[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 114 (Wednesday, September 5, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H5386-H5391]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CHALLENGES FACING AMERICA: THE BUDGET AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Grucci). 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, I appreciate the opportunity to address 
the House tonight and to bring to the attention of this body and to the 
Nation an issue of, I think, extreme importance to us. My original 
intent was to speak on the issue of immigration, immigration reform, in 
light of the visit of President Vicente Fox. I intend to do so. I will 
certainly do so for the majority of my remarks.
  But as I sat here in the House waiting for my opportunity to present 
my observations, I was, of course, listening to the discussion that 
preceded me with regard to the fiscal dilemma in which the United 
States finds itself at the present time; and my colleagues on the other 
side of the House, the Democrats, have concluded that the problem is 
that we are not taxing Americans enough. They have suggested, for over 
1 hour what we have heard, is that we have an enormous task ahead of us 
because revenue projections are lower than had been anticipated as a 
result of a turn down in the economy and that, therefore, this Congress 
is faced with a major dilemma: How do we deal with the fact that we do 
not have enough money coming into this body?
  It is their plan, when they ask the question, how did this problem 
come about, the answer they provide is that we gave Americans tax 
breaks. We allowed Americans to keep more of their money. As a result 
of that, the Democrats say, we are now in this fiscal bind. We now find 
ourselves in a situation where we may ``dip into the Social Security 
Trust Fund,'' a trust fund, may I remind you, Mr. Speaker, that was 
raided, not just partially, but totally, 100 percent, every single year 
that the Democrats had control of the Congress of the United States. 
Every single year.
  All of a sudden, this new-found concern about the Social Security 
Trust Fund is, I must admit, greatly appreciated. I am so happy to hear 
that my friends on the other side of the aisle are worried about this 
fund, which they successfully raided every single year for 40 years, 
took every single penny out of it and spent it in the general fund. Now 
they are worried about getting into that particular fund.
  Well, I am glad. This is a major shift in thinking in this body. I 
hope and I pray that it lasts for a long time. I hope and I pray that 
every Member of this body will in fact adhere to the pledge to not 
spend any money out of the Social Security or Medicare Trust Fund in 
the general fund.
  I am one of the 150 Members who have signed a letter to the President 
of the United States telling him that if he

[[Page H5387]]

vetoes any appropriations bill that forces us to dip into that trust 
fund, we will support his veto. By the way, I did not see a single name 
of a Member of the other side on that letter, not one.
  I was intrigued by the fact that in all this discussion, the 1 hour 
that has preceded me here about the horrible state of our economy and 
the horrible state of our budget, not once did I hear, Mr. Speaker, 
even though there was constant reference to the fact that we may have 
in fact given too much back to the people in terms of tax breaks, gone 
way too far, that was said over and over again, way too far in giving 
back the people of the United States their hard-earned money, giving 
back, as if it was ours to begin with.
  Of course, the appropriate way to phrase it is we allowed them to 
keep more of their money. But to my friends on the other side of the 
aisle, any money that we allow an American taxpayer to keep is money we 
are giving back to them; money that first belongs here in the Congress 
of the United States, first belongs to be spent by this body, and, if 
we deign, we will allow Americans to keep part of their tax dollars. 
But not once, Mr. Speaker, not once in that 1-hour presentation that 
preceded me, did you hear any one of the various Members on the other 
side who addressed this issue say the words ``let's repeal the tax 
cut.''
  You see, Mr. Speaker, every one of us has a wonderful opportunity, 
being a Member of the Congress of the United States, an incredible, 
enormous opportunity, and that is to introduce legislation that we 
believe to be important, that we believe to be helpful to this country. 
Every one of us here, that is something that we can do. Every one of 
the Members who spoke here tonight, Mr. Speaker, every one of them, 
could introduce a bill tomorrow to repeal the tax cut.
  We have only sent out half of the checks so far. They could introduce 
a bill to say stop where you are; we desperately need the money. They 
could introduce a bill saying for all of the other tax cuts we have 
passed, for the elimination of the marriage penalty tax, for the 
elimination of the death tax, for the reduction in the tax rates, we 
will not reduce them. We will eliminate them. We will get rid of them, 
because we believe we are in desperate financial straits; and those 
straits can be addressed, they can be changed, they can be dealt with 
successfully by taxing Americans more.
  You did not hear that, did you, Mr. Speaker, because they did not say 
it, because they, of course, know that it is politically very unpopular 
to tell people that we cannot live within our budget in this body; 
because, my friends, the problem here in Washington is not a lack of 
revenue from you, from the taxpayers of the United States of America. 
That is not the problem. Mr. Speaker, the problem is the fact that we 
in this body collectively spend too much and have spent too much.
  One of the other speakers referenced Reaganomics. I am glad he did, 
because it is, in a way, Reaganomics all over again. But let us look at 
what Reaganomics really means and what it really was.

