[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 73 (Thursday, May 15, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4195-H4201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MORE HOMELAND HEROES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, as I do on several occasions, I attempt to 
bring to the attention of the body and the people of this country a 
group of people who I have referred to as homeland heroes. These are 
people whose efforts in defense of the homeland go unheralded, 
unfortunately, but who, in every way imaginable, are living in 
situations that we can only describe as war-like. They are living on a 
war front, and I refer specifically to our borders where an invasion is 
occurring. And these folks, the folks that I refer to as homeland 
heroes, represent to me, anyway, the sort of first line of defense, and 
they look to their government to help them defend their country, their 
lives, their homes. Unfortunately, the Government of the United States 
looks the other way.
  Tonight I wanted to bring to the attention of the body the newest 
member of this group of homeland heroes. His name is Gary McBride. He 
is a 59-year-old rancher in Cochise County. He has lived in Arizona all 
of his life. He manages a ranch of over 22,000 acres in Rucker's 
Canyon, which is 30 miles off the U.S.-Mexico border just northeast of 
Douglas.
  I met Gary McBride on one of my most recent visits to Arizona, and I 
visited the Rucker Canyon area on a beautiful Sunday morning. Mr. 
McBride is a frustrated man, I should tell my colleagues. He cannot 
understand why his own government cannot curtail the flow of illegal 
aliens across the rangeland he manages. This is a good question. It was 
one I could not give him a good answer to.
  Mr. McBride is the manager of a ranch with 30 bulls, 300 cows and 
their offspring. His job is to see to it that the care and feeding of 
these cattle goes on. Anything that affects the cattle or increases the 
cost of raising cattle has a direct impact on his life.
  A few things are basic to raising cattle and bringing them to market. 
These things include water, feed, and fences. Let us concentrate on 
just water for a little bit. Water is, of course, an enormously 
valuable commodity, as it is in Arizona and throughout the West. I am 
sure one can understand how wasted water and damaged water lines can be 
a big headache for ranchers. All of the ranchers I spoke to along the 
border region have experienced continual problems with their water 
lines because of illegal alien trespassers.

                              {time}  1800

  The illegals stream across their land in very large numbers. Anyone 
walking many miles across open range will need water. If the trespasser 
only drank the water and did not damage the water lines, the water 
troughs, water pumps and other equipment, that would be one thing. It 
would not impact the ranch so much, and it would not add that much to 
the cost of raising cattle. Unfortunately, the illegal aliens coming 
across the land in large numbers do not merely drink water from spigots 
or troughs. They break a float or fix it so it will not shut off, or 
they turn a valve so the tank is drained completely dry and the water 
wasted.
  A typical storage tank holds 10,000 gallons of water. In the last 
year alone these tanks have been drained three times, the tanks owned 
by Mr. McBride. This is a lot of water to waste in time of drought. Not 
only are the cattle affected, but local wildlife is also affected.
  Often the generator for the water pump is damaged or vandalized. The 
cost of replacing a generator, anywhere between $3,000 and $5,000. I 
will stress that these are new situations for people living on the 
border, for Mr. McBride who has lived there all his life. It is not new 
to have illegal trespassers coming across their land. It is completely 
new to have them come across in numbers of hundreds, even thousands. It 
is also new to have this phenomenon where they are so intent on 
vandalizing the property. They confront property owners in very 
aggressive ways.
  There is a difference today, they will tell you. Anyone on the border 
will tell you there is a big difference today in the people coming 
across the border and the people that used to come across three or four 
at a time looking for a job, that oftentimes the ranchers would 
provide, give them some food, send them on their way. But today it is 
different.
  Fences. Let us go into that part of what it takes to be a rancher in 
this area. A central part of ranch management is having good fences. 
Keeping fences repaired is a big problem for all of the ranchers on the 
border region. One or two people crossing the land might easily crawl 
under or over a cattle fence, but groups of 20 or 50 or 1,000, usually 
headed by what is called a coyote, and the coyote cares nothing for the 
fences.
  This is not the four-legged animal we are talking about. Coyote is 
the term used for the individual who is leading the group of illegal 
immigrants across the country. So as I say, he does not care a thing 
about your fences. And in order to facilitate the movement of the 
people quickly, which is what he is trying to accomplish, they will cut 
the fences or trample them down. On one recent evening, trespassers 
destroyed five gates and six fences in one 15-mile stretch involving 
four different property owners. Think about the cost in supplies and 
time to repair those gates and fences. On another night the trespassers 
destroyed two gates and two fences that took Mr. McBride $170 to fix.
  When a fence is down, cattle move across and wander into adjacent 
ranch property. It typically takes over 100 manhours each month to sort 
the cattle out and move them back where they belong. Sometimes the 
coyotes create a new problem that never existed before. Mr. McBride 
told me about this fence that serves no purpose but to stop illegal 
traffic. Mr. McBride had to build a strong fence on a quarter-mile 
stretch of road to prevent vehicles from using a back road to transport 
drugs across his land. It was the only way to stop the almost nightly 
flow of trucks across his land. It cost him $1,033.25.

