mr. chairman , i want to thank my colleague from monterey for so clearly laying out the reasons that waiving all laws is a travesty of american governing principles . 
i will focus on the issue driving this extreme language -- completing the 3 1/2 miles of border fencing , including the ocean section in my district . 
a member stated that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants enter there and are chased all over the sensitive wetlands destroying them anyway . 
his facts were true 10 years ago . 
they are not today . 
in 1993 , the border patrol apprehended 165 , 000 people in this section . 
in 2003 , the number had dropped 94 percent -- to 10 , 000 . 
how many illegal entrants get past the border patrol today ? 
they tell us 1 , 000 a year -- three people per day . 
and that is with a fence you or i could easily walk around or through . 
what should we do ? 
finish building a secondary fence with the proposed level of environmental destruction . 
compromise has occurred , and plans exist for alternative road alignment . 
appoint a task force to meet and reach consensus by a deadline . 
one issue remains -- a one-half mile wide river bed called smuggler 's gulch -- leading to internationally recognized wetlands restored at the cost of tens of millions of dollars . 
the proposal lops off two adjacent mesas to dump 2 million tons of dirt into the gap to a height of 165 feet ! 
-- as high as two of the new giant airbuses stacked on top of one another ! 
it would cost $ 40 million just to move the dirt -- money better spent purchasing high grade technology and funding the president 's proposed increase of border patrol agents . 
i urge you to support the farr amendment . 
