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Law enforcement and federal and state governments are notoriously deficient if you go looking for stats on how many crimes are committed by illegal foreign nationals on our soil.

So, a concerned citizen is forced to go to what sources are availabe. Here's one...a United States congressman:

Those are two of the situations here, Mr. Speaker. And then as some other things flow through my mind, and I look at the situation here in the United States, we are quite a country. And we have had a lot of people pour into the streets of America over the last several weeks. It has been rather astonishing to watch the foreign flags unfurled in the streets, the American flags flown upside down, the Mexican flag flying on top of the flag pole at a high school in California with an upside-down American flag right underneath there.

It is interesting to watch the second wave of demonstrations, when they seemed to take the coaching a little bit better and put on white shirts and flew more American flags. Of course the foreign flags were also in their midst although in significantly fewer numbers.

And then on May 1, the International Workers Day, the day where the socialists and communists around the world take to the streets to march and demonstrate, that was the day that it appeared that the movement for advocating for illegal aliens in America apparently was co-opted by the socialist communist movement in the world. Some of the descendents of the Workers World Party, the Communist party front, I will say, here in the United States and also ANSWER, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, those organizations, socialist organizations at best, more akin to Marxist organizations, are bringing people to the streets to demonstrate in the United States.

What a concept, Mr. Speaker, to get people to walk off their jobs, to walk out of their schools and plug the streets and refuse to do business with anybody that is, I will say, a non-Hispanic American, and then argue that this is a day for all immigrants, when they are seeking to punish their employers and punish the merchants that they would normally do business with and by walking out the schools, somehow figure that they are punishing the schools instead of the students. Not a very rational approach. And I dubbed it Biting the Hand That Feeds You Day. Because the punishment, if there was any, was to be delivered to the people that were most inclined to be supportive of illegals in this country.

And so, perhaps a million, 1.1 million, 1.3 million people took to the streets on Monday of this week to send a message all across America that they are demanding that they get a path to citizenship and hopefully a fast path to citizenship.

And I would argue, Mr. Speaker, that, you know, they came into this country and did so illegally. They argue that they are not criminals. But in fact, it is a crime to enter the United States today. Passing the law that makes it a felony makes it a penalty greater than, it is 6 months in jail and deportation if you enter the United States illegally today. And if the House Resolution 4437 should pass the Senate with the President's signature on it, it would make it a felony. That would be a year and a day penalty instead of 6 months. But regardless, it is still a crime to enter the United States. It is a crime to go to work in the United States illegally. And it isn't that they are not criminals. They break the law every day they go to work.

But I fault, Mr. Speaker, not just the illegals. In fact, I put it in this opposite order. I fault the government of the United States, the Federal Government. For the last 20 years, the enforcement effort has diminished incrementally year by year for the last 20 years. And the Federal Government has the first responsibility to defend our shores, defend our borders, defend our national security. But they let the situation get out of hand to the point where there are 3 to 4 million illegals who poured across our southern border within the last year. The Border Patrol stopped 1,159,000. That would be for 2004. For 2005, that number would be about 1,188,000. Now, they adjudicated for deportation in 2004, 1,640 was all. And some of those out of that 1.2 million or so that they did stop, some of those were taken to the border and sent back through the turnstile. Some were released on their own recognizance because it wasn't a logistically feasible thing to do to send them back.

Well, some of them come back the next day. Some of them come back within hours of the time that they are sent back to their home country.

This number keeps growing and it keeps ballooning, Mr. Speaker, and we must do something. And I think Democrats and Republicans agree that we need to control our borders.

As Congressman Gingrey says, when you are in an emergency room in a hospital and you get a patient that comes in and they are bleeding all over the place, you don't stop and debate about what you are going to do, how you are going to clean up the mess; you stop the bleeding first and you stabilize the patient. And that is what we sought to do here in this House with H.R. 4437.

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Stop the bleeding, stabilize the patient, get control of our laws, enforce them, and then begin a debate on what to do about how to get the patient rehabilitated again, after we get this patient stabilized. We can't do both of these things at once, Mr. Speaker. But we do need to do some things to pull this country together.

Mr. Speaker, again, it is important for us to bring some stability to this immigration issue. It is a national security issue. This is a national security issue as much as the global war on terror is a national security issue. And the statistics that I have looked at tell me that we have a slow-motion terrorist attack going on in the United States that comes across our southern border.

Now, some will say that if I point out the crimes of anyone coming into the United States, that somehow I am labeling everyone who illegally comes into the United States as a violent criminal. And of course, we know that is not true.

