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One-Minute Speech By US Rep. Gary G. Miller of California.


Washington, Jul 12, 2006 - Mr. GARY G. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the American people expect us to stop the flood of illegal immigrants coming to this country. In order to do that we need to secure our borders. We need to crack down on employers that hire illegals and preserve American jobs for Americans. We need to reject all forms of amnesty.

Many talk about a guest worker program. I think most reasonable people believe that a guest worker program in the farming industry, perhaps in the gardening and landscape industries, is reasonable. Beyond that we need to look at what the need of America is, not the need of foreign countries and where they want to place their people. We need to absolutely reject again all forms of amnesty. We need to increase enforcement on current immigration laws.

Today, currently, business owners can go out and find out if the person they are hiring is eligible to work here or if they are not. We need to think about how we are impacting workers. In 1973 the average manufacturing jobs paid $15.24 an hour. In 2004 it paid $15.26 an hour. An American worker should not expect his pay to be cut because somebody comes to this country illegally and is willing to work for less than he or she should be paid. We need to protect Americans and protect their jobs.

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