[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 146 (Saturday, October 8, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             HUNT THEM DOWN

                                 ______


                          HON. JOSE E. SERRANO

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 7, 1994

  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues an 
editorial from the New York Times of October 4, 1994, on the very 
troubling anti-immigrant hysteria that pervades out Nation today. Let 
us not forget that we are overwhelmingly a nation descended from 
immigrants and it is to this fact that we owe our unparalleled 
democracy and prosperity.

                             Hunt Them Down

                          (By A.M. Rosenthal)

       When a nation sets out to persecute a segment of its 
     population, to hound them down, mark them, deprive them of 
     the human care it gives to others, tells them they cannot 
     work to earn their bread, that nation takes a large step 
     toward persecuting other groups who live within its borders. 
     It follows as blood the wound.
       In dictatorships, the first persecution is carried out by 
     command, in full knowledge that other groups are on the list.
       In democratic countries, the first persecution is usually 
     the result of generalized public anxiety and uncertainty, 
     manipulated and deepened by politicians who scavenge and 
     batten on antagonism within society.
       The antagonism becomes a political movement in itself, 
     frightening into silence politicians who are aware of the 
     dangers of the acceptance of any persecution of any group but 
     willing to push that into the back of their minds.
       All this is taking place in America--the anxieties being 
     directed against a small slice of the population, the 
     heightening by political propagandists, the submission of the 
     political center.
       The target is the residents of the U.S. who have come to 
     this country in search of work or refuge without securing 
     admission papers--the 3.2 million people called ``illegal 
     aliens'' or ``undocumented immigrants.'' Usage depends on 
     whether you despise them or can muster up some memory of 
     America's debt to the paperless.
       Americans suffering from jumpy nerves about immigrants 
     should demand that Washington spend more billions of their 
     tax money to make the borders tighter, knowing total tight is 
     impossible. And it is in democratic order for the Government 
     to use its legal powers to deport illegals.
       But it is not in democratic order for politicians to spread 
     falsehoods about the economic ``burden'' of immigrants, legal 
     and illegal, to use clubs of fear to drive out immigrants, or 
     to saddle the country with immigrant-hunting computer banks 
     and work licenses that will cut away at every American's 
     liberty.
       Immigration, legal and illegal figured in, adds up to an 
     economic boon to America. The estimate of the Urban Institute 
     in Washington is that they contribute $25 to $30 billion more 
     money in taxes and jobs than social benefits paid out.
       Benefits, On the West Coast, there is lots of political 
     noise about removing them from illegals, to drive them out. 
     Mean-spirited referendum items may pass but they will bring 
     little economic benefit. The truth is that the dreaded 
     benefit-swilling illegals now receive little more than the 
     schooling for children upheld by the Supreme Court and 
     emergency medical help.
       And now, an immigration ``reform'' commission appointed by 
     the Clinton Administration calls for a nationwide computer 
     bank that would grant or withhold the permission to work. 
     Every job applicant immigrant, naturalized or native born, 
     would have to be computer-cleared as a legal resident of the 
     U.S. fit for a work license.
       Lovely. Tomorrow, the Government could ask the computer to 
     hunt down every person who broke a law, had a bad credit 
     rating or ever had a contagious disease to see whether he 
     should be permitted to work. Will Americans really stand for 
     this?
       While we think it over, the ``anti-illegals'' crowd is 
     moving against its next target: immigration itself, the 
     concept of America as haven for refugees and a place of 
     economic hope for some of those who stupidly failed to be 
     born in America.
       The anti's are so strong that many Republican and 
     Democratic politicians who are opposed to them just keep 
     quite. As antidote, I give you two quotations.
       One is from Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York. ``I love 
     immigrants,'' he said. ``Legal, illegal--they are not to be 
     despised.''
       And this if from New York City's Mayor, Rudolph Giulani.
       ``If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be 
     in an undocumented status, you are one of the people who we 
     want in this city. You are somebody that we want to protect 
     and we want you to get out from under what is often the life 
     of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair.''
       One of them is a Democrat and the other Republican. But 
     when it comes to understanding America's roots and the 
     dangers to them, you can't tell these fellows apart--my happy 
     thought for the day.

                          ____________________