About 11,000 illegals cross our southern border every day. If they were all murderers, we would double our murder rate practically just with 1 day's supply. No, that is not the case. But the crimes that are committed by those who enter this country illegally are in significantly greater numbers than the crimes that are committed by American citizens, to the extent that 28 percent of the inmates in our prisons in the United States are criminal aliens, 28 percent. And that includes our city, our county, our State and our Federal penitentiaries. And they vary only 1 or 2 percent above or below, but they average 28 percent. And it costs us $6 billion a year to provide for the incarceration of the criminal aliens, and that is just the Federal dollars to speak of. And once we reach down into the cities, into the counties, there are other numbers out there that would grow that greater and greater. It is a minimum of $6 billion. And these numbers that I have come from, their SCAAP funding, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Plan. And all States don't apply for SCAAP funding. So we know that these numbers are low numbers, not high numbers. But it is certain that there are more. I am just not certain how many more. But I can stand on 28 percent.

Now, that means then that criminal aliens are committing 28 percent of the crimes in the United States. And so that means 28 percent of the murders, 28 percent of the rapes, 28 percent of the violence and the assaults and battery, first- and second-degree murder and also manslaughter attacks are committed by criminal aliens.

Now, I think that is one of the reasons that I believe the illegal population in America is greater than those numbers that we are seeing. And I can't imagine how, if 3 to 4 million come into the United States, and we may be direct, we tell over a million, 1.2 million, go home, but we don't have any verification that they actually go home or stay home. Some we do verify they went home, but we can't verify that any of them stayed home; this population is growing.

The Border Patrol would say that there is another 2 to 3 million that get by that don't get stopped every year compared to the million that get stopped. So if this number in the United States is 3 million or more extra every year, some will die, yes, and some will go back home. That is true. And some will become citizens by hook or by crook, but there will still be a significant increase in the United States. And I think that number increases substantially, perhaps 2.5, maybe even as much as 3 million a year. That would take us on up to 20 million or more in this country, not 11 or 12 million. That is a more reasonable number. And if you think that the numbers could be 20 million or more, then it is easier to understand how you could have 28 percent of our criminal aliens in the penitentiaries. So this problem is a lot larger than most people think. And it comes down to this: If we had enforced our borders, if we hadn't allowed any illegals to come into the United States, if we would have enforced our domestic laws so when people violated immigration laws internally, domestically; if we did those things, then we wouldn't have illegal aliens in America to commit the crimes. And that would equate and extrapolate down to 12 fewer murders every day, 13 fewer people that die at the hands of negligent homicide, primarily the victims of drunk drivers, at least 8 little girls that are victims of sex crimes on a daily basis, and that number could be well higher than that because the average predator, perpetrator commits and is convicted on at least 3.6 victims. And that is the ones we find out about. There are many others that are not reported. In fact, they statistically say that there might be only 10 percent that are actually reported. These numbers are small numbers. They are the conservative side of the numbers, not the larger side of the numbers.

This is a slow-rolling, slow-motion terrorist attack on the United States costing us billions of dollars and, in fact, thousands of lives, and we have an obligation to protect the American people, and that means seal and protect our borders. And if we are able to do that, down the road a few years, once it is established, we could have a legitimate discussion about whether we could have a guest worker plan, whether we could open the greencards. But today we haven't demonstrated that there is going to be enforcement. And without that demonstration of enforcement, I am not willing to go a step further and to insist that there will be enforcement.

But in this country, Mr. Speaker, we need to have cultural continuity. We need to pull together as a people. We need to pull together under our civilization, under a common cause, a common sense of history, a common language. And a common language is essential to any country.

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In fact, I went through the World Book Encyclopedia. I went to the almanac and looked up all the flags of all the countries in the world, set it down beside the World Book Encyclopedia, looked them all up to see what is the official language. Every country that is registered in the almanac with a flag, what is their official language? Every single country in America has at least one official language, except the United States of America. We do not have an official language. We just have a common language called English. All the rest of the countries saw the wisdom of binding and tying any country together with a common language.

The Israelis, when they established their country in 1948, and I believe that anniversary was just yesterday or the day before, they established it from 1948 until 1954. In 1954, they established Hebrew as their official language, and they did so because they needed a common language to bind them together, a common form of communications currency, if you will, Mr. Speaker.

So people have understood that throughout the ages. That is something that has been known since Biblical times, how powerful a common language is.

Mr. Speaker, I propose that we move that kind of legislation and that we establish an official language here in the United States and do so for the purposes of pulling our people together.

We are being fractured by worshipping at the alter of multiculturalism. When that first came forward and I dealt with it, however many years ago, 30 years ago, perhaps, or more, when I first began to hear the term multiculturalism diversity, I really actually thought, fine, this sounds good, gives us an opportunity to recognize other cultures, other civilizations. People have things to be proud of. It is constructive. It is positive. And I went my merry way as kind of an endorser of multiculturalism and diversity.

