mr. chairman , i rise in opposition to h.r. 418 . 
the first thing is america will not sleep any more securely with the passage of this piece of legislation , as well intended as it may be , because i am not going to question the motives of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle . 
but why do a useless thing ? 
why would the state legislatures , why would the state governors , why would every latino advocacy group come against this ? 
why would the national council of bishops here in the states come out against this ? 
it is for various reasons . 
but they all acknowledge that there is not a conspiracy going on here to thwart the efforts at security by these groups . 
no one would accuse these individuals of that , because this does not do anything . 
it only burdens the state and does not get us anywhere . 
but more importantly , and i really believe this , this is an anti-immigrant bill in the guise of some sort of security consideration , which it does not further . 
and so we ask , who are these immigrants ? 
i have a simple answer for all of us . 
look in the mirror . 
that is who we are talking about . 
we all got here one way or another , some earlier than others . 
we are all immigrants . 
what this bill is really about is not bad people coming into this country to do bad things to this country . 
it is about preventing good people coming into this country to do good things . 
