The king was preventing people from coming to the country and being able to migrate. I dont want people to take away from this hearing that all of a sudden we forgot about the tired and the poor and the people striving for a better life. Those are probably my biggest concerns when we look at just the precedent we set and we have economic problems and we are getting out of them like we always do and we will always prospered because we are resilient. What about the moral grounds that we would see if we say we are going to forget about 11 Million People and focus on skilled workers and not take care of spouses and equal protection under laws . Do you worry about that . I do. If we look at the statue of liberty what it says give me your tired and youre poor. What i do not want people to take away from this hearing is all the sudden we forgot about the tired and poor and the people who are striving for a better life. Those are probably my biggest concerns when we look at just the president we set and we have economic problems and were getting out of them like we always do and we will always we are resisted. We are resilient. What about the moral ground if we say were going to forget and we only focus on skilled workers. We will not take care of spouses and equal protection. Do you worry about that . The country is in a mess. Our economy is in horrible shape we have a brain drain going on. It has never happened before. America has always been a land of immigrants, not immigrants. Were losing a couple hundred thousand more people could be killing our economy. Until the economy heels the public will not be receptive to the unskilled workers. It is a mess right now. Lets agree and get that over and done with. Lets agree on the dream act and give some kind of green card to the of undocumented workers. That is toxic right now. I am not after mistake we can solve that problem. Optimistic we can solve that problem. Lets make things easier for everyone. Give them green cards. My father has a green card. He has lived here for 30 years happily without having that problem. You do not have to have citizenship to do what is right for people. The problem can be solved. My wife lived here for 25 years on a green card until she decided to naturalized. She could not about in School Board Elections which annoyed her. The statue of liberty is on the cover of all the commission on Immigration Reform reports and on the diversity of visas. If you look at the composition, of current legal emigration to the u. S. , it is very diverse. When approbation was passed, there was concern it was not diverse enough. Since then it has become very diverse. These are adding 55,000 visas that are getting 8 million applications each year, randomly allocated by computerized lottery. That is a somewhat odd way to set priorities. The Commission Said we should set priorities and we should deliver on them. And the Diversity Visa Program it felt then and it would say now it does not rise to that level of priority compared to the other priorities. Alamance time has expired. The gentlemans time has expired. I think it is important we modernize our immigration system. We agree that we have a broken immigration system but we need to find a solution to the promise we have by being fair. We need to be fair to the millions of americans that want to follow the rule of law. We need to be fair to the millions of people who are waiting in line to come legally to the United States and we have to be fair to the 11 Million People who are here illegally. I have a few questions about this. I want to ask, you spoke about the sibling category in your report. Can you explain i agree with the conclusion. We should get rid of the sibling category. Can you explain why you think that is important . Up there are not enough space is allocated for the huge volume of applications. You have eight 2. 5 million person waiting list. The waiting times vary from 12 to 20 years. If youre not going to manage by backlog which is what the Commission Said, we should not be doing. That is a category managed by unconscionable backlogs. One thing i disagree about is the guest worker issue. I am a little bit dumbfounded by it. This report came out a few years ago. 15 years. In my state, in idaho we have a large dairy industry. Two former have experienced i9 audits. 20 of the 30 employees did not qualify. 40 of 57 did not qualify. The one hand and fired all those employees and it went ahead and ask for people to come work at the dairy. They could not find a Single Person who applied for the opposition who spoke english. They do not know if people are legal or illegal. I have not done another inine audit. How can you see that we do not have a need . That is a large number of employees that needed to be hired and not a Single Person who spoke english applied for the position. I do not know the circumstances in idaho, congressman. I am sorry. I would say it is true that in some agricultural areas, employers, particularly in rural areas which is where agriculture normally is anyway. Typically. Not all. Have become dependent on the assumption they can recruit from this undocumented work force. This is different. This is somebody who had to fire everybody who was working at their dairy and they could not find anybody who could speak english. I do not know what their status was. I was an immigration lawyer and i found the same experience. Some of the agricultural areas and industries. It is hard to find American Workers who want to do the job. Your solution is they should do something else. They should pick, and instead of something else. The reality is we should let the market decide that, should we not . It seems that even in the example you gave us that the owner of the farm had already decided he was not going to pick the apricots because the market was not working. We need to do something about our guest workers. I disagree with you there. With the commission. With the commission. I apologize. I like your words that we progress because we are pragmatic. It seems to me that your solution is not