[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 29, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3442-H3447]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION REFORM
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burns). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to point to a couple of
issues that I think deserve our attention. As I do on many occasions, I
come here to address the issue of immigration and the reform thereof.
I would like to start tonight with a discussion of a couple of people
that I met not too long ago when I was on a trip to Arizona, and
specifically, to the border area around Douglas, Arizona, and I want to
add them to the list of people that we have identified over the last
several weeks and months as belonging to who we have described as
homeland heroes. They are George and Linda Morin. They own and manage a
cattle ranch of 12,000 acres, located only 4 miles from the Arizona/
Mexico border. Their ranch house is only 5.5 miles from the border.
They have one son, 26, who lives on the ranch and helps run the
business. George Morin's grandfather came to America in 1908 and bought
a dairy farm in southern Arizona. He speaks Spanish and has a half
brother living in Mexico. After living 54 years in this border region,
he knows both sides of the border very well.
Beginning in the late 1980's, things began to change along the
border, and we heard this refrain often. We heard this same thing from
almost everybody we talked to there, and most of the people who live in
this area have been living there for generations, and they have
witnessed the phenomenon of immigration over that period of time. They
have witnessed people coming across the border looking for jobs, people
that they have befriended, people they have aided economically, and
this has never really been a huge issue for them except in the last 10
or 15 years.
George and Linda noticed a steady increase in the number of illegal
aliens crossing the border and coming across their land. Over the past
5 or 6 years, this flow has become, as they put it, a flood. They run a
large cattle ranch as a family business, and it is a lot of very hard
work. Drought, cattle diseases, volatile market prices for beef cattle,
all of these make cattle ranching a tough business in the best of
circumstances. The massive flood of illegal immigration across the
border has brought many more hardships. Among the recent experiences,
consider the following: The waterlines that carry water to their cattle
have been cut and broken so many times that they have lost count, and
again, by the way, this is a complaint that we heard over and over
again. Water in this part of the world of course, in this part of the
country, is very valuable, and it is something that ranchers depend
upon for their existence, frankly, and the people coming across the
border, for reasons that are sometimes difficult to explain, oftentimes
vandalize these waterlines, vandalize the wells, even though many of
the ranchers will leave out cups for these people so they can drink
from the well and not do anything to harm it, but they do anyway.
The same thing goes for cattle fences. Repairing cut fences is now a
routine task, and we saw hundreds of miles of broken-down fences along
the border. Electric switches for water pumps are often jammed or
vandalized. The Morin ranch has lost 8 cattle in the last year to death
by eating plastic trash bags that trespassers drop as they pass through
the land. This is also a site that is all too common throughout this
particular area. There are occasions throughout the Southwest, and
especially in southern Arizona that are referred to as pickup sites.
These are places where large numbers of illegal immigrants will gather
for the purpose of getting a ride eventually, because these places are
often near roads, sometimes highways, but they are often on private
land, sometimes on public land, but they are places, as I say, in which
large numbers of these folks will gather.
When they gather there and they start to undertake the next part of
the journey, they discard everything that they have been carrying
because the coyotes, the people who bring these people across, tell
them that there has to be a lot more room in the trucks so they have to
discard everything they have, and they throw everything in these pickup
sites. We walk through them now, and they really are similar to large
refuse piles, dumps essentially. I have, sometimes not so facetiously,
referred to many of our parks in the area, the Cactus Pipe National
Park as the Cactus Pipe National Dump because of the way it appears,
and the trash is everywhere and these plastic bags are everywhere, and
the cattle eat them and die. Trash left behind by the thousands of
trespassers are not only dangerous to the cattle that eat it; it is
despoiling the land and environment in numerous ways. In one day, Mr.
Morin collected 42 syringes left by one group along with discarded drug
containers.
All of this goes on, by the way, in plain sight. It is something that
if the media would pay attention to, certainly there would be an
outcry. We wonder why there is not an outcry from groups like the
Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth and various other environmental
organizations that often raise Cain about the despoiling of the land,
but seldom say a word about this particular problem because of course
it is connected with illegal immigration, and therefore a topic not
willing to be discussed by these left-wing observations.
We wonder how many people are coming across. Do they see these
people? Do George and Linda, his wife, see them coming across? How many
do they see? Can they actually identify people who are coming across
illegally? And of course, that is very possible. Two years ago George
Morin woke up to some noise at about 5:30 in the morning. He discovered
a virtual army of 600 trespassers walking through his ranch within
eyesight of his ranch house. He called the border patrol. They did come
this time and loaded 297 people onto buses and took them back to the
border patrol station for processing. About half of the 600 got away,
scattered to the hills, trails before the border patrol could load them
onto buses. Sometimes these folks coming across the land get lost or
they are
[[Page H3443]]
abandoned by the coyotes. Again, these are the people who are paid to
bring them into the United States.