[[Page H4196]]

  How about the trash, another aspect of this that goes undiscussed and 
to which very few people pay attention. But if you live in this area 
and on the land down there, you pay attention to it. It is the pristine 
environment; pristine except for those areas where illegals have made 
it a national dump. Cows are not very smart, but they are curious 
creatures, and they will eat almost anything when hungry. They eat 
trash bags and plastic. The illegal aliens coming across the rangeland 
in groups, as I say, in groups of 100 or more, will leave behind lots 
of trash. They leave milk jugs, plastic bags, baby diapers and other 
things.
  When a cow eats the plastic bag, she will die, but she will not die 
right away. It will eventually block her digestive system and cause 
infection. She will either starve to death or die of gangrene from the 
infection because of the blockage. The cost of each dead cow, lost 
income, $750. If a cow is carrying an unborn calf, it is about another 
$400. In the last year alone Mr. McBride lost three cows with baby 
calves. The total cost is $3,450.
  Now we listen to this kind of thing, and you may be thinking to 
yourself that this is just the cost of doing business, and, after all, 
we all have these problems. But it mounts up, and the cost of doing 
business on the border, it is a little more difficult to do business 
down there because of the environment. It is a very harsh environment, 
and these are things that are happening that could be prevented. That 
is the other thing. These are not just part of the natural environment. 
These are things that are happening to people living on that border 
every single day, destroying their livelihood, destroying their lives, 
and forcing them off of their land, and this is what I believe to be 
intolerable.

