[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 83 (Thursday, June 14, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3196-H3199]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THREAT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AND MASSIVE UNCONTROLLED
IMMIGRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Issa). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, today being Flag Day, millions of
Americans around the country are honoring the Nation through honoring
the flag. Naturally, our thoughts turn to a number of subjects on a day
like today.
I just returned from a particularly stirring presentation that was
held over in the Cannon Caucus Building for veterans, at which time I
was able to give a little bit of a presentation. It was a very powerful
event, beautiful music, and a lot of great speeches about the country,
about the Nation, about where we are as a Nation and about where we
hope to go.
Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to talk about a couple of things
that I believe to be the most significant threats this Nation faces;
one is an external threat, and that threat is the People's Republic of
China.
I characterize that nation as a threat, because of the actions taken
by the Chinese, not just in the recent past, by the forcing down of one
of our planes, but I suggest that China is a threat to the United
States and can be identified as such as a result of analyzing China's
history and its most recent actions together.
China is a nation with a very long history of aggressive behavior;
that behavior is often activated by grievances, both actual grievances
and perceived and contrived.
It is motivated by a sort of raging nationalism that finds expression
in expanding its borders in xenophobia. I believe that the best way to
successfully deal with China is to understand these realities and to
fashion a foreign policy accordingly.
Later on, I will discuss what I believe to be the other most
significant threat to the United States and that is internally. It is
not a foreign threat, it is an internal threat, and that is massive
uncontrolled immigration into this country, both legal and illegal.
I recognize that both of these subjects are quite controversial. Both
of these subjects always engender a lot of emotion and a lot of
discussion. The latter, the issue of immigration, does not get much
attention on this floor, because there is a fear, a natural fear, on
the part of a lot of people, a lot of my colleagues to address this,
for fear that they will be characterized or mischaracterized, as the
case may be, as a result of their opposition or concern about massive
immigration into this Nation.
It is, nonetheless, the second topic I will deal with. First, I want
to stay with the topic of the People's Republic of China.
Another important understanding for Americans with regard to China,
something we must come to grips with is the fact that China believes
itself to be our number one enemy. They look at us as their enemy.
There is absolutely nothing we can do by way of appeasement that will
ever change this reality.
Here in the United States, as in most democracies, there is a basic
unwillingness to confront the harsh realities of nature. We want to
attribute always the hostile actions of others to benign intent.
History, of course, has proven that this particular course of action
is always dangerous and sometimes disastrous. From a historical
perspective, China provides an unparalleled view of a nation in the
constant grip of absolutism. Indeed, this tradition goes back to the
very founding of the Chinese state by the Chang dynasty in 1766 B.C.
The governmental structure at that time was sophisticated, and an
autocrat ruled it. When addressing his subjects, he referred to himself
as I, the single one man.
For literally thousands of years, the Chinese people have been
treated as disposable resources of the state. The recent discovery of
the famed Terra Cotta Warriors in China's ancient Capitol of Xian have
survived far longer than the bones of the thousands of construction
workers who were buried alive to hide the location of the tomb from
grave robbers.
I find this to be a more interesting aspect of Chinese and a more
revealing aspect of Chinese culture than the craftsmanship of the
artists involved.
China's long history is an unbroken international internalization of
the concept of externally expanding power as a guiding principle of
foreign policy.
A China scholar by the name of Steven Moser states that this desire
for hegemony is still deeply embedded in China's national dream work,
intrinsic to its national identity and implicated in what it believes
to be its natural destiny.
Mr. Moser divides China's quest for hegemony in three parts, basic
hegemony, he says, the recovery of Taiwan, and the assertion of
undisputed control over the South China Sea. Regional hegemony is the
extension of the Chinese empire to maximum extent of its old, what they
call their old Celestial Empire.
Finally, global hegemony, this is a worldwide contest with the United
States to replace the current Pax Americana with a Pax Sinoca.
Certainly many observers disagree with Mr. Moser's characterization
of modern day China. They would argue that time have changed and that
new realities have forced a cultural and political metamorphosis in the
PRC.