It is common for ranchers and border patrol agents to hear from a
group that their coyote pointed them to the lights in the distance and
told them there is Phoenix. Maybe it is Tucson or maybe it is some
small town only about 40 miles from the border.
One Thanksgiving morning 4 years ago, George and Linda Morin woke up
to find about 80 Iranians walking across their property right in front
of their house. The border patrol agents who took them into custody
said that they had been told by their coyote that they were only 10
miles from San Diego. Only last Thursday, April 24, 90 illegal aliens
were caught walking through the grassy expanse of the U.S. Army's Fort
Huachuca near Sierra Vista, Arizona. The military police caught them
and marched them to the fence where the border patrol loaded them onto
vans.
One thing that is important to understand is this, as I mentioned
earlier, is a new type of phenomenon. We have always had illegal
immigrants coming across the line, but we have seldom had this happen
in the numbers that we are witnessing today and/or in ways that are so
organized. It is no longer just a few people coming across looking for
jobs.
It is now a very well-organized effort, a very well-organized
activity conducted largely by people who have heretofore been involved
with drug smuggling into the United States. Because it has become very
lucrative, that is why the drug cartels have become interested in this
business. They are paid between $1,000 and $1,500 for a Mexican
national to come into the United States illegally, but costs for a
Middle Easterner or an Asian will get to about $30,000.
So there is so much money now in people smuggling that it rivals drug
smuggling into the United States in terms of just the sheer volume in
both human beings and in dollars.
If they are poor and they want to get smuggled into the United
States, they do not need to come up with the ongoing price of $1,000 to
$1,500 to get the help of professional people, smugglers. One can now
be smuggled into the United States on the installment plan. It is
happening this moment on a very large scale. It is widely understood by
the border patrol and law enforcement agencies in the west. What
happens if one gets to Phoenix or Los Angeles or Omaha and do not make
their promised payments? Some very bad things happen.
{time} 2030
Only last week, two illegal aliens who had made it to Phoenix were
killed by members of the Mexican gangs that had smuggled them into the
country. They were killed because they did not make their mordita
payments. This is now a ``travel now, pay later'' business. But if you
cannot pay, it is ``travel now, die later.''
Not only have the numbers of nationalities of people coming across
the land changed over the last 10 years, but the character of the
people and their attitude has also changed. Twenty years ago it was not
uncommon to encounter illegal aliens on the ranch who would ask
politely for a drink of water or ask for directions. Ranchers were
normally cordial and often did not report the trespassers if they were
in small groups or posed no immediate threat.
In the past decade, this has changed because the groups are larger,
more aggressive. Part of this change is due to the increase in drug
smuggling. The people who are transporting drugs across the open
rangelands are usually armed and dangerous. They do not want any
interference, and they will usually take what they want and not ask for
it politely.
One recent trespasser George Morin encountered was angry because he
had been caught and was being turned over to the Border Patrol. He told
Mr. Morin, You don't belong here. You are in Mexico, and you don't know
it. We are going to take it back and you will be gone.
This man is not delusional. He was deadly serious. He was voicing a
goal of a small and radical movement within Mexico and the Southwest
that looks forward to what it calls ``Reconquista.'' This is the
reconquest of the lands Mexico lost to Texas in 1836 and to the United
States in the Mexican war of 1846.
There is a larger and more persuasive movement that is more powerful
and very influential. The changes this movement seeks, in my opinion,
pose a threat to our civic and legal institutions that provide the
foundation for our freedom. I am talking about the multiculturist
movement.
This movement is very political and politically correct. It becomes
very influential in our universities, our public schools, our
foundations and our mass media. The problems raised in this movement go
far beyond the immediate concerns presented by illegal immigration; yet
the two sets of problems tend to reinforce each other.
Many of these problems created by large numbers of illegal immigrants
are exacerbated by the diversity movement because of the many
proponents welcoming illegal immigration and opposing measures to
controlling it. So I want to speak to that issue tonight.
Over the past several weeks, I have tried to deal with the issue of
immigration reform in a variety of contexts. We started off talking
about the problems with porous borders and what that means to the
United States, especially in terms of our own national security. We
talk about the economic impact of massive immigration of low-skilled,
low-wage people. That was another segment. We talked about the
environmental damage.
