can check in at a post office. They can check in at a Federal courthouse. And so it is going to be easy for people to stay compliant. If they are not in compliance with checking in, they will have a grace period. They have to become compliant. If they are not compliant after a period of time, they are subject to deportation. One of the things we talked about is what happens if somebody creates a deportable felony, and that would be something like, maybe, vehicular homicide from a DUI, which we have seen too many of those in the news. They would be subject to deportation. If they are here with a family that they came in illegally, they got accepted into this program, if that were to happen, they have put their family at risk of deportation. I don't like that part, but it is also that we need to look at the other side of that. We have allowed people to come into this country to be a guest worker. I have had the experience of being a veterinarian, practicing for 30 years, in large animals. We dealt with cattle farms, dairy farms, horse farms, people who did row crops, fruits and vegetables. Just name a crop, and we have pretty much dealt with it. I have gotten to a point where I talked to a lot of people who were here as migrant workers, and I sympathize with them. Heck, I was still working on the farm. That was one of my ambitions of going to vet school. I wanted to be outstanding in my field, and I wound up being outstanding in everybody else's field. But we got to know the immigrant, and we got to a point where we could ask them: Are you here legally or illegally? They were so honest. They say: I came in illegally. And I even asked them: Did you pay a price to come in? They said: Yeah, $2,000, $5,000, $8,000. And it shocked me that people were paying. And this was probably 12 years ago, 11 years ago. And I would ask them: Do you want to become a citizen? And it would amaze me how many of these people said: No. I just want the opportunity to come here, make a living, and go home. So one of the impetuses behind this was let's create a system where people can come, fulfill the need we have, and fulfill the need they have. I have stayed in touch with some of these people. They have made enough money to go back home, create a farm of their own, and they don't have to come back. But they will refer people into the system. So if we can streamline that and make it easier for people to come in when we have border security, they can come in the legal way. There is no need to sneak in. If we can take that group that came in illegally and they move into this, the ones that know they probably don't have a bad record, they have moved into the system. So we can start cleaning up this mess. And the gentleman and I just shared the analogy of working cattle. When we have all of our calves, we sort out the ones over here: the males over here; the females over here. So it is a way to sift through the problem we have. If we do nothing, the problem is going to grow. The H-2A system right now, one of the flaws with that, as I said, it was supposed to be a 10-month program. People come in. Our producers are paying $1,200 to $2,000 to get a person into the country for the permit, to get them the transportation and all that. When they come into the country, about 25 percent of the people that come in on an H- 2A abscond. They go off the grid, and the producer can't get people to come back that they have hired to work and they have made that commitment. With this system, that person will have that ``AG'' designation. The H-2A program will have the ``AG'' designation, and with the H-2A program, the goal is to make it a 10-month seasonal program. After 10 months, you go home. You have agreed to that. If you only want to work 16 weeks, you work the 16 weeks and go home. So it gives flexibility to the worker. It gives flexibility to the producer. It creates food security for us because this is something we need. And we get rid of the adverse wage effect and we go to the prevailing wage, which usually is about 115 percent above minimum wage. But as you and I know, people who work in agriculture, and if they are picking crops or shipping stuff, they are making $250 to $300 a day. They work their tails off because they are appreciative of the opportunity they have, as you said, because they want to live their dream. And they may become a citizen down the road. There is no citizenship with this. It is a way for people to come in and work. We get rid of the touchback provision of Bob Goodlatte's bill last year, and that comes from feedback from our dairy folks and other industries: I need year-round workers. A touchback does not work, because we have had these people who have been in here illegally for 5, 10, 15 years. Let's work together as Americans to solve a problem so that we can sift through this and end people coming in illegally. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman if he has any other thoughts that he would like to add, he can feel free. Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho), and I would add that, one of the things that crosses my mind, as I talk and listen here this evening, is that the Social Security numbers, multiple uses of a single number--it might even be all zeroes, and all zeroes might be used a thousand times in America, or more. [[Page H7456]] So I hear these stories, and some of the employers will say: Well, we have followed all of the laws that we are required to follow. But common sense isn't something that we hold them accountable for, apparently, and so the Social Security Administration, under Barack Obama started issuing no-match letters. {time} 1800 No-match letters used to go out to say this Social Security number that you are using isn't a match. Then it should go to the employer, too, and I believe it used to. I understand that the Trump administration may be picking that back up again and issuing the no-match letters, but that is not where it should stop. That is where it should begin. Mr. YOHO. The gentleman is exactly right. I have had producers call me. When I was in the district, they brought that up, the no-match letters. They are in a tizzy. If we go back prior to President Obama, there were no-match letters. This is what is wrong when you have bad policy. When you get rid of a program or a requirement that is working, people get complacent. They are like: Hey, I don't have to match up to Social Security, so there is no reason for me even to apply legally. Then, when you try to reinstate it, you get angry people, and it gums up the system again. That is why, if we have a good system in place, there is no reason to back away from it because this will be a policy that will live beyond you and me. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman. Mr. KING of Iowa. In 1986, when the Amnesty Act was signed by Ronald Reagan, there was a requirement that each employer would have I-9 documents that would be filed. As soon as applicants came in, we took a copy of their information. We took the I-9 documents. We kept them in our files carefully. Any individual who came in and applied, we had the right file, expecting INS--Immigration and Naturalization Services, at that time--personnel to be at our door anytime, poking through all of our records, which records are probably still sitting in my archives somewhere. That was going to work. They believed it was going to work. What happened was, slowly along the way, the ACLU filed lawsuits, and people kind of ducked and dodged. They found a way to rationalize a way around it until they got around to: Well, as an employer, I can't be required to make a judgment call. If I am looking at a picture of someone, I can't be sure that that is the face of the person who is in front of me. They would make the presumption that was best for their business interests rather than best for the law enforcement part of it. Then, if ICE doesn't show up when the no-match letters come through, because they are not cooperating with the Social Security Administration to go through those records when it is very probable that when a Social Security number is being used maybe in 10 places, in 10 different towns, you can't get to 10 jobs simultaneously. It should make sense that nine or at least eight of those are phony. They ought to go in and identify those employers and employees and, if there are law violations, bring charges against them. That hasn't been happening for years in this country. It needs to happen. This component that you proposed looks to me like it is an improvement, to segment off some of this, but I still say we need to go into the Social Security no-match and fix that. Mr. YOHO. I think that is a great thing. That is something we do need to go into. Then, we need to have the alternative. The gentleman brought up a good point that I have experienced, too, talking to our producers. If you get an I-9, which is the form to apply for a job, if there is a Social Security number, if you question that and don't hire that person because you think it is not legal, he has the right to sue you, and he will win. If you don't question that and hire that person, the Department of Labor or ICE shows up. They are going to fine you for hiring a person that you didn't verify. It is a mess. How did we become the great country we are with such a--I was going to say messed up system, or something like that. This is not rocket science. This is a simple program, and there is a commonsense reform. One of the things I didn't bring up, and I think the gentleman had asked me about this, is that the ID number is also a tax number. Taxes will be taken out of that. That is why I don't want Social Security associated with it, because Social Security denotes benefits, that if I am paying this, I get benefits. Those are not tied here. Money that goes in will go to other resources. What we are proposing is that we are going to make a requirement that each person who comes in as a guest worker has to have a catastrophic health insurance policy. If you come in here and drive a car, you have to have insurance. This will be something that we are sitting down with the insurance companies about. We have a pool of about a million people who are going to need some form of catastrophic health insurance. The other thing we are proposing is, if they are here legally, and they have a guest permit to work here, we go to direct primary care. These are companies around the country--it was amazing. I went and visited one. If you are between the ages of 18 and, I think, 25 or 30, your monthly cost for your health insurance is $25 a month--$25 a month. If you want blood work, it is $40 a month in my town. If you want an MRI, it is $250. That is affordable healthcare. The beauty of this is the employer can bring in a group of people. He can get direct primary care for a small amount of money. We will allow him to deduct that cost. Then, there is catastrophic health insurance. We have covered health insurance. We have covered driving insurance. We have covered a way for people to come in. We have given them a number so that we know where they are. They are not gummed up in our Social Security system. We have started to separate into different silos or categories and envelopes where they should be so that there is rational thought to this. The gentleman brought up rationalizing. I shouldn't have used that word. Rationalizing is to make rationale a lie. That is used too often up here. We want to make commonsense reforms to have a program that works for the immigrants, works for our employers, and works for our Nation. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman. Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I wanted to add another piece to this. This is an observation that I think applies across this country and a lot of places today. Some of my constituents made a practice of going out through the parking lot at the packing plant and picking up the check stubs on payday that were dropped down on the asphalt. Then, they stack a bunch of them up, put them in a big manila envelope that would kind of spring like an accordion, and mail it off to me. Here it comes in my mailbox. What is this? There is no letter, no message, no return address. Just my address on there and all these check stubs with no names on them. But the withholding, it tells me, is zero, zero, zero. No State withholding. No Federal withholding. What that tells me is that we have a lot of people who are working unlawfully in America, that when they apply, they claim the maximum number of dependents, so there is zero withholding at the wage scale they have for Federal income tax or State income tax. Yet, they still say they are paying taxes. Well, yes, there is sales tax. I suppose, in the rent, you are paying a share of the property tax. Some of those things are taking place. But that is another place the system is gamed by using Social Security numbers. I am hopeful that the gentleman has zeroed in on a way to address that. Mr. YOHO. We have. That is the beauty of the system. We get rid of all that. It is not a Social Security withholding. It is going to be a tax. It will be a guest worker tax, and money will be taken out. As I said, as I have shared this with Members in a bipartisan manner, they get excited about it. Our producers get excited about it. Industry gets excited about it. [[Page H7457]] Let's work to finally be the Congress that says that we fixed this problem, and let's make the American people proud and make our Nation safer. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. ____________________
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