                              {time}  2130

  It was a time in the Nation's history when we reduced tax rates, not 
taxes, but tax rates, and we reduced them significantly.
  What happened, Mr. Speaker? Was there a dramatic decline in revenues 
to this government as a result of that reduction that caused deficit 
spending that we, of course, had? We definitely had deficit spending 
during the 1980s. Was it because the Reagan tax cuts produced fewer 
dollars coming into the coffers of the government? No, of course not. 
It is simply because we spent all of the money.
  Not only did it not reduce the revenue coming into the government, it 
dramatically increased the revenue. Revenues tripled, quadrupled 
because, of course, we stimulated the economy, more people were 
employed, so more people were, therefore, paying taxes. That is the 
effect of Reaganomics. It increased revenues to the Federal Government.
  We definitely had deficit spending, absolutely true. Why?
  Mr. Speaker, the reason is because this body, this body spent the 
money. Not only did it spend all of the revenues that came in, which 
were significantly more than had been experienced in the past, but it 
went on and spent beyond that. It did, in fact, deficit spend. So it 
was not Reaganomics, Mr. Speaker, it was this body. It was the Congress 
of the United States in profligate spending that caused the deficits of 
the 1980s, and it may very well be this body which causes that problem 
again. It may very well be, because no one can accuse us of being very 
judicious in the way we approach budgets.
  In the last several years, because of the past President's urging and 
the fact that this Congress could not say no very often in terms of 
spending, we outdid ourselves. We increased budgets dramatically. And 
now, of course, we may have to look at reducing expenditures.
  That was something that was never mentioned in the 1-hour as we 
listened to the other side talk about our problem. Never once did they 
say, we need to reduce expenditures. Every single time they talked 
about the problem we face, they said it was because we gave people a 
tax break. Now, is that not intriguing, and does that not simply tell 
us something about the nature of this body?
  Today, Mr. Speaker, a newspaper which comes out every day here in the 
Congress, it is called The Hill. For most people, they may not have 
heard of this, because it is really just a newspaper circulated in the 
Capitol and around the Capitol, and it is certainly not a paper that I 
would call, or I think anyone would call partisan in favor of 
Republicans. It is a very liberal-leaning newspaper; most of its 
reports have that sort of slant to it.
  But today a very interesting headline in The Hill newspaper, 
especially in light of the discussion we just heard about the problem 
we are having with the deficit, with the budget, and about why we may 
actually be sort of dipping into the Social Security Trust Fund, 
remember, a fund that the other side spent 100 percent of every single 
year in the general fund. But now they have great concerns about it. 
Again, I am happy to hear that, I am very happy to hear that we have 
had sort of an epiphany for the people on the other side here.
  But here is The Hill newspaper and here is the headline: ``Senate 
Dems Wield Power, Feast on Pork.'' The whole article is about the 
degree to which the Senate Democrats, the Democrats now having taken 
control of the Senate, have gone bananas essentially in a spending 
frenzy.
  Senate legislation would give the Corps of Engineers $500 million 
more than the President requested in his budget, which sought to reduce 
superfluous spending by that agency. The Corps currently has a $40 
billion backlog, and there is no greater pork barrel project in this 
Congress than the Corps of Engineers.
  It is everybody's engineering firm around here. Believe me, I know. I 
have tried to reduce the funding, and whenever we do, we run into a 
buzz saw around this place, because many, many, many Members see the 
Corps of Engineers as their personal construction company. It is not 
just unique to the Democrats, I should say, but in this case: ``Senate 
Dems Wield Power, Feast on Pork.''
  We should take that into consideration, I say to my colleagues, when 
we think about the degree to which the words of our Members on the 
other side hold any water whatsoever when they discuss the issue of 
budgets and tax reductions and the reasons for coming up to a budget 
crisis.
  So anyway, as I say, Mr. Speaker, these were not the original remarks 
I intended to give, but I simply could not sit here and listen to the 
other side discuss this issue without trying to at least shed a little 
light on the reality of the situation.
  The real reason, of course, that I took to the floor this evening is 
to discuss the issue of immigration into the United States, massive, 
uncontrolled, illegal and legal immigration into the United States. I 
take this opportunity to address this issue, of course, because of the 
visit today and tomorrow of President Vicente Fox of Mexico.
  I was privileged to be able to be on the south lawn of the White 
House this morning when President Bush greeted Mr. Fox, President Fox, 
and it was truly a very exhilarating experience. It is always exciting 
to be able to go to the White House, to be able to participate in an 
event of that nature, a lot of

