For immigration-sanity patriots, there's a lot to like about Congressman Steve King (R-IA), who will presumably chair the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in the coming 112th Congress. VDARE.com's Brenda Walker pointed us to a three-minute video of King arguing against the DREAM Act amnesty in the House on December 8. However, that clip doesn't contain an impressive statement that I, watching live, saw King make during the debate. The statement indicated to me that King has the correct, foundational understanding of American immigration policy, at least as it should be. It turns out that the statement I noticed was later during the debate, found on this page of the Congressional Record. (The longer text corresponding to the video Brenda linked is at this page.) Here's what King said:

I believe in an immigration policy that is designed to enhance the economic, the social, and the cultural well-being of the United States of America. This immigration policy is for America. We can’t relieve all of the poverty in the world. That is completely impossible. Today, our immigration structure is this: between 7 and 11 percent of our legal immigration is based on merit, and the balance of it is out of our control as far as setting any standards. If we are going to be a great Nation we have to have a policy that is established to promote American exceptionalism. This bill does not. I urge a ””no’’ vote.

There are two points of fundamental understanding in those two paragraphs. First, King is in accord with the first of John Miano's Ten Principles of Immigration:

The purpose of immigration policy is to benefit the citizens of the United States.

And King also recognizes that, because our legal immigration inflow is overwhelmingly dominated by extended family preferences ("family reunification"), it's really a matter of immigrants choosing subsequent immigrants, with no conscious benefit to the interests of America's native-born population