Congressional call for troops on border
Iowa rep says he will introduce bill in weeks

June 3, 2005

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, called today for deploying the military to
seal the borders against illegal immigration and stiff new financial
penalties for employers who hire aliens.

"The destiny of America is going to be shaped a lot by immigration
policy," said King, who said he will introduce legislation "in the
next several weeks."

King said the measure he's pushing would put in place severe financial
penalties for companies hiring illegal workers, ending the companies'
ability to take deductions on wages and benefits for those workers.

"That will change the dynamic of this," said King. "That will slow the
growth in this job magnet that's driving our illegal immigration."

King spoke during a taping of Iowa Public Television's "Iowa Press"
program airing later this weekend.

"Immigration is the big sleeping issue that seems to be the subject
that no one wanted to touch in the last presidential campaign, the
subject that these presidential candidates don't want to touch, but
it's something that Iowans and Americans want to have a national
debate on," said King.

His bill, he said, would give "safe harbor" to companies that use
Internet-based tracking systems to verify that workers are in the
country legally.

"We need healthy immigration," said King. "We should go around the
world and recruit the best people we can get. We just simply can't be
the relief valve for all the poverty in the world."

King said it would be a relatively simple task to seal the border by
deploying military units for that task.

"Yes we can control the border, we can put more people on the border,"
said King. "Deploy our military to the border. That's great terrain to
train to go to Iraq. You need to keep an army busy. We have National
Guard people down there now, we can just put more there."