[[Page H5388]]

pomp and circumstance and 21-gun salutes and all of the rest of it. It 
was very, very interesting, very enjoyable.
  As I stood there with the crowd watching, I listened to both the 
remarks of the President of the United States and the remarks of Mr. 
Fox. To a large extent, those remarks centered on the issue of 
immigration.
  Now, when I say ``immigration,'' I think most people understand the 
meaning of the word ``immigration,'' immigration meaning people coming 
from one country into another. In this case, more specifically, people 
coming from Mexico into the United States. ``Immigration,'' that word 
was never once spoken by either the President of the United States or 
President Fox, interestingly, although a great deal of the time and a 
great many of their remarks dealt specifically with immigration.
  Mr. Speaker, let me tell my colleagues how they addressed it. Let me 
tell my colleagues the word they used. Throughout this whole speech, 
there were several times, from both the President of the United States 
and President Fox of Mexico, I thought, gosh, that is a different sort 
of phrase, that is a different way of addressing that particular issue; 
I never heard it like that before, they have changed.
  In this debate about immigration, we have found that there have been 
many, many times actually that the words have been changed. For 
instance, we started talking about a month ago, I guess, and we used a 
word to describe a process called amnesty, the word ``amnesty.'' The 
word has a definition; one can look it up in the dictionary. We all 
pretty much understand what it means. It means, if you have done 
something wrong, we are going to forgive you for it. That is amnesty. 
If you have broken the law, we are going to say, that is okay, no 
problem. Everybody go back to square one and start over again. That is 
amnesty.
  Well, because the word ``amnesty'' has a relatively bad connotation, 
and let me tell my colleagues how bad it is, by the way. There were 
recently several polls done, the most recent is the Zogby poll on 
amnesty for illegal immigrants, but by the way, everything I am going 
to say in this poll is substantiated by other polls, by the Gallup 
Poll, USA Today; all of them say the same thing.
  Consistent with other polls, Zogby finds that the majority of 
Americans, 55 percent, think that amnesty is a bad or a very bad idea, 
compared to 34 percent, who think it is a good or very good idea. The 
strongest opposition to amnesty can be found among conservatives with 
60 percent thinking it is bad, and most troubling for those who are 
supporting this idea is that 32 percent of the conservatives said they 
would be less likely to vote for anybody who supported amnesty.
  Among Democrats, 55 said they thought amnesty is a bad idea, 55 
percent of the Democrats; 36 thought it was a good idea. Some of the 
strongest opposition was found among voters in union households, a key 
Democrat constituency. Sixty percent of the voters in union households 
said it was a bad idea, compared to 32 percent who said it was good. 
And amnesty splits the party's liberal base right down the middle with 
46 percent of the liberals thinking it was good idea and 45 percent of 
the liberals, people identifying themselves as liberal Democrats, 
saying it was a bad idea, 45 percent.
  By the way, amnesty does not even appear to be winning Hispanic 
votes. Fifty-one percent of the respondents identifying themselves as 
Hispanic said it was a bad idea; 51 percent of Hispanic Americans said 
that amnesty is a bad idea. This according again to the Zogby poll, but 
believe me, every single poll that has been taken says the same thing.
  So, all of a sudden, as a result, Mr. Speaker, as a result of this 
kind of information, these kinds of facts being brought to the 
forefront, all of a sudden, the word ``amnesty'' disappeared. We will 
not hear anyone who favors this concept use the word.
  We have now changed ``amnesty'' into ``regularization.'' Yes, that is 
right, ``regularization.'' Or, another one I have heard is ``earned 
legalization.'' These are the euphemisms that have been constructed to 
describe the fact of amnesty, but nobody wants to use the word because 
of the polling data that tells them, everybody is against it.
  Do we know why they are against it, Mr. Speaker? They are against it 
because they are, in fact, logical, common-sense people, common-sense 
Americans. When we say to Americans, do you think it is okay for people 
to come into this country illegally, take jobs, many of them, of 
course, hard-working, nobody is suggesting that that is not the case, 
but do you think that that is okay? Do you think that we should reward 
that behavior with amnesty? Do you think it is all right that there are 
literally hundreds of millions of people around the world who would 
give their eye teeth to come to the United States, and who go through a 
process every year signing up, going through the application process, 
which is laborious, and hoping and praying that their number will come 
up and that the quota that they are in will not be filled until they 
get in.
  And those people who do the right thing and come to the United States 
expect, of course, that they are coming to a country which is governed 
by the rule of law and not by the rule of man. That is the basic 
underpinning of the American republic, the rule of law.
  So we ask Americans, do you think it is okay that those people who 
choose to ignore that particular avenue, albeit for probably very, very 
good reasons, probably because they are in economic deprivation in the 
country of their birth. They are seeking to get into the United States 
for advancement. Again, I do not blame them for trying. But do you 
think that we should reward them for doing that? Is that a good idea, 
America? Do you think that will help us deal with our illegal 
immigration problem?
  And America says, golly, I do not think so, to the tune of some 65 to 
67 percent in the CNN poll, Gallup-CNN poll, 66 or 67 percent saying, 
no, I do not think that is a good idea.
  So, therefore, in the speeches today, from both President Bush and of 
President Fox, we never heard the word ``amnesty.'' Never. And we will 
not hear it emanating out of the administration or any of the people in 
this body who support immigration. What we will hear are these other 
things, these other euphemisms: ``regularization'' and ``earned 
legalization'' and all that stuff.