  Let us talk about another aspect of massive immigration of illegals 
across their land. Over the past year Mr. McBride put out several small 
grass fires started by illegal trespassers that left campfires 
unattended. Luckily, the fires were discovered and put out before they 
could do much major damage, but last summer only 40 miles west of 
McBride's ranch, a major fire was caused by illegal aliens in the 
Coronado National Forest. I happened to have been there at that time, 
by the way. It was called the Ryan fire. It burned over 38,000 acres. 
It came right up to the border of the town of Sierra Vista and the U.S. 
Army facility at Fort Wachuka.
  Only 2 days ago there was another fire in the same vicinity of Santa 
Cruz County, this time in a wildlife preserve. It burned over 450 acres 
until it was brought under control. Front page story from Tuesday's 
Tucson newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, quotes a Forest Service 
employee as saying the source of the fire was a cooking stove used and 
abandoned by illegal aliens. Perhaps the Tucson churches that want to 
provide plentiful water to the aliens crossing the border could also 
provide them with a manual for camping safety.
  Mr. McBride kept a journal of his encounters with illegal aliens over 
a 3-month period last year. He spent a lot of time calling the Border 
Patrol and waiting for them to arrive. McBride encountered illegal 
aliens on 46 separate occasions over a 90-day period, sometimes as many 
as 3 encounters in a day. Over the 9-month period, January 1 and 
September 1, 2002, Mr. McBride made 101 calls to the Border Patrol to 
come and apprehend illegal aliens. This does not include the numerous 
times when he did not bother to call the Border Patrol because there 
was no chance of catching the trespassers, or there were too few 
involved, and he knew the Border Patrol would not come out anyway.
  Some of the encounters are not friendly, and they make daily life 
hazardous to local residents. Mr. McBride found trespassers in his barn 
where they leave garbage, feces, and lighted cigarettes. He has been 
run off his road by illegal drug smugglers traveling at high speeds. In 
his daily experience drugs are now smuggled across his ranchlands every 
single day; not occasionally, not weekly, but daily. Equipment has been 
stolen from his garage. Groups of illegal aliens stand in front of his 
yard and yell at him, demanding to use his telephone. Real estate 
values in the area have fallen dramatically as few people want to 
purchase a ranch and cope with the daily stresses and additional costs 
imposed by the constant flow of illegal trespassers.
  Mr. McBride is a frustrated man because he sees nothing happening 
about his problem. He has every right to be frustrated. Nothing 
happening. People apparently here do not care. At least not enough of 
us care.
  Many of us, however, on this floor and in this body share the 
frustration because we see much more that can be done and could be done 
to secure our borders and curtail, if not stop, this invasion. For 
example, we could adopt a policy that the Armed Forces of the United 
States could conduct routine training exercises along the northern and 
southern borders. As a Nation, by action of this Congress, we could 
adopt a policy that one-third of all our military training take place 
within 50 miles of our borders. That would send a message that we are 
serious about the borders.
  Not long ago, Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to actually visit a 
site north of a little town called Bonners Ferry, Utah. It was a site 
where a group of 100 marines along with the Border Patrol in the area 
and the Forest Service and the Customs Service were trying to see 
whether or not they could actually use the military to help control, 
let us say, 100 miles of border up in that most rugged area of the 
Northern United States and our border with Canada. It was an enormously 
successful 2-week exercise. While I was there, we actually saw and the 
authorities were able to apprehend four people coming across, as I say, 
the most rugged area you could imagine, no roads, coming across on 
ATVs, all-terrain vehicles, carrying 400 pounds of drugs.
  Another time a small plane was coming through, and the radar 
facilities used by the marines, employed by the marines picked it up. 
It was intercepted. It was also full of narcotics. These would have 
certainly gone through easily as they had done many times in the past 
had it not been for the fact that the military was there using military 
assets, including three drones. These were old, old 1991 model drones, 
the kind we used in the Gulf War, and they are noisy, but they did the 
job.
  At 2 o'clock in the morning, they picked up those four guys coming 
across the border, and then they called to the Border Patrol, 
helicoptered out, intercepted them, and we had them. The really 
interesting thing is when I talked to the Commandant of that Marine 
group that was there, he told me that it was the best experience they 
had ever had. It was the best training experience they had ever had, 
because it was real time in really rough terrain dealing with real bad 
guys.
  We could be training our military on the border, if nothing else, 
even if you did not want to put them there all the time because 
everybody is so sensitive about, oh, my God, what would the Mexicans 
say, what would the Canadians say about using our troops on our border? 
Well, I do not really give a fig what they would say.
  I could not care less about what Mexico thinks about us trying to 
protect our own borders, especially when Mexico does everything it 
possibly can to help people invade the United States. Mexico has 
departments of government that are designed to help people come into 
this country, even come in illegally. Mexican Government provides 
buses, bringing busloads of people to the border of the United States 
where they dislodge these passengers and let them start walking across 
into the country, into the desert. This is the Government of Mexico. 
This is our friend.
  This is the country that is represented by President Fox, who came 
here and said over and over again that he wanted to be our friend. And 
this is the same country, of course, Mr. Speaker, that refused to be 
our friend when we asked them for support in the Gulf War, the most 
recent war in Iraq, in Operation Enduring Freedom. They were not to be 
found. They were AWOL. They said we should not do it. They would not 
give us any help. They would not help us defend our country, but they 
have no qualms about helping their illegals into the United States, 
because for one thing, of course, those illegals who are here send 
money back to Mexico and now accounts for a third of the Mexican GDP. 
It is a huge amount of money. And so Mexico encourages invasion of our 
country. And