We spent 1 hour here talking about just this one aspect of it, the
environmental damage that is being done by the literally millions of
people coming across our southern borders, both walking and driving
through pristine land, destroying some of the most beautiful and
important national monuments.
All of this, as I say, is happening without the attention that would
normally be focused on that kind of activity by the environmental
groups in the United States. If it were done any other place, any other
way, any other time, you would have hell to pay. The environmental
groups would be just going crazy about the fact that we are destroying
so much of our natural environment. Yet nothing is said about it here
because we are talking about illegal immigration, and nobody wants to
touch that subject.
This is a chart that describes what is happening in the United States
in terms of population growth. By the year 2100, if we do absolutely
nothing, if things continue as they are today, if the numbers increase
as they are from the sources that they are occurring today, here is
what happens. We reach a little over half a billion people in the
United States.
The fact that we get there via immigration and descendants of
immigrants is the important point here. It may be a very good thing. It
may be very positive for the United States to have population growth of
this nature, so dramatic and so important in terms of many things,
including the economy. People talk about the need for growth in the
economy, so maybe it is a good thing. Maybe this kind of growth is
good.
It is important to understand that this growth is not coming as a
result of the natural birth rate in the United States; it is coming as
a result of immigration. So we have to make a decision as to whether or
not this is where we want to be in 2100.
Again, this is if it just stays at the same level. This is all U.S.
census data here. This is not something we are interpreting. This is
where the U.S. Census Bureau tells us we are and where we are going and
how we are going to get there.
Mr. Speaker, we can go back to the one part we talked about in terms
of immigration reform and what this really means in terms of the
environment, the impact on the environment. I come from Colorado, and I
will tell you that things have changed pretty dramatically in my State
over the last several years. The increase in the State's population has
been dramatic. All of the infrastructure costs that go along with
massive increases in people are, of course, prevalent, and they are to
be paid for by the taxpayers of the State of Colorado.
This is happening not just in Colorado, but in States all over the
Nation. But where is this growth coming from? Again, I want to
emphasize, it is not the natural growth rate of the country.
[[Page H3444]]
It is a growth rate made up of immigration and the descendants of
immigrants.
Again, this could be what we want. It could be absolutely where we
want to be, so that pretty soon it is much more difficult to get
through on congested highways, to visit the national parks, to
experience that pristine wilderness that we have all enjoyed. But maybe
that is all worth it. Maybe giving all of that up, maybe, is worth it,
because the economy demands this kind of population growth rate.
But what we do not talk about and what I want to focus on tonight is
the effect of immigration, of two things, and this is very important to
discuss tonight or at least pay some attention to.
It is not just immigration that poses a cultural threat to the United
States. Heaven knows that this is a Nation of immigrants. We have
talked about this over and over again. We are all here because somebody
in our past, some grandparents, great grandparents or however far back,
decided to leave wherever they were and come here. I do not care if you
call yourself a Native American. The reality is somebody many, many,
many generations ago came across a land bridge from Asia to what we now
call America. So all of us came here as a result of somebody making a
decision to leave someplace and come here.
This has been a source of great strength for the United States. It is
something to be enjoyed. Diversity is a good thing. I am not arguing
that point.
By the way, this level of immigration, this rate of immigration, is
something far greater than anything we have ever experienced in this
Nation. It is far greater than what we experienced in the 1900s when in
fact my grandparents came here. The numbers are huge.
Now, this does not even account for illegal immigration into this
country. We talk about the fact that there are, we do not know for
sure, maybe between 13 million and 20 million people in the country
illegally. That, combined with all the people who have come into the
country legally because we have now expanded our immigration and opened
our immigration doors wider than ever in the past, all of these things
can be positive.
I am not saying that we should slam the door to all immigration.
Certainly not. But what I am suggesting is it is important for us to
review as a Nation the connection between massive immigration into the
country and something else we call multi-culturalism, this sort of
rabid multi-culturalism.
What do I mean by that? Multi-culturalism is a philosophy that
permeates our schools and society in so many ways, and it says
essentially this: there is nothing unique about American culture. In
fact, if there is anything noteworthy about American culture, or
Western Civilization, it is that it is bad. It is that it has been a
culture developed on the backs of slaves, and that all the people who
created the American dream were slave owners, people who came to
pillage and rape the land. That is what we teach children about America
and that there is nothing unique about America; there is nothing
special, there is nothing that we should sort of glom on to and maybe
disconnect from in terms of where we came from. This is the problem.