                              {time}  2145

  But I ask my friends when they hear that word to remember that it 
means one thing, amnesty, which means rewarding people for breaking the 
law. That is it, pure and simple.
  They went on; both Presidents today went on in their remarks. I 
mentioned earlier that although a lot of the discussion revolved around 
the whole concept of administration, I never once heard the word 
``immigration'' ever spoken. Never once did either one of the two 
gentlemen speaking today use the word ``immigration.''
  What they used instead, and this is President Bush speaking, ``We 
understand our two nations must work together in the spirit of respect 
and common purposes to seize opportunities and tackle challenges on 
issues that affect the lives of our citizens, including migration,'' 
migration; ``the environment, drugs, crime, corruption, and 
education.''
  President Fox went on in his remarks: ``Likewise, we want to continue 
making progress towards the establishment of an agreement on migration 
which will be of mutual benefit to us, and will recognize above all the 
value of migrants. The time has come to give migrants and their 
communities their proper place in the history of our bilateral 
relations. Both our countries owe them a great deal.''
  Well, that is an issue we will explore a little bit more here as time 
goes on.
  Mr. Fox goes on: ``For this reason we must and we can reach an 
agreement on migration before the end of the year which will allow us 
before the end of our respective terms to make sure that there are no 
Mexicans who have not entered this country legally, and those who have 
come to this country do so with proper documents.'' Once again, two or 
three times, migration.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a difference between a migrant and an 
immigrant. A migrant moves from place to place. An immigrant moves from 
country to country. This is an important distinction which is 
attempting to be blurred by these kinds of statements.

[[Page H5389]]