They go on to contend that the United States should fashion a foreign
policy to accommodate this change. This, of course, is one of the
arguments that was made during the recent debate here in this Congress
over PNTR, or permanent normal trade relationships, with China.
The other very powerful argument that was made for PNTR, and about
which I will say more later, when something like this, we do not really
care about America's national security interests. There is money to be
made by buying cheap in China and selling dear in the rest of the
world. Well, let us test the theory of the modern day Chamberlains that
rely on the accommodating rather than confronting China.
China, of course, is already acquired, through more peaceful
mechanisms, Hong Kong and Macau; but they are now preparing for Taiwan
to follow suit, peacefully or otherwise. China is aggressively
assembling the military capabilities to protect its war power beyond
its present internationally recognized borders.
Six days ago, China masked amphibious vehicles and landing craft on
an island near Taiwan as part of a large-scale military exercise. These
exercises are expected to be one of the largest shore-based war games
held by the Chinese military in recent history.
China's capability to deliver the nuclear weapons to targets which
include Los Angeles and many other cities in the United States has been
perfected by the application of advanced technology that has been both
purchased and stolen from the United States.
China has embarked upon the construction of three missile bases along
the coast to threaten Taiwan. My colleagues may recall that they fired
several missiles toward Taiwan just not too long ago.
Mr. Speaker, a little over 1 year ago, China exploded a neutron bomb;
that event went relatively unpublicized in the Western press. Included
in the plans for this basic hegemony of the region is the occupation of
the Spratly and Paracel Island group. No fewer
[[Page H3197]]
than 11 naval bases have been constructed in this area in the very
recent past.
By the way, these are very important sites strategically, as they
control the sea lanes connecting the Strait of Malaca and the Taiwan
Strait. From there you can easily strengthen the Philippines and Brunei
and Thailand.
In recent history, China began its quest to regain the Celestial
Empire, that was an area stretching from the Russian Far East to Lake
Bakal and most of southern Asia, by sending troops into Tibet, Inner
Mongolia and Manchuria.
They are using nonmilitary assets to project Chinese influence around
the region by exporting human beings. There are now over 60 million
Chinese expatriates in surrounding countries operating businesses that
generate almost $700 billion a year, which is, by the way, almost equal
to the entire Gross Domestic Product of the Communist Chinese.
Chinese now outnumbers Russians. Chinese now outnumber Russians in
Siberia. In 1995, the Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev warned the
Chinese were in the process of making a peaceful conquest of the
Russian Far East. Russians are fearful of this mass immigration, but
the Chinese love it.
The outflow relieves unemployment. It facilitates trade and, more
importantly, it strengthens the historical claims to the land. By the
way, all this sounds unfortunately very familiar to some of the things
that are happening in our own country and, again, about which I will
speak more in the future.
There is a significant increase in activity of a variety of sorts in
Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and Mongolia and Korea.
Eventually, the Chinese believe they will be in direct confrontation
with the United States. Their military and political leaders have
stated this on several occasions. We, however, would rather whistle
past the graveyard, which by the way may well be the one that we would
all rest in if China had their way.
Now many people disagree. Again they will say that the era of
monolithic communism is dead and the era of democratic capitalism has
replaced it. Well, philosophical communism is indeed a rotting corpse,
but totalitarian communism is alive and well in the PRC. In fact,
throughout the world, political oppression can and does coexist quite
comfortably with various iterations of capitalism.
{time} 1545
One can make the case that political freedom cannot long exist
without economic freedom; but the opposite case that economic freedom
leads inevitably to political liberty is much weaker.
In fact, let us look closely at China over the last 20 years of
economic reforms. Today, remember, after the last 20 years of economic
reforms where democratic capitalism was supposed to have been making
inroads in China, after 20 years of this, every major dissident in
China has been jailed or they have been exiled.
According to the State Department nation report this year, thousands
of unregistered religious institutions have been either closed or
destroyed. Hundreds of Falun Gong have been imprisoned. Thousands more
have been sentenced to, quote, reeducation camps or locked up in mental
hospitals.
On April 23, the Chinese arrested a 79-year-old bishop and seven
other Catholic clergymen in anticipation of problems arising out of the
celebration of Easter. Two days ago, they arrested 35 Christians for
worshipping outside their official church. They were sentenced to labor
camps.