[[Page H4197]]

so I am supposed to care about what they think about us putting 
military on our border? Give me a break.
  But let us say we are still sensitive to that, what they might say, 
what they might do. So do not station them there. Just use them there 
for training purposes. They get good training. They also help defend 
the Nation's borders.
  At a minimum we could say that all military facilities located in the 
14 States along our northern and southern borders must conduct at least 
half of their training exercises within 50 miles of the border. 
Utilizing military resources does not mean putting a soldier every 100 
feet on the border. That image is conjured up by the opponents of 
border control. Using our military on the border will not mean a new 
expenditure of tens of billions of dollars, another myth. But we must 
be willing to employ our military intelligently, appropriately. And I 
think we owe it to the citizens of this Nation to do so.
  We send our military to borders all around the world. Our military is 
presently employed defending the borders of Iraq, defending the borders 
of Afghanistan, defending the borders of South Korea, defending the 
borders of Kosovo and in the old Yugoslavia. We send them all over the 
world. We can find the money to send them all over the world to have 
them defend the borders of other countries. We cannot do it in our own 
country. Why? Because we are fearful of the reaction not just of the 
Governments of Mexico and/or Canada, we are fearful of the reaction of 
people in the United States who have an allegiance greater to other 
countries than they do to this country. We are fearful that there will 
be people in this country who are still politically connected to 
Mexico, for instance, and would raise Cain with us politically for 
putting troops on the border.

                              {time}  1815

  We are fearful that we will lose the votes of this Hispanic, I would 
say, very small minority, but nonetheless, that is really one of the 
reasons why we refuse to do it. So let us say what the truth is here. 
That is why we do not put troops on the border. We are afraid of both 
foreign and domestic reaction.
  I asked Secretary Ridge, I will never forget. It was on this floor. 
Actually my recollection, it was another Member who asked him during a 
briefing on this floor. He was then head of the homeland defense, and 
now, of course, running that new agency; but he was asked why he was 
opposed to putting troops on the border to defend the country, he is 
the head of homeland defense after all, and his response was incredibly 
elucidating. It was very candid, and what he said was the reason why we 
will not do it is because there are political and cultural obstacles, 
political and cultural obstacles to putting troops on the border.
  I applaud Mr. Ridge for being truthful. He could have given us some 
mealy-mouth typical Department of State response to a question like 
that, but he said it just the way it is. There are political and 
cultural problems with putting troops on our border.
  I will say this, that if we have another event like 9/11 and it 
happens as a result of somebody coming across these borders illegally, 
then I want him or any other member of the administration employing 
this particular philosophy to go to the families of the people who are 
killed in an event like that and explain that we could not protect them 
because of the political and cultural obstacles to stop them from doing 
so. You explain that to them. I certainly will not.
  I will tell them that we shirked our duty as a government. We shirked 
our primary duty. It is to protect and defend the people of this 
country and their property. We are not doing it for Mr. McBride or any 
of the people who live along the border in Arizona and Texas, New 
Mexico, California, any of the other States that are impacted by the 
invasion to which I have referred. We are not doing it there. We are 
not helping them, and we are not helping the rest of Americans who are 
going to be affected by this policy.
  To those of my colleagues who think it is just Mr. McBride's problem 
and just the homeland heroes that I have brought to my colleagues' 
attention, Mr. Speaker, if they think that is who it is, let me say 
that it is a much broader category of Americans. It is a much broader 
spectrum of Americans than just those living on the border who are 
affected negatively by massive immigration, unchecked immigration, 
immigration uncontrolled so we do not know who the people are coming 
into this country.
  We have created an oceanful of immigrants, legal and illegal, in 
which now the most dastardly deeds can be done and people who have come 
into the country do us great harm, can swim, and they can swim in that 
ocean undetected simply because there are so many here; and we 
overwhelm all of our agencies designed to do something about illegal 
immigration. We overwhelm the INS, the border patrol, the Customs 
service, homeland defense. We overwhelm them with numbers so it becomes 
impossible.
  Let us look at just one aspect of this. There are, we do not know, 
but somewhere between 13 and 20 million people living here illegally; 
but my colleagues say, okay, well, they are not really doing anything, 
they are not harming the country, they are just providing labor for the 
jobs necessary to be done that ``no one else would do.'' I hear that 
all the time, that the only people we are hiring are people taking jobs 
no other Americans would do.
  I tell my colleagues that right there I would challenge that 
statement and tell them there are millions of Americans looking for 
work, and they will take jobs and they will take any jobs. I have a 
fellow working for me who is a past executive in a high-tech firm. We 
cannot get him more than a relatively low-level position. It is almost 
a part-time position. He has a daughter with leukemia. He is looking 
for insurance benefits. We are able to help provide him that at least. 
He does data input for us. He also works driving a limousine at night 
to try to put a roof over his family's head and keep food on the table, 
and you are telling me there are not American citizens looking for work 
and that all these illegals are coming in to do work that no American 
citizen will do? I am telling my colleagues that is blatantly untrue.
  There are millions of unemployed Americans looking for jobs that are 
being done by illegals in this country. Why? For one thing, they are 
being employed by employers because, of course, they will work for less 
and they will not make any waves because after all they cannot pay an 
illegal the same amount of money as they pay somebody else. They cannot 
give them the same benefits. What they are going to do about it? They 
are not going to squawk. They are going to be turned into the INS. 
They are fearful. If they only knew they could get turned into the INS 
every single day and they are not going to do anything about it. They 
are leery about it. So they can be manipulated. They can be mistreated, 
and they often are.