  I know these are small things. People would say, it is just a word. 
It is just a word. But these are important, very important. Do Members 
think it is odd at all, even intriguing, put it both ways, that both 
gentlemen in their discussions never use the word ``immigration,'' but 
also use the word ``migrant'' or ``migration"?
  It is important. There is a distinction here between those two words. 
The attempt is to make us feel as though there is essentially no 
border; that the movement of people back and forth between what we now 
call Mexico, or by the way, which has actually had a name change in the 
recent past. Today when I got the invitation to go to this particular 
event over at the White House, I was intrigued because it said, 
``Please come here. President Vicente Fox, President of the United 
States of Mexico.'' That was on my invitation.
  That was interesting. I did not know Mexico had changed its name from 
the Republic of Mexico to the United States of Mexico. There were all 
kinds of interesting really semantic things in terms of discussing this 
issue which I think are intriguing, to say the least: the United States 
of Mexico.
  But the whole purpose of the discussion today was to make us simply 
think about the idea of illegal immigration as being nonexistent. And 
when Mr. Fox suggests that ``there will be no Mexicans who have not 
entered this country legally,'' what he is saying, of course, is there 
is only one way in which that particular phenomenon could occur, one 
way. That is to essentially remove the border, eliminate the border in 
a de facto way and even a de jure way. That is the only way we would 
eliminate illegal immigration is by everyone coming here as legal.
  There are people here in this body, there are people certainly 
throughout the country, who believe that that is exactly what we should 
do; that we should in fact eliminate the border, not just the border 
between the United States and Mexico but all borders, because, of 
course, nowadays the free flow of capital and people should not be 
impeded, and, what the heck, it is all one big world, anyway.
  The European Common Market has formed itself into the European Union, 
they have established a single currency, and they are now establishing 
a single government in the European Congress. So that should be sort of 
the model for the rest of the world: that we should simply eliminate 
borders and let nature take its course.
  If that is the case, Mr. Speaker, then I think that that is a 
debatable point. I hope and I pray that this body will debate that 
point, because that is the end result of our whole debate on 
immigration.
  We have sort of talked around the edges of it: How many people, what 
should we call them, how long should they be here, how should we deal 
with the millions who have come to the United States illegally.
  What really and truly people are saying, people who are pushing the 
pro-immigration side, and I am saying ``immigration,'' mind you, not 
``migration.'' Migration is what happens if I move to Kansas. It is not 
what happens if I move to Mexico or Canada or Guatemala. That is 
immigration.
  But when we talk about immigration in this body, and in this context, 
in the context of the discussions, the speeches given today by 
President Fox and by President Bush, I am concerned that what we really 
are beginning to discuss is the elimination of the borders.
  In the June 22 Time Magazine, they had a very, very interesting 
series of articles. In fact, the front page, and I wish I had it with 
me tonight, I forgot to bring it, but the cover of Time Magazine June 
21 says, ``Mex-America,'' and the real gist of the story was that we 
have in fact, in a way, completely eliminated the border between the 
United States and Mexico, and that the Mexican culture, not just 
culture but many other aspects of life, has changed in the South, 
southwest parts of the United States because of massive immigration, 
both legal and illegal. There are, in fact, people who believe that we 
should do that.
  Well, then let us get to that point, Mr. Speaker. Let us really and 
truly simply get to the basic debate point here in the issue of 
immigration; that is, should we have a border, or should we not?
  Mr. Speaker, here is what we have to decide as a nation. If we want a 
border, if a border is meaningful, if it has any reason to be, if there 
is a reason to draw a line around this place we call the United States, 
then it is the responsibility of this Congress, uniquely of this 
Congress, by the way, and this administration, to defend it, to give it 
integrity.
  What that means is to make sure that only the people who are allowed 
to come in by law are able to come in, and if that means defending that 
border with one's armed forces, that is what it means.
  That is what we have to do if we want a border. We establish an 
immigration policy. Every Nation does. It says, here is how many people 
we will allow in this year; and by the way, not just how many people, 
but here is how many people with what we need in this country. We need 
doctors or lawyers although I must admit I do not know why we need any 
more of the latter. But we need people with various skills, various 
attributes to come into the United States, or any country. That is not 
just us, that is what most countries do. They say, here is who we need, 
here are the kinds of skills we need, and we will establish that as our 
immigration policy. We will defend our borders to make sure nothing 
else occurs.
  The United States essentially has surrendered that degree of 
sovereignty by saying, hey, listen, we will wink at all the millions, 
and I mean millions, of people coming across our borders illegally 
every year; we will wink at the employers who employ them illegally, 
and we will do so because it provides profits for many employers, and 
in a way it provides future voters for various political parties. Let 
us face it, there is a very political issue here.
  So we do not care about the fact that this Nation's population grows 
approximately 60,000 per week. That is the net gain over deaths and 
over emigration, people leaving the country, 60,0000 a week. And we 
ignore the fact that approximately 70 percent of that amount is a 
result of immigration.
  All of the issues with which we deal day in and day out in terms of 
the enormous strain on our infrastructure, the increase in demands, in 
the State of California, by the way, 95 percent of that State's 
increase in population over the last year, 95 percent is the result of 
immigration, legal and illegal. And because of that, Mr. Speaker, the 
State of California has to build a school a day to keep up with the 
demand. And, of course, there are highways, hospitals, and social 
services.
  It has been estimated that the cost of adding every new person to any 
community is about $15,200 a year, and that is the initial cost. It is 
not the costs we incur every year from that point on. There is no way 
that people coming into the United States today with very few skills or 
none at all, taking the lowest-paid jobs available, will ever pay back 
that cost. So all the talk about immigration being important for the 
United States, important economically, is hokum.
  If we were to really be concerned about what was good for America, we 
would say that we will take in about 300,000 a year, and here is who we 
need, people with certain skills, high-level skills, primarily, who 
will come into the United States, become very highly successful in 
terms of whatever trade they are involved with, and become net 
taxpayers, not tax users. That is the present state of affairs, that by 
far, by far the people coming into the United States today are net tax 
drains on the United States over even in the short run and over the 
long run.
  We tend to ignore this for a lot of other reasons, a lot of political 
reasons. I have developed a list of questions that I would like to be 
able to pose to President Fox while he is here. I have a feeling they 
will never be asked, but this is my only opportunity to present them.
  I am the chairman of what we call the Immigration Reform Caucus in 
this House. I have many times attempted to contact the administration, 
the White House, and talk to them about this issue. We have been 
unsuccessful in arranging for a meeting to this point in time. 
Therefore, I have only this way of bringing these issues to the 
attention of my colleagues, to the administration, and to the people of 
the United States.
  Recognizing full well that it is extremely important for Mexico to 
reconstruct itself economically in order to