This is a very serious problem in this regard.
The combination of these two things, massive immigration and this
rabid multi-culturalism that tells people there is nothing unique about
America, and that if you come here you should probably not only not
integrate into our society, but you should in fact keep separate, keep
a separate culture and keep a separate language.
We go to the extent of spending billions of dollars every year to
teach children in our public schools in languages other than English. I
think that this is a dangerous phenomenon. I think that we can handle
immigration into this country, and always have; and we can do so
because people coming into the United States, people coming here were,
for the most part, coming from something else and to connect to a new
idea. At least that is what my grandparents always said.
My grandparents came here around the turn of the 20th century, and I
can remember very distinctly my grandmother telling my grandfather all
the time, Speak American. Speak American. There was this implied and
sometimes not so subtly implied desire on their part to really
Americanize themselves.
I think of that when I think about a lunch I had not too long ago
with a gentleman in Colorado, his name is Gomez, and he happens to be a
Catholic bishop. Bishop Gomez asked to have lunch and discuss this
issue of immigration, because he knows I am quite concerned about it.
He knows I talk about this issue an awful lot here in the Congress of
the United States, and he does not agree with me. So I certainly agreed
to have lunch with him.
He said something that I found very illuminating in the course of our
luncheon. He said, Congressman, I don't know why you are so worried
about all of this immigration from Mexico, let's say. He said, You
know, they don't want to be Americans anyway.
I thought that was just an amazing statement. He said, Don't be
worried.
He thought for some reason or other I was worried that these people
were coming into the United States to become Americans, and I did not
want them to. Of course, it is exactly the opposite. I explained to him
that was exactly why I was worried about massive immigration today. It
is a different thing.
Mr. Speaker, we have argued about this issue since our Nation's
inception. People have come to this floor over the past 200 years to
talk about concerns about the newest wave of immigrants from someplace
else and how that might affect America or whatever, and I do not mean
to suggest that these old arguments hold water.
I am not talking about the simple fact of immigration, although it
has, as I say, implications. Regardless of whether or not it was
connected to the multi-culture issue, it has implications for many
things just because of the numbers, which are far different than it
ever was before.
But regardless of that, there is something new that is happening, and
that is what I keep harping on, that is what I keep trying to bring to
the attention of anyone who will listen, that there is a different
immigration pattern today, and it is, as Bishop Gomez accurately
described. He said, They don't want to be Americans. That was his
comment, an exact quote: ``They don't want to be Americans,'' so I
should not worry.
They are only coming here for economic reasons, to escape poverty,
the same reason my grandparents came, for the large part, and many
others, to escape poverty and the blight of their history and the past.
But I am telling you that there was this other aspect to that
immigration of past years, this one thing that said, I want to
disconnect from that old way, from those old ideas, from that bankrupt
history. I want to connect to something brand new in the United States.
{time} 2045
I wanted to become part of it. This is showing itself in a number of
ways.
When my grandparents came to this country, they no more would have
thought about the possibility of having a dual citizenship status than
they would fly. They really wanted, as I say, to disconnect from the
old country. They came to the United States, and they took an oath of
allegiance, and they swore to end any allegiance to any foreign power
or potentate. That is the same oath that people take today, but
something else is happening. In about 1947 or 1948, the United States
decided to allow people to have dual citizenship. Now, we did that
primarily because of what was happening in Israel at the time;
Palestine, later to become Israel. And there were maybe at any given
point in the last 50 years, up to the last, let us say 10 years, there
were maybe 100,000 people in the United States, according to our
research, maybe 100,000 at any given time holding dual citizenship.
Now, something has happened. Something brand new is occurring that
reflects, I think, the problem that I have just described with this
concept of multiculturalism, the lack of any desire to attach
themselves to any American experience, if you will, and to retain
political and cultural ties to the country of origin.
About 2\1/2\ years ago, Mexico allowed their citizens to actually
have dual
[[Page H3445]]
citizenship, something they had never done in the past. And they also
began to encourage, this is over maybe 5 or 6 years, they began to
encourage a large flow of Mexican nationals into the United States,
which created the kind of problems that we talked about here with the
Morins on their ranch because they had never seen this kind of thing
before. As I said, they had lived here for generations, but they had
never seen the kinds of problems that they are seeing today, the
numbers that are coming across, in this case from Mexico. And the fact
is that this kind of combination of events where Mexico is encouraging
the movement of people into the United States, allowing people to take
dual citizenship; this is having an interesting effect here in this
country.