  There are plenty of American citizens who need and want jobs; but let 
us say, all right, out of the 20 million people who may be working here 
illegally, living in the United States illegally, let us say that 18 to 
19 million of them are just regular folks trying to make a living doing 
the same thing our immigrant grandfathers and grandparents did. Let me 
tell my colleagues that because there are so many living here illegally 
and because all of our agencies are swamped by the numbers, we cannot 
deal with those maybe several hundred thousand, maybe a million people 
who are living here illegally and are doing very bad things to us.
  For instance, a few years ago, we brought pressure, I and other 
people in this body, against the INS to tell us exactly how many people 
were actually still living here in the United States, after they had 
been ordered to be deported. The only way one actually gets ordered to 
be deported in this country is usually they do something pretty bad and 
they get arrested and they get arrested for rape or robbery or murder 
or vandalism, one. All of the sudden they say, oh, by the way, you are 
also here illegally, you end up in immigration court and the judge 
orders you deported and you think, oh, good, the INS comes to get them 
and they take them back. No, wrong, does not happen that way.
  They are put out on bond usually, and they are given a letter and 
says come back, report in 6 months to be deported. Guess what. Just 
guess. Mr. Speaker, guess what happens. They do not come back, amazing 
as that is to

[[Page H4198]]

contemplate, that someone would actually not come back for their 
deportation hearing. Well, they do not, of course.
  It is called a ``run letter.'' As a matter of fact, when you send 
them a letter telling them when they are supposed to come, the 
vernacular is it is a run letter because they run.
  Of the people who have been told that they are to be deported because 
they have committed some crime here, 2 years ago the INS admitted that 
they had a list of over 320,000 individuals. They would not even talk 
about it until we forced them to, and actually an immigration law judge 
called my office and told me about this and said do not use my name, we 
hear that 1,000 times, do not use my name, I have got to tell you what 
is happening because I know you get upset about these immigration 
issues; but he said every day I see in my court, I order somebody to be 
deported. They put up a bond. They are out the door. We never see them 
again. He said, I will bet you there are 100,000 or more like that.
  We kept pressing the INS. Guess what. There were over 300,000 that 
they admitted to.
  Last year, again because of the pressure, they decided to put these 
300,000 people on the NCIC. They decided that we would put them on the 
databank that was available so that if anybody picked them up crossing 
the street illegally, running a red light, anything else, and you ran 
their number in the NCIC, you could get them. We could deport them.
  Come to find out, of the 320,000 people that were on that list, 
according to just statistics that came out the other day, a total of 
2,000, little over 2,000, were actually identified over the last year. 
Of them, about 600 were actually deported, and guess what has happened 
to that total number. It has grown to about 400,000 people who have 
been arrested or ordered to be deported and walked out the door.
  Now the homeland defense agency is calling upon people to be a little 
more focused on this issue and calling on local law enforcement 
agencies to find these people. We have 400,000 people here that the INS 
admits most of them with felony convictions and who have just walked 
away. That is one of the problems of having massive numbers of illegal 
immigrants and even legal immigrants in the country because when it 
blends together, it becomes impossible for us to track; and, therefore, 
the resulting consequences to the United States are severe.
  There are consequences to massive illegal immigration into this 
country. We have over 5,000 miles of international border with Mexico 
and Canada, but Mexicans and Canadians are not the only ones who come 
across those borders. INS statistics for 2001 show that 70 percent of 
the illegal aliens crossing from Mexico are Mexican nationals. That 
means 30 percent are from other countries. The number of illegal aliens 
coming into the country by most estimates is three to four times the 
number that are caught by the border patrol. That means that 1.5 
million illegal aliens came into the United States in 2002, and that 
means that 450,000 came into our country from countries other than 
Mexico.
  In fact, that is the way it is referred to on the border, OTM, other 
than Mexican. By definition we do not know who these people are or what 
they are doing here. I ask you to consider just one statistic. If only 
one percent of those 450,000 people are terrorists, that would mean 
that there are 4,500 possible terrorists entering our country each 
year.