As the years unfolded, Mr. Speaker, I came to a different conclusion. I came to the conclusion that identity politics were tearing America apart. Our rights come from God, and they are guaranteed to individuals, not to groups. God blesses us all equally and creates us all in His image; and He does not draw distinctions between us based upon skin color, ethnicity, or any other characteristics that we might want to be part of. And yet we insist upon dividing ourselves up and calling it ``diversity.'' And I think ``diversity'' really stands for ``division.''

So I did a little experiment. I went on the Web page at home, Iowa State University, typed in ``multiculturalism'' and looked up the student organizations that are there. It is quite an interesting list, all identity

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politics. It starts with African Students Association, and there are 50 of them, and it ends with Zeitgeist. And in the middle of that you will see the Identifying as M.E., the Multi-Ethnics. That is one of my favorites. They could not come up with a label, so they called themselves Multi-Ethnics.

But you have Amnesty International, Asian Pacific American Awareness Coalition, Benefiting the Education of Latinas in Leadership Academics and Sisterhood, Black Graduate Student Association; and before you can get there, you need to be part of the Black Student Alliance, the Brazilian-Portuguese Association, the French Club, the Iowa State Ukrainian Club, the Japanese Association, the Kenya Students Association, Latino Heritage Month. The list goes on and on and on, Mr. Speaker, 50 strong, identity politics, all of them viewing themselves as somehow disenfranchised, not having the same kind of access or the same kind of privileges or opportunities or rights maybe as someone else. Except for those that identify themselves as the Identifying as M.E., which stands for Multi-Ethnic. So they finally found one that was generic.

Perhaps I fit in there also, Mr. Speaker. But I thought, well, that is Iowa State and they are a Midwestern fairly conservative institution.

So what about Berkeley? So we typed in Berkeley and did a little search on student organizations there. The University of California, Berkeley, they came up with 118 of these identity politics groups on campus there.

We are using up our resources supporting organizations that are designed to identify the differences in us, not the commonalities, designed to divide us, not to pull us together, Mr. Speaker. And it is in the end going to pull us apart, pull us irrevocably apart, if we do not pull ourselves together and provide for some cultural continuity.

So I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that we need to establish English as the official language of the United States. We need to stand up together and say, enough of this identity politics, enough of this division politics, enough of the idea that you cannot be an American unless somehow you are part of this beautiful multicultural mosaic with a particular identifier on you.

It was good enough for Teddy Roosevelt to be just an American. In fact, he insisted upon it, Mr. Speaker. And I insist upon it as well, that we must pull together in that fashion. And if we fail to stay in touch with our Constitution, with our history, with our commonalities, if we fail to pull together in the same harness, Mr. Speaker, then shame on us. This country will be weaker; and this country, in fact, may not survive the attacks that are upon it.

So, rather than go into the balance of the solutions for America, Mr. Speaker, I just would conclude with this, that they are doing great work in Iraq. We are committed there. We must follow through and finish the task, whatever it takes. We have the resolve to do that.

We are watching as millions pour across our Southern border, and we are establishing some policy here in this city over the next few weeks that will establish the destiny of America. If we do not have the will to establish our border and control our border, we cannot be a Nation, if we let people come into America illegally and then they are the ones that are establishing our immigration policy, not us here in this Congress.

The Constitution gives Congress the authority, Congress the responsibility, to establish immigration law. We need to do that. We need to do that after a national debate.

But we will hear story after story after story of how people have put down their roots and now we cannot ask them to go back. But I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that what we need to do is seal the border, build a fence to do that, build it as tight as we need to to make it effective. We need to end birthright citizenship that is creating these anchor babies.

We need to shut off the jobs magnet by applying employer sanctions, by passing my legislation, which is called New IDEA, H.R. 3095, which is the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act, that lets the IRS remove the deductibility of wages and benefits paid to illegals. When that happens, it will take the cost of a wage from, say, a $10 wage to an illegal, by the time the taxable component are factored in, take it on up to $16 an hour. That gives the American a chance to do the work or someone on a legal green card, rather than someone who is here illegally.

This is the United States of America, Mr. Speaker. We need to stand on defending our borders. We need to seal the border. We need to build a fence. We need to end birthright citizenship. We need to shut off the jobs magnet, pull ourselves together as a Nation in unity, and people will go back home when their job opportunities start to dry up here. We will not have to make that decision for them. The decision will be made. They got here on their own. They can go back on their own. It is not a matter of trying to deport 12 million or 22 million people.

But I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that if the Senate passes and this House should pass and the President should sign a guest worker program that might well have 22 million people who have a fast track to citizenship, they will also be able to invite in their immediate family. If each one of them invites just simply four of their immediate family in, a father, a spouse, and a couple of children, just four, that means 88 million new ones that are not calculated here. Add that to the 22 million or so that are here, and you have the entire population of Mexico brought into the United States in a single generation. If that is our intent, we ought to have the will to stand on the floor of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and say so, rather than do this in some kind of way that opens the gate and lets the American people find out about it after it is too late.

With that, I thank the Speaker for his indulgence.