[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7362-H7364]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            CHANGES THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN CENTRAL AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is 
recognized for the remainder of time until midnight, or 11 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. I think I can do it all in 11 minutes, Mr. Speaker.
  I thought I would just come to the floor tonight and talk about 
several issues. I was late to the special order of the gentleman from 
California [Mr.

[[Page H7363]]

Bilbray] where he spoke about his bill which would disallow automatic 
citizenship to the children of people who have come into the United 
States illegally. He went through a fairly lengthy litany of court 
cases and legal precedent behind the rule of law, the idea that coming 
to this country and achieving citizenship requires certain 
accountability and certain responsibilities and that that status should 
not be conferred; that is, citizenship should not be conferred on 
people who have come into the country using trickery or deceit or 
simply forcing their way in or simply walking across a land border.
  The theme I think of the gentleman's special order, and I thought it 
was an excellent special order, was that when an individual comes to 
the United States that they should use the front door; do not come in 
through the back door. And it is only appropriate that we reserve 
citizenship for people who have used the front door. I applaud him for 
that and wish I could have been here earlier, and I apologize to him 
for missing his special order. I think it was excellent and I think his 
legislation is very timely.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk about another person tonight who is a 
very important person to many of us in Congress who fought in what I 
call the contra wars in the 1980's. Those were the legislative debates 
that drove, to a large degree, American policy in the 1980's during the 
Reagan administration with respect to Central America, and particularly 
with respect to the Soviet Union's attempt to transfer a terroristic 
guerilla operation from the Soviet Union and from its client states 
into the guerilla operations in El Salvador, Guatemala, and in 
Nicaragua, manifested there by the Sandinistan Government.
  We saw the Soviets, then Soviets, moving in with tons of munitions, 
automatic weapons, all kinds of explosives, and fostering the guerilla 
movements in El Salvador that threatened to overthrow that very fragile 
government which even then had the makings of democracy.
  It is interesting, when I came in in 1980, as a freshman, Guatemala, 
Honduras, Salvador, and Nicaragua all had some form of military 
dictatorship. None of them had, when Ronald Reagan arrived on the scene 
as President of the United States, none of them had democracies. Today, 
they all have democracies, albeit fragile.
  It was important for us at that point, when they were struggling to 
achieve those democracies and to put off the terrorism, I can remember 
in El Salvador when the FMLN, the guerilla operations supported by the 
Communists, were blowing up electrical plants and were massacring 
people trying to engage in a harvest, were regularly assassinating 
state officials, and I remember when Ronald Reagan enunciated the idea 
that we need to provide a shield, a military shield for these 
governments like El Salvador and also for the freedom fighter movement 
in Nicaragua, where a few very brave souls were fighting the 
Sandinistas, the Communist Sandinistas, which were strongly supported 
by the Soviet Union.
  There was enormous debate at that time in the United States, and a 
number of citizen groups were engaged on both sides trying to persuade 
the Congress either to stay out of Central America and let the Russians 
have their way or to engage in Central America and provide the shield 
that I talked about.
  Bill Blakemore of Texas was a Texas businessman who wanted to engage 
in supporting the Reagan doctrine in Central America, and he put 
together a group of business people in Texas who came to the Hill and 
lobbied and did everything they could to see to it that people 
understood what was at stake in having democracies rather than tyranny 
in Central America in our own hemisphere.
  Bill Blakemore did a great job at that. He did not ask for anything 
in return. He did not get any money for it. He did not make any 
contracts. He simply did that work because he thought it was important 
to be a leader as an American citizen and to fight for and persuade 
people to do what was right.

                              {time}  2355

  He is very ill today in Texas. He is down at his ranch, an Iron 
Mountain ranch near Marathon, TX. So I want to say to Bill Blakemore 
and all the people that helped him, thank you for what you did for this 
country. Because partly because of your efforts, we now have 
democracies, fragile democracies in that part of the hemisphere, and 
that has accrued to the benefit of the United States.
  Lastly, Mr. Speaker, before I end my time, I wanted to say that my 
friend Bob Dornan has taken a lot of flak from Members on the other 
side of the aisle, Democrat Members, for the simple fact that after his 
election, which he won on Election Day by several hundred votes and 
then lost later when they counted absentee ballots, when they 
discovered that one group had fraudulently registered and voted a 
number over 300, that number of illegal voters, Mr. Dornan raised a 
question ``Were there more?'' And he raised a question as to whether or 
not he had really lost that election. In fact, the question was who had 
gotten the most votes, the most legal votes.
  He had every right to do that. And we, as a House of Representatives, 
should be very concerned when we see one group that fraudulently votes 
300 illegal voters on Election Day, telling them, manipulating them and 
telling them as non-citizens that they not only had the right but the 
duty as non-citizens to vote in an American election.
  So we are now undergoing a very thorough review of that voting 
situation to validate or to follow through on a very simple principle, 
and that is the person with the most votes wins in a democracy. Now why 
is that anathema to the other side? Why do they not want to see the 
votes counted?
  So we are almost at the end of that situation. And I just wanted to 
say that I think Mr. Dornan has comported himself in an absolutely fine 
manner. He has raised the question. He has every right to raise it. I 
think we have as much interest as he has and as the gentlewoman from 
Californian [Ms. Sanchez] has in seeing who got the most votes in that 
election.
  So the House administration committee is going to be coming up with 
the results of that analysis fairly soon, and I look forward to it.
  On a personal note, nobody fought for the pro-life cause as hard, as 
energetically, as compassionately and as passionately as Bob Dornan. 
And I thought it was kind of appropriate here just a few days after 
Mother Theresa's untimely death to remind our colleagues how valiantly 
Bob Dornan fought for people who did not have big political action 
committees and did not have enormous clout on the House floor, and were 
not CEOs and did not have all the things that generally drive and 
manifest influence in the city of Washington, DC.
  He fought for the most helpless of individuals, that is, unborn 
children. He never wavered. He always came up with the right amendments 
at the right time, standing side-by-side with guys like the gentleman 
from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] and the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith].
  We miss Bob Dornan. We miss that passion that he brought to the 
debate. As a member of the Committee on National Security, I can 
remember when our Rangers were killed in Somalia. And Bob Dornan, the 
only member of the committee who had the nerve and energy to do it, 
flew all the way to Somalia and debriefed all of the people or many of 
the people who had been involved in that combat, and came back and 
contacted the families of every Ranger who was killed in Somalia and 
talked to them about the incident and thanked them for the service of 
their loved one to this country.
  Bob Dornan was a great, great member of the Committee on National 
Security. He was also one of the few guys that actually flew all the 
planes, went out and looked at all the equipment, had a great analysis 
of what worked and what did not work, and brought great energy and 
great expertise to that committee.
  Lastly, Bob Dornan was a guy when I was a freshman who gave up his 
seat that he could have had on the Committee on National Security, then 
the old Armed Services Committee, to a new freshman from San Diego. 
That freshman was myself. I am very grateful to Bob for the friendship 
that he has shown me and many other Members of the House over the 
years.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply conclude my remarks by saying that I

[[Page H7364]]

wish Bob Dornan the very best and his wonderful family the very best, 
and I think that the results of this research and this analysis will be 
out before the House in the next several weeks.

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