  The INS said that there are nearly 400,000 absconders. I mentioned 
that one.
  The Haitians, just a little bit ago, big article in the paper about 
the fact that even the State Department is saying that we have to do 
something about the people coming in here claiming to be of one 
nationality but, in fact, they are not, because it detected an increase 
in third country nationals including Pakistanis and Palestinians 
attempting to sneak into the United States from Haiti; and because it 
feared that lax immigration enforcement would lead to a new boat lift 
from the country, the State Department urged the White House to adopt a 
policy of detaining illegal aliens arriving by boat from Haiti until 
they could be deported or granted asylum.
  Mr. Ashcroft acceded to the demand, the request of the State 
Department; and of course The Washington Post and all of the local 
media went crazy, and this was a racist philosophy and tried to get 
them to pull back on it. What they worry about, as I say, are so many 
people coming across claiming in this case to be Haitians, but in fact, 
they are other nationalities. This is not unique to Haiti.
  There is an area of South America, south Central America, South 
Americans in this case, called the tri-border area. It is Brazil and 
Argentina and Paraguay, and it is an area in which there is a great 
deal of activity where illegal aliens are brought in, smuggled in. 
There is a smuggling ring operating out of Brazil. It brings Middle 
Easterners into the country, gives them Brazilian documents, keeps them 
there for maybe up to 6 months, and then moves them forward through 
Mexico into the U.S.; and if they are stopped, if anything happens, 
they are identified as Brazilians so there is no big issue. Maybe they 
will just be deported back to Brazil.
  If they were brought here under their true identification as people 
coming from Middle Eastern countries, most of them on the terrorist 
watch list, then there would be a lot more attention paid to them. That 
is why they try to filter them through, try to mask them by coming into 
the United States as Brazilians.
  It is happening with countries all over the world. As we saw just a 
little bit ago, the Cuban boats are coming across in large numbers. We 
have a policy that says if you get to the United States, put one foot 
on dry land, you will be given asylum. I do not know how carefully we 
screen these people, but I will tell you that the whole enterprise that 
we call immigration and immigration control is a farce.

                              {time}  1830

  If you get to the United States, you are probably going to remain in 
the United States. That is the reality of the situation. We deport very 
few people; that is, if you are sneaking in especially. But if you are 
trying to get here legally, it can be a very difficult task. I have 
people coming to my office all the time asking to come into the United 
States legally, trying to bring a spouse in legally. Very difficult. 
That is tough. Trying to get somebody here legally could take you 
years, often does take years. Takes a lot of money. You have to hire 
lawyers.
  I often think to myself that you want to go to these people and say, 
boy, I hate to tell you this, but it is probably just as easy to sneak 
in the country, because it is going to take you a long time to do it 
legally. And if you sneak into the country, you will get all the 
benefits that anybody gets living here legally. Now, we do not tell 
them that, of course, and I do not suggest that people do it, but it is 
hard not to recognize the logic they would employ if they were to look 
at those two options. Go through all the brain damage of trying to come 
here legally or simply sneak across the border. Either way you will 
probably end up in exactly the same sort of circumstance, to live in 
the United States for as long as you want. That is the problem with 
immigration policies today.
  In just the last week or two, look at all the things that have 
happened, of course we have seen the horrible tragic situation in 
Texas, in Victoria, Texas, where 18 migrants died packed into a truck. 
Oftentimes these trucks carry upwards of 100 people smashed into them. 
It gets very hot. This is unfortunately not a unique situation, but it 
is always a terrible, horrendous problem, a horrendous thing to happen, 
where you have 18 people dead which were being brought in to the 
country by these coyotes.
  I was asked on a television program last night about this, and I was 
debating someone on that program from an organization that is an open 
borders-type organization called MALDEV, that is the acronym, MALDEV, 
and the gentleman was saying that the only way to stop this, according 
to the open border people, is to allow for greater immigration. But of 
course it does not matter, as I pointed out to him last night. If we 
said we will accept another million people a year, or 2 million or 10 
million people a year into the United States, as long as we put a cap 
on it, there will always be people coming in illegally. There will 
always be this kind of situation.

