Ted Poe: “I thank my friend from Iowa. We hopefully will deal with this issue as a body in September, come up with a commonsense…”

“I thank my friend from Iowa. We hopefully will deal with this issue as a body in September, come up with a commonsense immigration policy and plan that works. But any plan that we come up with has to start with the basic premise that we have to secure the borders and make sure that people in other nations respect the rule of law in the United States. As you mentioned and alluded to, we have people that come here legally. The process of coming here legally is taking so long, it discourages legal immigration and encourages those people to go around the rule of law and come into the United States illegally. A commonsense immigration policy that is fair to Americans, puts America first, is something that we need to deal with. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would like to read a short letter from a senior citizen down in east Texas. There is that east Texas wit and common sense that sometimes we do not see throughout other portions of the United States. He starts out his letter: ``There is an iceberg in the national bathtub. Illegal immigration and our current government's nonresponse to it is jeopardizing our national security, our State's security and our local security. With these 25 million illegal immigrants comes a huge problem and even larger risks. {time} 1300 ``We have more than likely allowed several terrorists and their weapons into the country. We all but rolled out the red carpet. The social welfare costs are damning.…”