For instance, we now think that there are between 6 million and 10
million people living in this country who claim dual citizenship. This
is an interesting new phenomenon. Is it worthy of our discussion here?
Is it something that anybody thinks is interesting, relevant,
important? What does this mean? What is the effect of having this many
people in this country with divided loyalties? And that is really the
only way that one can describe it. I think Teddy Roosevelt said, we can
have no 50-50 Americans. Either a man is an American and nothing else,
or he is not an American at all. Teddy Roosevelt.
The idea that we have so many people clinging to other citizenship,
clinging to other countries politically is, I think, a little bit
problematic. At least it is worthy of our interest, our debate. Yet it
is something we hardly talk about. Certainly it does not come up in
this body very often. Nobody wants to really push this issue for fear
that we will make someone else a little bit upset with us, that we will
insult somebody else, some ethnic minority in this country, some dual
citizen, some ``something'' hyphenated American or something that will
offend them. Well, I would suggest that we should not worry about that
kind of offense; we should talk about it because it is meaningful in
this country. It is important to understand what is happening here.
I want to go back for a moment to what I was talking about in terms
of the difference that is occurring and the whole concept of what it
means to be an American, how that is fading away, how difficult it is
now to actually define this idea, this ``concept America.''
When I was a child, when I was growing up in Denver, Colorado, and
attending St. Catherine's Elementary School and, later on, Holy Family
High School, I was taught about my heritage, who I was, and what my
history was; and if someone would have asked me then, if someone asked
me now, what is my heritage, I would say it is American. Who are my
heroes? Who do I look to in my history and the history of who I
consider myself to be from a heritage standpoint? I would say Jefferson
and Lincoln and Washington and Adams, because I connected directly to
that, even though I am a relative newcomer to this land. My ancestors
did not come here on the Mayflower. But I connected to America, because
that is what I was taught. I was taught by my parents, I was taught by
my school that that was my heritage; that I was here now, and that this
was the American ideal to which I was to aspire. And I did.
I would challenge people today to go out and ask a child, ask a
student, almost any school in America what it means to be an American.
Define that term: American. And I think many people would have, many
students would have a very difficult time in doing that today. They
have been told, frankly, that it is not a very good term, that it
really does not, and it should not be used to signify something select
and different and unique, distinct.
Not long after 9-11, the National Education Association put out a
list of suggestions for teachers and for parents as to how they should
address the issue of the attack on the United States on September 11.
In not one word of about a 3- or 4-page little program that they
distributed did they talk about the uniqueness of America, the
importance of defending this Nation. The entire little descriptor was
to tell people, tell parents and tell children that they should not
think about these people who attacked our country in negative ways; I
should say, they should not use the attack to cast aspersions on any
group or any organization, and that there are many bad things in
America that we have done, and that maybe we even actually sort of
brought this on ourselves. Well, an ex-President of this country, and I
am feeling a great deal of comfort in actually saying ex-President, for
me anyway, Bill Clinton, was speaking at a university, I think it was
Georgetown, and he said essentially the same thing. He said that the
reason why we were attacked is because of slavery and the way we
treated the Indians. I mean, this is the most incredible stuff. But
this is what we are teaching our children about America.
Now, this is, I think, dangerous stuff. It is reflected in other
ways. It is reflected in other ways. I look at the way in which the
media has portrayed, for the most part, I guess, I should say the
media, a large part of the media has portrayed the conflict in Iraq. I
could not help noticing, I was in Europe last week, or the week before
last, and I was watching, I think it was CNN International, and it was
fascinating because they could not report a single story without some
sort of twist they could add to it that they could characterize as
anti-American. Every single event in Iraq, no matter how difficult it
was to describe in this context, they managed to do it.
They are not unique in that. I think many, many aspects of the
American media one could describe as being overly sensitive to the
other side's attitudes, opinions, and ideas, overly critical to
American interests. And this is what I am talking about. We cannot even
report stories factually anymore. We have to couch everything in this
sort of multiculturalist light so that no one might come to the
conclusion that there is anything better about, let us say, the United
States and Western Civilization than any other civilization or country.
And that is why it was so hard for many members of the media to really
analyze this issue objectively and report it objectively. They are
stuck in this multicultural miasma. And they are, of course, helping to
expand and to incorporate that kind of thinking into American schools
and American thought.
I realize I am walking into somewhat uncharted waters here, and I
want to make some very important distinctions. When I talk about
multiculturalism and the problems I see in it, I am not talking about
cultural diversity that brings into our society the music, the poetry,
the art, dance from different cultures of all continents of the globe.
