Congressman Pete Hoekstra Radio Address
June 29, 2007

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Transcript:

Hi. I'm Congressman Pete Hoekstra from Michigan's Second Congressional District.

Facilitated by the American people, House Republicans won a very important victory this week by helping to defeat the Senate immigration bill

Rather than sit on the sidelines and wait for the Senate to send us bad legislation, House Republicans overwhelmingly voiced our disapproval of the Senate's bill before they had completed consideration of it.

In doing so we made the voices of House Republicans and American citizens heard on the Senate floor.

The bill provided amnesty to not only those who broke the law to come to our homeland, to come to America, but to even provide citizenship to illegal aliens who had committed felonies.

According to the Congressional Budget Office's study, the Senate bill would have resulted in only a 13 percent reduction of the 10 million illegal aliens expected to enter the United States in coming years.

So even if passed, the bill wouldn't have worked.

It was poor legislation, and it would only have become worse in Speaker Pelosi's Democrat-controlled House.

There is a better way. There is a common sense plan that will work.

The first step is border security. Congress needs to complete funding for effective border enforcement measures. This is not only an economic security issue, it's also a national security issue.

Second, we need strict employer/employee identification measures so that only people in the country legally are allowed to work. We need to enforce current law.

Third, we need to identify the mechanism for an effective and enforceable guest-worker program that matches willing workers with available jobs.

House Republicans are committed to making it happen.

Speaker Pelosi has a responsibility to work with Republicans to deliver results for the American people.

Congress still has an opportunity to implement practical and effective immigration reform. House Republicans this week stood side-by-side with the American people.

We led and will continue to lead.

Thanks for listening.