pragmatic. You say that it has to be a pathway to citizenship for nothing else. In my 15 years of experience as an immigration lawyer i talked to thousands who are here illegally and what they want is they want to come out of the shadows. They want to be legal and want to be able to work into trouble. They want to be able to feel like theyre being treated with dignity. Not very many people told me i want to be a citizen. I have to be a citizen in order to feel like i am a dignified person. If we can find a path to citizenship but better than kicking 12 Million People out, why is that not a good solution . I would say that is not the solution that is in the nations best interest. That is what i said and that would be the most pragmatic solution. One of the reasons i believe that is that if we do not go down that route i am convinced we are likely to find ourselves here again in 10, 15, 20 years. If you ask me with that the better than zero, i would not necessarily disagree. Is that sufficient . Does that actually address the issues that we have in front of us . No. It is not a sufficient solution. My time has run out. The question i have for you and for all advocates of Immigration Reform is whether you want a political solution or policy solution. If it won a political solution you have to insist on a pathway to citizenship. Youre going to be republicans over the head on this issue. Everyone a policy solution there is good will here in the house of representatives for us to come together and have a pragmatic solution to the current problem we have and solve and modernize the immigration system for years to come. Thank you. The gentleman from illinois is recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. I would like to say that while we have been here every minute, someone has been deported. Most of those deported have committed really no crime. Other than working in the United States which is a misdemeanor the last time attacked. They are raising their families, they are contributing. Theres always the question about paying taxes. They pay taxes. You can check with the Social Security department. There is a large amount that those unaccounted for. They do not know who toot attribute that money to pray we need to do reform so when they pay tax it goes into the right account and it helps fund and fuel our economy. And what the mayor and the state and federal government to garner this tax dollars and not for it to be in the pocket of sun some unscrupulous employer who is taxing the but not sending the money on. We all know that there was an increase in the earning ability of the undocumented once the became. Everyone keeps talking about innovation. Let me give you a little innovation. We talked about the uncertainty of the market and what we do as a congress. The uncertainty of what we do and what that causes. I want everyone to think one moment. What you think about the uncertainty in the life of a male 11 million undocumented workers when you give them certainty . I will tell you what i believe theyre going to do. Theyre going to buy that house that had they have been thinking about. It will buy that car. 75 of our Economic Activity in the United States is someone purchasing something. I want to to think. Think about people going to insurance agencies into banks to open accounts and to invest and to save. Most importantly, as i and other baby boomers, i am 59 and i am part of that group of people that is going to be hopefully soon going into the sunset. How soon . While we have a lot of people, we have the largest percentage of people ever before in the history of our nation that are leading our work force in the next 15 years. We need to replace them and we need to replace these assets. There are undocumented people in this room, there are dreamers in this room. I am happy that the president uses his executive authority. 500,000 of them are facing deportation. 150,000 of them is in my office and i have to tell you something. He is not a burden. He got legalized and came to my office. We get health care at our place of employment and that is the same place they will get health care. I want to say to everyone that is here, i want to quickly say to those who have come here and i will destroy your name to want to say to both of you, we have a bill. Was introduced by the gentle lady from california. For 10 years, i insisted that Nothing Happened on any other particular part of comprehensive Immigration Reform unless we did it all, but last year, in good faith and to show we wanted to work with everybody, we said 50,000, i will not object we did not want you to get something while someone else lost something. In our bill, 50,000, you get to come from the first day with your wife, with your children because we believe we should welcome you and at the same time that have to make a distinction between serving this country and bringing your talent and sacrificing and cherishing the fact that a family might not be there with you. I will continue to work. I say to my colleagues, we can resolve this and many other issues. Lastly, what to say special thankyou to mayor castro. You just a little up our house. You live us up with your speech at the convention, which your poise, with the way it is you make is also proud and which were story. I would like to say to you that i am so thankful that america gave your grandparents a chance and you are here with us today. I know that the nation is better because of your service. Thank you so much for your testimony today. Thank you. The gentleman from california is recognized for five minutes. [chanting] [gavel] the committee will have order. This is not the way. All those must leave. [chanting] just so many of you are not in doubt about the rules of the committee. I want to make sure that everyone knows that the chairman of the committee may punish breaches in order and decorum by center or exclusion from the hearing. We just a moment ago did not have order in the hearing room. Members of the audience must behave in an orderly fashion or elsewhere will be there will be removed. Let