Certainly our Nation has been enriched and continues to be enriched by
these contributions. I am not talking about people of other nations
bringing their language, religion, continuing to practice their
religion in our free society. The freedom of religion is, of course,
one of the most cherished liberties we have and must remain so. I am
not talking about new immigrants who continue to speak their native
language in their homes and want to pass it on to their children as
part of their biethnic heritage. What I am talking about is the current
politically motivated drive to enshrine, enshrine diversity as a goal
that requires and demands a change in our fundamental values governing
our civic institutions.
What the advocates of this new diversity seek is a kind of reverse
assimilation who want American society to assimilate and adapt to the
values of other cultures. An example of this political drive is to
establish bilingualism as a national standard for official business in
government operations and commercial life. Previous generations of
immigrants expected that their children would learn English. As I
mentioned, my grandparents demanded of my parents and of us, demanded
that we learn it as quickly as possible. Only in the recent past have
we seen a political movement that seeks to perpetuate a parallel
culture that does not speak English and thus cannot participate fully
in the mainstream of American life. There are schools in States
throughout this Nation, in cities throughout the country, where
children can actually spend years and, for a while, one could actually
go 12 years to a Denver public school and never be taught in English.
I believe that the demand and push for manufactured diversity in
every
[[Page H3446]]
facet of our lives has a political motivation. Its purpose has nothing
to do with toleration of other cultures. Our Nation has historically
been the most accepting, most tolerant people on Earth; and this has
not changed, nor should it. But Americans could and did accept millions
of immigrants from diverse cultures precisely because we had a set of
institutions and a set of civic values that all of the new immigrants
were expected to adopt. In doing so, immigrants did not give up their
language, their music, their religion. They became Americans in certain
essential ways that allowed them to assimilate into American life and
enjoy the benefits of liberty. I am gravely concerned that our recent
and current immigration is not of the same character as our historic
immigration and that the impact and effect will be to weaken our civic
culture and our political institutions that guarantee life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
I will give a concrete example of this changed character of our
recent immigration and especially the impact that can be expected from
granting amnesty and citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.
{time} 2100
I speak now of the matter of a divided loyalty and a growing
acceptance, as I mentioned earlier, of this dual citizenship. Do
Members think it is a mere accident or happenstance that the oath of
allegiance taken by every one of the tens of millions of naturalized
American citizens who had passed through Ellis Island over the last 150
years contains the words ``I hereby renounce and abjure all allegiance
and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, State, or sovereignty of
which I have heretofore been the subject or citizen''? These words
explicitly and unabashedly require new citizens to give up any loyalty
to the foreign country.
I have oftentimes, perhaps not so often, but I have certainly spoken
to immigrant groups coming into this country. I have gone to
citizenship ceremonies where people take the oath of office, new
immigrants to the United States.
I have gone there and said to them, first of all, I want to tell you
welcome to the United States. Secondly, I want to tell you, thank you
for doing it the right way. Thank you for coming here, working through
the process and doing it legally. I also want to tell you how important
it is to now adopt a new life around a set of ideals that we can share,
that we have in common.
I want to encourage that. I do try my best to encourage that. I say
this because I want to reemphasize the fact that I am not opposed to
immigration, but I certainly believe that it is in desperate need of
reform.
I think another way to describe what is happening, besides using the
word ``multiculturalism'' is to talk about the people who have
developed what is called a cult of ethnicity. It challenges the idea of
what it means to be an American.
There are major implications to this phenomenon. I have talked about,
to a certain extent, the problems we have when we do not encourage
people, Americans, especially our children, to understand and to
believe that there is something unique about America worthy of their
allegiance; not to be chauvinistic, necessarily, but to simply
understand the basic reality of the situation.
That is this, that western civilization has provided the world,
certainly America, with the infrastructure that has enabled us to
actually grow the greatest, I think, civilization on Earth. Now, that
is a personal observation; but I think it is empirically provable,
also, that there is something better about what we have.
I am proud of what we have. I am proud of being a product of western
civilization. I am proud of the infrastructure. I am proud of the
principles that we embody in this organization we call the Congress of
the United States. I am proud that we have an adherence to the rule of
law. I am proud that we believe in and strongly defend the right to
pursue our own religion, to speak openly about our feelings about
government.
All of these things really are an aspect of and a product of western
civilization, and they are worthy of our allegiance and worthy of
things we should tell our children about, and that we should encourage
them. If we do not, we will find ourselves lacking in a number of ways.
We especially will find ourselves in a dangerous situation when this
civilization is, in fact, threatened, as I believe it is today.