[[Page H5390]]

provide a standard of living for its own people that will keep them in 
Mexico, will allow them to live in their homeland, will allow them to 
prosper, achieve a better life for themselves. Recognizing a 
significant change has to occur in Mexico, I would ask President Fox, 
in order to achieve that degree of change, I would ask him: Number one, 
Mr. President, exactly how do you plan to reduce the massive and 
pervasive corruption which, in your country, unfortunately is endemic? 
For everyone from the cop on the beat to the highest levels of 
government, we know, everyone knows, the world knows the level of 
corruption.
  I had a gentleman in my office 2 days ago, in my Denver office, my 
Littleton office. He wanted to open up a business in Mexico. It is sort 
of a unique enterprise. He was not sure exactly who he needed to talk 
to in order to get permission from the Mexican government to import 
certain, in this case, tires to be recycled. And if he opened a plant 
in Mexico, he thought, how can I get permission from the Mexican 
government?
  He was going around and beating around the bush. Finally he said, 
look, what I am trying to say is, can you find out for me, Congressman 
Tancredo, who I have to pay off in Mexico to get the permits? Because 
he had done business in Mexico before, and anybody who has done 
business in Mexico and in fact in many third-world countries recognizes 
that that is the cost of business. That is the cost of doing business.

                              {time}  2200

  If you have been stopped in Mexico for a traffic ticket, I mean, I 
could go on and on and on. We know that the best way to handle it is to 
hand the policeman your driver's license and a $20 bill, probably now 
more like a $50 bill. It does not matter. The corruption goes from that 
level up to the top.
  I assure the Speaker that until we begin to address this particular 
problem in Mexico we will never have a viable economy. NAFTA has got 
nothing to do with it.
  We could have completely 100 percent free trade between these two 
countries. We would lose many, many jobs in the United States, but it 
would not improve the economy of Mexico because the economy in Mexico 
is stuck in two ways.
  It is stuck in a socialistic enterprise. It still has not been able 
to get itself out of the old government control, government ownership. 
The government owns the oil industry. The most significant industry in 
Mexico is owned by the government. This is not a good idea.
  If I had the opportunity, I would ask Mr. Fox, What are you going to 
do about that? Are you going to divest yourself of the oil industry 
because, of course, you will never prosper as a nation under these 
conditions?
  What are you going to do, President Fox, about corruption? Tell me 
specifically how you are going to handle it.
  President Fox demanded of the United States not too long ago, 
attacking our current immigration policies, and this was in Milwaukee 
on July 17, an integrated Mexican-U.S. labor market. An integrated 
Mexican-U.S. labor market.
  Again, I would ask Mr. Fox, What do you mean by that? That is an 
interesting statement. An integrated labor market. I would like to know 
specifically how you define that.
  He demanded that U.S. laws be rewritten to bring about open borders 
between the United States and Mexico and that we give illegal aliens in 
the United States driver's licenses, even though, of course, they 
cannot read the road signs and do not have insurance; and that we give 
Mexican illegals a university education and other taxpayer benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, we do now presently provide K-12 education to all 
illegal immigrants' children in the United States. He wants us to go 
farther. He asked us to, in fact, provide university education to 
illegal immigrants from Mexico.
  So I would ask President Fox, Will your government, the Government of 
Mexico, provide a free education, K-12 and post-secondary, to any 
foreign national in Mexico as he has requested of the United States? Is 
he willing to do the same thing?
  I would ask President Fox, Since you own the oil company, President 
Fox, will you agree to sell the United States oil at below OPEC prices 
when that cartel punishes the United States by reducing its production? 