Speaking of labor camps, the number in China now stands around 1,100.
These are places of human misery on a scale equivalent to anything seen
in Nazi Germany or in the Soviet gulag. In fact, they have become an
integral part of the Chinese economy through the sale of products made
by slave labor. By the way, much of this can be found in almost every
store in America. As we all know, China is the source the Pentagon went
to to purchase the berets, the black berets that they were going to
provide our military with.
A particularly lucrative industry has grown up around the harvesting
and sale of human organs in China. Prisoners in these labor camps are
categorized according to blood types and other pertinent information.
When orders come in from around the world for certain body parts, the
appropriate prisoners are slaughtered. Their organs are packed and sent
off to the highest bidder.
In 1996, the Chinese Government admitted that 20,000 kidneys had been
harvested from prisoners. By the way, in most cases, they took them two
at a time.
All this is going on while American culture supposedly makes inroads
into every part of the world and while the Internet provides a window
to the world to all who can afford the hardware or get access to it.
All this is going on subsequent to all the political strategies
designed to bring China into the community of nations. It goes on after
we pass PNTR. It will continue to go on until the United States and the
rest of the world draw the proverbial line in the sand and make it
clear that Chinese plans for basic regional and global hegemony are
unattainable.
China may eventually be forced to accept the world as it is and
accept that role as a peaceful participant in the March toward
democratic capitalism. But it will not happen as a result of a policy
of appeasement.
I worry, Mr. Speaker, about the fact that this Congress will be asked
once again to approve normal trade relations with China because,
although we passed over, certainly, my objection and that of many of
our colleagues here, we did pass last year PNTR.
China has not, in fact, joined the WTO, the World Trade Organization.
As a result of the fact that they have not yet joined the WTO, they
have not achieved PNTR with the United States. So we will every year
now until they are in the WTO, the President will still have to request
normal trade relations with China. I fear that it will be extended to
them.
Mr. Speaker, I will never forget what we went through here on this
floor and in this body on the debate over that particular issue. I
personally have never ever been lobbied more heavily, more pressure
applied to try to get me to vote for normal trade relations with China.
Nothing that I ever dealt with here on the floor, not issues of
abortion, not issues of gun-related laws, nothing matched the pressure
that we faced from the corporate lobby in this Nation, the corporate
lobby that puts profits above patriotism. That is the only way we can
describe what they were doing here.
I will not call them American corporations because, Mr. Speaker, they
had absolutely no allegiance to this country. They were much more
concerned with that market they believed that existed in China. Really,
what they wanted to do was import very cheap Chinese products and sell
them in lucrative markets.
The idea that we were going to have a two-way trade was what they
would constantly refer to. But, Mr. Speaker, that will never happen.
First of all, there is no market there. Although there are certainly a
billion and a half people, they cannot buy our products. They do not
have the money, number one.
Number two, the Chinese Government will never allow massive trade
with the United States. They only allow it going the other way, to the
extent that we now sell to them only 2 percent of our exports, but we
buy 40 percent of theirs.
Our trade imbalance with them last year was $86 billion. This is what
we called trade. It is not trade. It is an imbalance that is
detrimental to the United States and to American workers. Not only
that, it is detrimental to the security of the United States, because
when we make China stronger economically, we in fact provide them with
the means to build the armaments to threaten us eventually. Taiwan
today, the United States tomorrow. I believe this to be true, Mr.
Speaker. I believe that China is our most significant and most serious
threat externally.
Now, let me get to the internal threat to the Nation. Since 1970,
more than 40 million foreign citizens and their descendents have been
added to the local communities of the United States. Last month, the
New York Times reported the Nation's population grew by more in the
1990s than in any other decade in United States history.
[[Page H3198]]
For the first time since the 19th century, the population of all 50
States increased, with 80 percent of the American counties experiencing
growth.
Demographic change on such a massive scale inevitably has created
winners and losers here in America. It is time, in fact way past time,
that we asked ourselves what is the level of immigration that is best
for America; in fact, what is even the level of immigration that can
help the rest of the world.
