On the recordNovember 30, 2012
I thank the gentleman from California for yielding to me. I point out, Mr. Speaker, that I have served on the Immigration Subcommittee for 10 years. In that period of time, I've sat in on dozens and scores and perhaps hundreds of hearings during that period of time, and gathered information and a knowledge base on these issues. I walked into this issue as a freshman Member of Congress 10 years ago with this statement: the immigration policy that we have in this country needs to be designed to enhance the economic, the social, and the cultural well-being of the United States of America. In fact, every country's immigration policy should fit that standard. We can have debates about the definitions of those three words that are part of that direction, but what's going on here is eliminating a really foolish policy that we've had, and I have long been for the repeal of the Diversity Visa lottery program, and I have long been for setting up a system so that we can promote the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the United States through our policies. In some of the information in hearings, we only control with our immigration policy--depending on whose numbers you want to look at-- between 7 percent and 11 percent of the legal immigrants coming into this country on merit. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