[[Page H4199]]

  We have two choices, only two choices. Either we walk away from the 
borders, close down the border stations, close down the Border Patrol, 
admit the failure, admit that it is our desire to maintain open borders 
and allow anybody to come into this country when they want to, go ahead 
and admit that; and stop the charade, or secure the border. Those are 
the only two options. There is nothing else. In between leaves us with 
things like this: 18 dead. It leaves us with hundreds dead in the 
deserts of the Southwest. People die of exposure. It leaves us with all 
of the problems that are attendant to having porous borders: The drug 
trafficking, the horrendous impact on the lives of the people in 
southern Arizona and all along the borders. These are the things that 
happen when you have porous borders and you pretend that you have some 
immigration policy. It is either one or the other. Make a decision, 
America.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that we should try our best in this body to 
force a debate on whether or not this country wants open borders or 
whether it wants secure borders. I am a vote for secure borders, 
needless to say. But if I lose the debate, if I am in the minority, 
then so be it. We will no longer have people like Kris Eggle being 
killed in the line of duty.
  His parents were here when we passed a bill on this floor, a bill I 
introduced to name the visitor center at Organ Pipes Cactus National 
Park down in Arizona, to name the visitors center after Kris Eggle. His 
parents sat up there in the gallery when we passed the bill here on 
Wednesday, and his name was added to the list of names that were put on 
a memorial here in Washington, D.C., for all of the fallen law 
enforcement personnel of the Nation.
  Many of these people like Kris, they are people who were Border 
Patrol people, they were park rangers, they were Customs officials who 
were cut down in the line of duty by people coming into this country 
illegally, people transporting drugs, people protecting those people 
who were transporting drugs.
  Kris Eggle was 28 years old and had a full and rich life ahead of 
him. I went to his funeral, and I passed a bill to memorialize him. I 
do not want to have to do anything like that again. There are no 
parents of children who are employed in our Park Service or on our 
Border Patrol who want to go through what the Eggles have gone through. 
Nobody wants to do this again. But it will happen again unless we make 
that choice that I have just put in front of this Nation. That is it. 
Either secure our borders or walk away.