It is difficult to discuss this, because everyone here, certainly on
this floor, all of us, all of my colleagues, everybody that we know as
friends and relatives who are immigrants to this Nation and relatively
recent. My family came here in the late 1800s.
So it is not immigrants in and of themselves with which we find
fault. Certainly I do not. I understand entirely the desire for all of
these people to come to the United States. I do not blame them. If I
were in their situation, I am sure I would be trying to do exactly the
same thing.
But we must ask each other, Mr. Speaker, we must as those of us who
have been elected and the Nation's future put in our hands for at least
this period of time, we must ask ourselves if massive immigration on
the scale that we have been witnessing it over the last couple of
decades is in fact the best thing for America from this point on.
Mr. Speaker, in the heyday of immigration into this Nation, in the
late 1800s, in the early 1900s when my grandparents came here, the
height of immigration, we call that the Golden Era, in fact we never
had more than a couple hundred thousand immigrants a year during that
period of time.
This year, and for every year for the last decade or more, we have
had at least 1 million immigrants a year over that period of time. We
have had about another 250,000 a year who come here every year under
refugee status.
Now, I am going to try to explain what has happened here by the use
of this chart. As my colleagues can see, in 1970, the population of the
United States was 203 million. By the year 2000, the population had
gone up to 281 million.
How much of this population increase can be attributed to
immigration, and how much can be attributed to what we would call the
natural, the birth rate of the people here that we refer to as the baby
boomers and the people who are indigenous to the United States prior to
this time?
The green area of this chart indicates what the growth in this
country would have been, what the population of this Nation would have
been in the year 2000, the 2000 census, had it not been for
immigration. As my colleagues can see, it would have been about 243
million people. It is actually 281 million people.
By the way, this is a very low count because it does not really
capture the number of especially illegal immigrants who are here in the
country, and there are millions and millions of them.
But one can see, Mr. Speaker, what I am talking about here, in that
we have had almost the exact same growth rate from the baby boomer
generation, we call the baby boom echo, because we are having an
increased birth rate in the United States, and it will continue to
increase until about the year 2020. It then levels off, and it actually
starts downward. That is what we would call the natural birth rate here
in the United States taking out immigration.
But the fact is that immigrants and their descendants amount to
almost exactly as much growth in the last 10 years as the entire baby
boom echo, bringing this up to 281 million.
Mr. Speaker, there was a time when this land could absorb this kind
of population growth. But I suggest to my colleagues that every single
day on the floor of this House, when Members of the Democratic Party
get up and talk about their problems, the problems in California
especially, the problems with energy consumption in the United States
generally, they always blame it on the producers, the price gouging
electric producers, power producers.
Even we, Mr. Speaker, on the other side trying to explain supply and
demand to those people who have a desire to not listen miss the
important point that this particular thing plays in the debate over
natural resources in the United States.
Mr. Speaker, I suggest to my colleagues that what we are seeing in
California today we are going to see happen throughout the United
States as a result of massive population increases, increases in
population that force a demand on resources. It is a natural function.
We are actually in many States below where we were several years ago
in per capita use of resources, per capita use of energy resources
specifically. We have been able to conserve enough. We have been able
to improve products. We have been able to do a number of things that
actually have reduced per capita usage.
But it does not matter when the number of people in this country
keeps climbing so dramatically. I want to tell my colleagues how
dramatic it is going to be with this other chart here.
I just returned recently, I had an opportunity to speak in Los
Angeles. As most people know, Los Angeles is a city that is inundated
with immigration. The numbers of people are growing dramatically. I
have to tell my colleagues that, for the most part, it has affected the
quality of life in that city.
A lot of people I talk to actually use the phrase we have escaped
from Los Angeles. They had moved to all the areas in the suburbs
outside. Many, many more people I know living in my own community in my
district came from California, and they came because they said it is a
quality of life issue.
It is absolutely true that the quality of life has been eroding both
in Los Angeles and other areas where massive numbers of people are
congregated. We find that as a result, of course, tremendous demands
are placed on resources.