Because at a certain point, about $27, they go, oh, it is too low. OPEC 
says we have got to decrease production in order to increase prices.
  So, President Fox, you said that you wanted to be a friend to the 
United States. We have to build a relationship on trust.
  Okay, I would say. Mr. Fox, let us start here. I want you to agree to 
sell us oil at below OPEC prices every time they try to blackmail us. 
What do you think the answer would be? I wonder.
  I would ask him again, President Fox, What specific step is your 
government willing to take in the direction of increased privatization 
of the Mexican industry, Mexican economy. Are you willing to give up 
the oil company? Are you willing to privatize in order to spur economic 
growth?
  If not, do not look to the United States to be your safety valve, to 
take all of your unemployed, all of your poverty. Because I assure you, 
Mr. Speaker, as long as we continue to do that there will never be any 
pressure on Mexico to reform itself, as long as we are there acting as 
that safety valve.
  I will ask him, Mr. Fox, Will you stop the practice of handing out 
survival kits to those people about ready to come into the United 
States illegally? An agency of the government hands out a paper bag, 
200,000 at last count, to people coming across the border into the 
United States illegally, paper bags filled with maps, little how-to-
survive in the desert, condoms. Go ask them what is the purpose. But, 
anyway, that is what they give them, some water.
  Will you stop that, Mr. Fox? Because you say you want to stop illegal 
immigration in the United States, why are you promoting it by handing 
them out ``survival kits''? Will you stop that as a friendly nation?
  Will you publicly condemn those members of the Mexican Government who 
have called for the recolonialization of the southwestern United States 
by Mexican nationals? They have done so. Bizarre as that sounds, they 
have done so.

  I guess also, Mr. Fox, I would have to ask you, Why are you 
encouraging your people to take dual citizenships in the United States? 
In 1998, Mexico passed a law allowing for dual citizenships of their 
people. Since then somewhere close to 6 million Mexican-Americans, or I 
should not say Mexican-Americans because there are probably others 
involved, but so far 6 million people have accepted that particular 
identification as a dual citizen. Why are you doing that, Mr. Fox? I 
ask our own government, Why do we allow that?
  When a person becomes a citizen of this country, they are supposed to 
raise their hand and swear that they give up allegiance to any foreign 
power or potentate, I think is the word that they use. How is it that 
you can have a dual citizenship and call yourself an American? How can 
that happen, Mr. Fox? President Bush, I would ask you the same 
question.
  So those are some of the questions that I would pose to the President 
of Mexico, the Republic of Mexico or the United States of Mexico, 
whatever it calls itself now. Those are the questions I would pose. I 
hope that someone will ask them. I doubt if they will.
  I will tell you that those are the questions I want answers to before 
I would move one step forward in the area of immigration, 
liberalization. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I have introduced a bill to 
reduce legal immigration in the United States from the present 1 
million a year to about 300,000 a year.
  I would, of course, take any action I could to stop illegal 
immigration. I would fine those employers who continue to use this form 
of illegal employment. I would put troops on the border. I would do 
what is necessary to protect our border; or I would say let us dissolve 
it. But let us have the debate here. It is one or the other. Either you 
have a border or you do not. Either it is meaningful or it is not. But 
before we go 20 years down the road and we look back and say, gee, how 
did it happen, that it sort of just evaporated, it is just gone, how 
did that occur, I would just as soon have us in this body debate that 
topic, have a vote up or down. Shall we eliminate the borders or not? 
If we decide not to, then we have to decide to enforce them.

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