Now, this gets me into an even more, I guess, controversial arena
than what I have spoken of up to this point, if that is even possible.
I believe that what we are witnessing throughout the world is, indeed,
a clash of civilizations, and I believe western civilization is
threatened.
I think the major threat today comes from something that we can refer
to as radical Islam; not the religion of Islam, but it is the religion
married to a political philosophy that says that all other people on
the Earth have to be annihilated, abolished, eliminated.
Now, this is a clash that we have seen actually for centuries. It is
not new, this confrontation. This conflict has been going on, as I say,
for centuries. It peaks; it goes down. There are times of a great deal
of activity, and times when there is not a lot of activity around this
thing. But it has been going on for a long time, and it goes on even
today.
It is important to understand this, because what it means is this:
that it must be fought. If we are going to defend western civilization,
it has to be fought with force of arms, as we have witnessed in Iraq
and Afghanistan. It also has to be fought in the world of ideas. It has
to be fought with ideas.
Western civilization rests upon certain ideas and ideals. They, in
fact, need to be taught to children and to adults.
I was a teacher. I taught for 8 years in the Jefferson County public
schools. I taught civics. I will tell the Members that very, very few
children ever come to school with an innate appreciation of certain
things like art, music. They need to be taught. They do not just wander
in the door thinking, you know, I just feel something really good about
Mozart or about Picasso. We have to teach children. We have to teach
people about the value of these things to get them to appreciate them,
more often than not. Some people may have that gift, but most of us do
not.
Likewise, children do not come to school with an innate appreciation
for western civilization or what it means to be an American. They have
to be taught. When we abandon that and we offer it up on the altar of
multiculturalism, we risk a great deal; especially when, as I say,
there is the threat to the system.
Now, anybody can feel sort of a visceral response to somebody driving
a plane into a building and killing 3,000 of our citizens; driving a
plane into the Pentagon and killing a couple hundred of our fellow
citizens there; crashing a plane into Pennsylvania that was destined
for this spot.
Anybody can get a visceral reaction to that and say, yes, I want to
confront that and punish whoever did that. That is fine. It is fine if,
in fact, that conflict only lasts a short time, and that we identify
the culprit and we take care of business.
But unless Americans understand that this is a long-term prospect,
that this is a long-term conflict; and that it is not just with a
segmented chunk of society. It is not just with a group we call al
Qaeda or a group we call the Taliban or an individual we call Osama bin
Laden, or another individual that we call Saddam Hussein.
Unless we realize that it is something broader than that, something
bigger than that with which we are in conflict, Americans will lose
heart for this conflict because they do not connect it to anything
bigger than an attack on the Pentagon, an attack on the World Trade
Towers.
This is why I say that this is an important issue for us to discuss
as Americans, and understand that there are cultural ramifications to
massive immigration when it connects with this rabid, bizarre
multiculturalist philosophy which permeates America.
There was a book written not too long ago by Arthur Schlessinger,
Jr., certainly someone that I would not have thought before I would
have found myself having a common ground with, but he wrote a book
called ``The Disuniting of America.'' I have liberally excerpted from
it for tonight's discussion.
He says, ``The historic idea of a unifying American identity is now
in peril
[[Page H3447]]
in many arenas: in our politics, our voluntary organizations, our
churches, our language.''
What this esteemed historian saw as peril in 1991 is even more
evident today in confronting the question we are, in fact, confronting,
the most fundamental question a nation can consider as a matter of
national choice and deliberation: what is America? What is America?
This question is not one that has been created by illegal
immigration. We would confront this question sooner or later, even
without massive illegal immigration into the country. Nor is the
question now more urgent because the levels of legal immigration has
far surpassed historic levels. The additional numbers of immigrants
brought to America by our immigrant policies no doubt exacerbate the
problem of national identity, but they have not created the problem.
What has created the problem is the influential ideology of
multiculturalism discussed so eloquently by Arthur Schlessinger and
accurately described by him as deeply hostile to our historic ideas of
assimilation.
Now, remember, Mr. Schlessinger is not a conservative. He is not or
he cannot by anybody, I think, be called names like ethnocentric or any
of the other epithets that are thrown at people who suggest that there
is a problem with multiculturalism. He has lifelong liberal credentials
and is a liberal scholar.
On July 4, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson spoke in Philadelphia at a
mass naturalization ceremony. On that day, at the President's behest,
all members of the cabinet and other prominent members of our society
spoke at naturalization ceremonies across the Nation.
