[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 130 (Thursday, September 25, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H7838]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              LEGAL ISSUES IN DISPUTED CALIFORNIA ELECTION

  (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam Speaker, the Republican majority on the Committee 
on House Oversight seems to be willing to go to any length to overturn 
the election of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. The committee majority 
is in the process of sharing the Immigration and Naturalization Service 
records of hundreds of thousands of Orange County residents with the 
California Secretary of State. These records contain personal 
information on law-abiding U.S. citizens, many of them targeted by 
committee investigators simply because they have Hispanic surnames or 
because they reside in certain neighborhoods, and that is an outrage.
  Everyone in this House must be concerned if the majority is simply 
acting as a conduit to circumvent Federal privacy protections. We need 
to be concerned with the legal issues that are involved for every 
American in this country, and if Hispanic-Americans have to believe 
that, in fact, simply because of their Hispanic surname, like I who was 
born in the United States, will be on some list, that that is the 
reason that they are going to be able to introduce and get into their 
privacy records, that has no end, and that cannot be tolerated by this 
Congress.

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