We recognize that what was just yesterday a beautiful pasture is
today sprouting houses. We recognize that where we took a walk with our
dog and with our family maybe just a few months ago is now some sort of
industrial park development. A road is coming through in an area that
was a pleasant pasture land a short time ago.
In Colorado, we are forced with enormous expenditures for
infrastructural development all to meet what, population growth.
Population growth. A lot of people think to themselves, well, gosh, is
it the case that we are having such an enormous growth of population
just internally in this country? Because I know most people are quite
concerned. I mean, the two-child family, a lot of people recognize that
that is what is, maybe, the optimum number, and they try very much to
achieve just that goal.
Well, it is not that birth rate that we are concerned about. It is
not the natural birth rate in the country that will propel us into this
dire strait that is the expansion of the Los Angeles all over the
United States of America.
Nothing against the people who live there in Los Angeles. Many people
I am sure love it. But I will tell my colleagues that it is a
megalopolis by anybody's definition, and it faces some of the most
difficult situations of any city in the United States as a result of
that.
That is what I am referring to when I talk about the fact that we are
expanding. That is exactly what cities are going to be looking like all
over the United States in a relatively short time because this chart
shows what is going to happen.
{time} 1600
This is the dramatic evidence of population and what will happen if
we continue to have immigration at this particular level. This does not
presume to define what will happen to the population because of legal
immigration. Remember, this is just what is going to happen by the year
2100 to the population of the United States of America if we allow
immigration to continue at the numbers that we have today.
Again, I have to reiterate, it does not count the fact that we are
doubling our immigration rate every year with illegal immigrants. About
1 million illegals come in every year. About 2 to 3 million we gain.
Nobody is really sure, of course, we cannot really count them all that
easily, but the best prediction we have of this is that 2 to 3 million
a year are net gains. So, in fact, this doubles. This doubles if
present trends continue, 571 million at 2100.
Then where will our cities be? Then how much will gas prices be? How
difficult will it be for us to deliver natural gas from one place to
another?
[[Page H3199]]
How much will it cost to do that? What will the smog be like in these
cities? What will be the quality of life for Americans in the year 2100
if we allow immigration to continue at this level?
Mr. Speaker, I suggest that it is nothing any of us here would like
to think of. We cannot describe it as a pleasant place to be under
these circumstances. That is why I characterize this as a threat,
almost equal with the threat posed to the United States externally by
aggressor nations.
This is happening, and we are doing it. We have the ability to
control this, Mr. Speaker. This is something we can handle because in
fact we have the power in this body to control immigration, at least to
try to bring it under control. Certainly there will always be people
coming across our borders illegally, but we have to at least try to
preserve the integrity of the border. We must at least try to reduce
immigration.
Can we handle 50,000 a year? Yes. Can we handle 100,000 a year? Yes.
Can we handle 150,000 a year? Okay. Give me 200,000 a year, but not a
million a year legally and twice that many illegally. We cannot handle
it. It is the numbers. It is not where they come from. I do not care
where they are coming from, whether it is Mexico or Guatemala or China
or Cuba or Haiti. I do not care. The place of origin is not important;
it is the numbers. It is the numbers. This is not a racial issue. It is
the numbers.
I am somewhat discouraged because it is so difficult to get this
subject dealt with openly, even, as I say, here in this body. People
are afraid to discuss it. People choose to avoid it. As I was walking
over here with the staff person carrying these charts, we were walking
through the tunnel area coming over and an another Member of the House
walked by and he said, oh, you are going to do a Special Order? I said,
yes. He said, what about? I said, immigration. I am trying to talk
about immigration control. He said, oh, brother, good luck. He said
good luck because he knows that this is not a popular subject. It is
very difficult to get my colleagues to really want to focus on it, but
I think it is an enormously important thing for us to do.
We control immigration. No State does. No State has the ability to
establish numbers for the people coming in. They cannot control their
own borders. That is uniquely the territory of the United States, the
Federal Government. It is our responsibility. It is a responsibility,
Mr. Speaker, that I think we have abdicated. We have done so for a lot
of reasons. We have abdicated this responsibility, to a certain extent,
and have allowed this massive immigration because there are political
implications to this. And, yes, I will say it, political parties and
specific individuals within political parties want to manipulate and
use immigration as a political tool.