As we all know, President Wilson was an idealist in matters of world
politics and a liberal reformer in domestic policy. But on that day in
1915, he spoke for all Americans when he told the new citizens
assembled to take their oath of citizenship:
``I certainly would not be the one even to suggest that a man cease
to love the home of his birth and the Nation of his origin. These
things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts. But
it is one thing to love the place where you were born, and it is
another to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You cannot
dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and
with every purpose of your will thoroughly Americans. You cannot become
thoroughly Americans if you think of yourself in groups. A man who
thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in
America has not yet become an American, and a man who goes among you to
trade upon your nationality is not worthy to live under the Stars and
Stripes.''
I firmly believe that we desperately need to reaffirm the principles
of citizenship and of American identity if we are to survive as a free
people in the 21st century. I believe this is not just a fear of
immigration. As a son of immigrants, I welcome and support immigration.
What worries me is that the nation our new immigrants seek to find at
the end of their journey may not be the nation of their dreams and
grand ambitions. If we are to remain true to our history, we must also
remain true to our destiny. It is not that of a vague and confusing
collection of ethnic groups or religious sects; our destiny is to
continue as the land of freedom and opportunity, a beacon of hope for
all the world's oppressed.
To succeed and find that destiny, we must renew the bonds of
citizenship and the values and institutions that nourish and sustain
those bonds. This ideology of multiculturalism does not understand
this. In fact, that movement is at war with the very idea of America as
it was understood for 200 years.
But most Americans do understand it and do want to strengthen it; at
least I hope that is true. With the help of the good people of this
Nation, we will prevail. But we will not prevail unless we are willing
to at least confront this issue, no matter how uncomfortable it is for
us to talk about, no matter how challenging it is.
It is undeniable that massive immigration combined with a
multiculturalism philosophy in this country has ramifications. Some
here, some throughout the country, may believe those ramifications are
positive; I believe that, for the most part, they are negative.
{time} 2115
I believe that the leadership of this Nation must begin a discussion
with America. When I say leadership, I mean it in the way of renewing a
commitment to the idea of America on the part of all the people who
come here and on the part of all the people who are here. Is Western
Civilization, as epitomized by the American experience, is it worth
saving? This is the question we must pose. And in order for anybody to
answer it accurately, they have to have all information available to
them.
We have to teach children about its value along with its warts. It is
important that we do not gloss over the inequity, that we do not
discard as part of our text any discussion of slavery or any of the
issues that we know to be negative in our history. They have to be
discussed and understood in order to be overcome. But why is it not
equally as important to discuss the factual positive elements of
Western Civilization and what it has brought to the world? Why is that
so scary to the academic community, to the media, and to the pop
culture? Why is it so comfortable for members of the pop culture, the
people in television and in movies to stand up and criticize, only to
criticize, what it is to be American when they reap so many of the
benefits of Western Civilization themselves? How hypocritical it is for
them to do so. But how comfortable it is for them to do so. How easy it
is for them to do so.
Is it not intriguing that if anyone were to stand up, especially in
the world of Hollywood and such, how difficult it is for anybody to
stand up and be patriotic Americans, say things that reflect a true
love of the country? I mean, this was not always the way. In the 1940s
and the Second World War, Hollywood was looked at as a bastion of
patriotism. The movies they put out were patriotic in nature, and it
was not looked down upon to express those feelings.
Something has changed dramatically, and now people who do, people who
exist in that medium are afraid to actually express those sentiments
for fear they will be shunned by their peers. What has happened that
has allowed this to occur? Well, I suggest to you that it is time to
regenerate a discussion of American principles and ideas; to make
everybody, our children and adults, understand the importance of those
ideas and ideals; to expect from immigrants coming to this country that
they want to be Americans, and to come here for any other reason is not
acceptable. To come here simply to achieve economic goals, but to hold
allegiance to other countries both politically, ethnically, and
linguistically is not acceptable. It is not acceptable because it will
sap the strength of America. It will sap our ability to be successful
in the clash of civilizations. It will lead to our demise. And that is
why I take to the floor as often as I do to talk about this issue,
immigration.
It is far, far more significant than just the issue of jobs or low-
skilled, low-wage people who have to come to the country and we have to
build highways and we have to build schools. And all of those things
are true and all of the problems we have with population increases that
are as a result of massive immigration, those things are real and they
have to be dealt with. But it is even more important than that; it is
far more important than that. It is far more important than that. It
goes to our very existence.
Massive immigration in this country will determine not just what kind
of a Nation we will be, but whether we will be a Nation at all.
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