me say on the side that was not a good action point to the excellent points made by the gentleman from illinois. The way we resolve this is through discussion and careful deliberation about the issues, not by disrupting efforts to educate members of this committee and the public. We will resume the hearing. The gentleman from california is recognized without penalty for the loss of any of his five minutes for that destruction. Can i get an extra minute for this one . May be. First of all. In several ways i want to associate myself with my good friend from illinois. I am one month, nine days older than you. That does not mean there is any real difference in us as baby boomers. Were going to exit the scene and i do not want to exit the scene without resolving an immigration problem that predated my interest and the gentlemans entrance into congress. That group of disruption did not understand my politics. I do believe we can get to unsubstantial if not complete Immigration Reform bill. It is my hope that this is that window of opportunity. I do have some concerns from earlier. I want to associate myself with ms. Lofgren. I heard you say we should grow different crops in california as a resolution to the leading needing labor we cannot seem to find. Is that pretty well correct . I am saying that farmers and employers make decisions incrementally over time based upon the available availability of labor at what price and so we have allowed farmers are dependent on that continuing flow of labor. That is the nature of temporary worker programs and undocumented workers. I want to challenge that for a moment. I was there in 1986 when the law changed. I have seen my farmers, some that i represented in the past, some that i still represent, flowers, tomatoes, strawberries, and my wifes home in monterey county. The majority of all lettuce comes from that county. If we simply say we cannot have labored to pick that and we need to make other decisions, this land is will grow something else. We will import or lettis from another country. If the real question is if we have an Effective Program that gives the opportunity to people to work for a time and periodically return home in a non immigrant, in a migrant way, we can have an Effective Program and in the 1990s, you were studying it at a time when the problem was fixed and it was getting rebroken as we spoke. We had migrant labor that had become permanent. There were beginning to either be in the management ranks of agriculture for they were leaving agriculture. That is understandable. There were tens of millions who would stand in line to get good paid by their standards, migrant jobs here in america and would do so under a set of rules that were fair to them and fair to us. If they were fair, that is a big if, of course because temporary worker programs generally have not have that character. And then i would suggest let me challenge that. I want a successful resolution. I believe it is to deal with people who are already here and empower us to bring in people who add to our economy and deal with lowskilled jobs that in many cases if people come to this country they do them for a short period of time. Is our standard supposed to be an american wage for american jobs or and i want to go to or should it be a wage that is completely fair and greater than the wage someone would find in their home country for coming here and sufficient for them to not only earn a living but also to go home with more money. If that is the standard, is that an achievable standard where it is a winwin . We can get our crops still with in a decent way, they can be better off, and we can have a full flavor for that one portion that would not be subject to shaye migration. Change migration chain migration. The recommendation said that was an attractive goal but not possible to achieve. Not possible to achieve. My premise was that we pay more than they would find in their home country but not necessarily what were paying today with all the rules under the ag program of h2a. You might want to look at the backlogs that have been generated that have lots of people who are not particularly skilled waiting. Theyre in it entitled to a visa but they are in the backlog. I hear you say it could not be done and it was not going to work but i worked with mr. Berman on this community this committee believing it could. You look at canada, canada has made the Guest Worker Program work for a while. It is a good solution. You want the high skilled we want them here permanently. Thank you. Anyone else . Thank you. The gentleman from washington is recognized for five minutes. I come from a district that has lots of technology in the southern part of the district. Home of microsoft and a lot of biomedical Device Companies and rich Agricultural Industry of dairies and specialty crops. Emigration is important from many different aspects. You talked we talked about h1b minute talk about a starter visa program. Would you talk about how that would work in conjunction with the program . The starter visa would do wonderful wonders for seattle and new york and more for Silicon Valley. There are tens of thousands of companies that would be started almost overnight if we gave the entrepreneurs the ability to do that. It can start a company but you cannot work for a period that is brain dead. We would have a boom in entrepreneurship but we have not seen before. It should be done independently of Everything Else were doing. Just get that done so we can fix the immediate problem. There is the issue of habs. H1bs. There are debates about whether they take jobs away. And in other parts you do need h1bs. The more urgent thing is to give green cards to the millions who are already here. Let them start their companies. Let them buy houses, let them enjoy the rights that americans enjoy. We talk about Startup Companies but a lot of research there is great basic research that is happening at our universities. How do you think the relationship of our emigration program has an impact in the education were able to deliver in medical