We all recall that in the last administration, the President, then-
President Clinton, forced the INS to go through this hurry-up process
to bring all these people in and give them citizenship. Well, why, I
wonder? Why did he force them to ratchet up the time frame involved,
shorten the time frame involved and ratchet up their energy to get all
these people registered, get them all in here in the United States, get
them to be citizens, get them registered? Because, of course, they turn
into Democrat votes. Let us be serious about this. We all recognize the
politics of this issue.
I know it is another one of those things nobody likes to say, but it
is the truth. And as a result of the fact that these populations are,
and I will say it, manipulated, and I believe they are manipulated by
political parties and by politicians, we are going to find it difficult
to actually bring the numbers down.
Now, that is one thing that has done it. The other thing, of course,
has been business. Businesses in the United States are very, very
content to continue to hire people, immigrants coming in here legally
and illegally. Why? Because they will work for less. It is not nuclear
science here we are talking about. If I can hire somebody for a lot
less than I would have to pay someone who is a citizen of the United
States, I am tempted to do it. They are not supposed to. There are
supposed to be laws against it. But everyone knows that they are
regularly ignored. We all know the INS does absolutely nothing to
actually enforce those laws. Once in a while, a little tiny feint here
or there, a raid here or there to pretend they care. But in reality
this is not an area where INS pays any attention.
I hear this from my community and from people all the time, from
employers who say, Tancredo, I wish you would get off this thing, this
immigration issue. I hire a lot of people who I know are here
illegally, but I have to do it anyway. They will admit it. And
certainly they will admit to hiring illegal immigrants because they can
pay them less. Well, is that in the immigrant's best interest?
I mentioned earlier there are two interests here: What can America do
for our own people, and what can we do for the rest of the world? Mr.
Speaker, I suggest that people coming here and working for low wages
are continually exploited. They are exploited by business. They are
even exploited by the labor unions. And they are exploited by the
people who bring them here, the ``coyotes'' they are called, people who
pack them into vans and on the back of trucks, or packed in with other
kinds of products in order to get them across the border, sometimes
dead. We have had, in the last months in Colorado, several cases where
people were found dead. Perhaps their car was in an accident. A van was
in an accident not too long ago, and 13 people were killed in the van,
and several others hurt, in a small van. They were all smashed in
there.
They are coming across the borders in greater numbers. They are
risking life and limb to get here. And I do not blame them for doing
it. I do not blame the immigrants. I blame our government for not being
willing to deal with this issue. It is extremely difficult for us to
bring issues like this forward, but I will continue to do it as long as
I have the opportunity to do so.
There is a June 11 special issue of ``Time'' magazine entitled ``The
Border is Vanishing.'' It says: ``The Border is Vanishing Before Our
Eyes Creating a New World for All of Us. Welcome to Amexico,'' their
world is called. A world, of course, in which English is not spoken, a
world in which the numbers, the population numbers, are affecting the
quality of life in the way I have described and is described in this
``Time'' magazine article.
This is something with which we must deal, even if it is difficult to
think about it. We have to do so. It is our responsibility as people
who have taken an oath to defend this Nation against all enemies,
external and internal. And I am not saying that immigrants are internal
enemies. I am saying that immigration is a threat, huge massive
immigration on the scale with which we have now observed it lo these
many years is a threat to this Nation. And this is the best example I
can provide to prove that.
This is where we will be, Mr. Speaker. This is not a place I think
most of us would find appropriate or most of us would want our children
to be living in. We want to bequeath them something else, both the
children of people who have been here for a long time and I believe the
children of recent immigrants.
I think many recent immigrants, Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact,
agree with us on this issue, agree with us that a cap has got to be put
on it. It is the old thing about, I'm here, now you can shut the door.
But they recognize the impact that massive immigration, legal and
illegal, has. It is not just people who have been here for a long
period of time.
So I do really hope that we will take serious account of these two
issues, the issue of the threats posed to the United States, again
externally by the People's Republic of China, and internally by massive
uncontrolled immigration of this nature.
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