  This approach we presently employ of having the charade of a Border 
Patrol, where we put people out on the border, we put them into harm's 
way, but we really and truly do not mean to secure those borders, this 
is the worst of all possible worlds. Their blood is on our hands. Those 
people who make these decisions to keep our borders porous and to put 
these people in harm's way without supporting them, without a real 
commitment to defending the border, they have the blood of people like 
Kris Eggle on their hands.
  And so there will be no other way. We will not stop others from 
dying, not American citizens, not illegal aliens trying to come into 
the country. It will happen over and over again until we secure those 
borders. Allow for a legal way for people to come into this country and 
demand that is the only way they get into this country. Deport everyone 
who is here illegally.
  Now, I know people will go, oh, what are you saying, deport people 
here illegally? That is exactly what I am saying, Mr. Speaker. We must 
deport people who are here illegally, and we must prevent those who are 
trying to come into this country illegally from doing so. That is the 
only way we can call ourselves a Nation. It does not mean that people 
cannot immigrate to the United States, as my grandparents and probably 
yours and everybody else's did. Immigration can still occur. But it can 
occur on our basis, on how many we want in the country, on what grounds 
we believe they should be able to come into the country, for how long, 
what are they going to do here when they get here. But it has to be in 
a number that we can handle. It has to be a number that we can actually 
integrate into the country.
  There is another whole side of this that we have not even touched 
upon, and that is the threat to the very culture of the country, the 
threat to the idea of citizenship that occurs when we have massive 
immigration coming into the country, and we combine that with this 
rabid multiculturalism, the cult of multiculturalism that permeates our 
society and that tells us and tells our students and tells our citizens 
that there is nothing unique about America; that we have to worship at 
the altar of multiculturalism; that we cannot be proud of own culture; 
that Western civilization is of no value.
  It is that philosophy, combined with massive immigration, that could 
spell doom, and does spell doom for our own country and for our 
civilization. And, believe me, that is a 1-hour Special Order in and of 
itself. In fact, we have divided this issue of illegal immigration into 
different categories. We started off by talking about the danger it 
poses to our national security.
  Then we talked about, in another hour I did, simply the environment, 
the damage to the environment, the kind of things I talked about 
earlier, but even in more detail in terms of just exactly what is 
happening to the environment of this country, what is happening to our 
parks, to our grasslands, to our deserts when they are crossed by 
thousands and thousands of people on foot and in vehicles, coming 
across desert land that is pristine, ruining the lands, depositing all 
their trash, their feces, their leavings, and leaving it looking like a 
national dump. The fires.
  All of these environmental hazards and all of this environmental 
degradation that occurs even without the slightest peep from the Sierra 
Club or any of the other organizations that are supposed to be out 
there caring for our pristine lands, caring for our environment. They 
only care to a point. But they are, of course, also wrapped up in the 
cult of multiculturalism so that they cannot complain about the fact 
that there is such degradation on our borders and in our parks being 
committed by people who are coming into the country illegally. That 
would be seen as a racist comment. That would be seen as someone who is 
ethnocentric.
  Well, race has got nothing to do with this issue. Ethnocentrism has 
nothing to do with this issue. It is an issue of our national survival, 
and we are attacked on various fronts.
  Then we could spend an hour, and I did spend an hour, talking about 
just the health care costs, the damage that this massive immigration is 
doing to our infrastructure in the United States in terms of health 
care, in terms of tax, the cost to taxpayers to provide housing, to 
provide roads, to provide hospitals, to provide schools for the massive 
number of people coming across here into this country illegally.
  Twenty-five percent of all people presently incarcerated in Federal 
prisons are noncitizens. I do not know what it is for cities and 
localities, but it has to be almost as high, if not higher in some 
places; huge infrastructure costs to the United States that are not 
paid for by the ``taxes'' paid by people coming in here and working, 
even if they are illegal. I assure my colleagues that the meager amount 
of taxes paid by people who are employed in low-skill, low-wage jobs in 
no way pays for the infrastructure costs of their existence here. So 
there is another aspect of immigration that we do not talk about; that 
we are afraid to talk about.
  Then there is this issue of the culture and the issue of citizenship, 
the attack on the culture, the attack on citizenship. This is perhaps 
the most dangerous aspect of the entire phenomenon. It is the desire on 
the part of a lot of people, maybe even in our own government, to 
eventually eliminate the distinction between someone who is here as a 
citizen, a legal citizen, and someone who is here illegally. And 
everything that is done that provides illegal immigrants with some 
benefit or other that would usually go to an American citizen is 
another step towards that elimination of the importance of the 
distinction of being a citizen.
  You can come into this country illegally and get an education for 
your children. You can come into the country illegally, starting out by 
breaking our laws just to begin with by placing your foot in this 
country illegally, and as a reward for that behavior, you can then get 
your children educated, your children and yourself medical attention, 
your family provided with all

[[Page H4200]]

kinds of benefits in terms of housing, subsidized housing and the 
myriad of other social services that we provide in this country to the 
poor.

                              {time}  1845

  You can even vote, which in fact they do in large numbers. Illegal 
aliens are voting in this country in every election. We have had, oh, I 
do not know how many exposes that have been run showing how many people 
have been in this country and have voted illegally. They do not have to 
even do that by lying, sometimes, by lying to the person at the voting 
booth, by the poll watcher. They can do it by walking into cities right 
here in Maryland, College Park and others, other cities, that allow 
people to vote if they are a resident. That is all they ask for, 
residency, proof of residency. Let me see your utility bill. You do not 
have to be a citizen. So if you can vote, if you can get Social 
Security benefits, if you can get social service benefits, if you can 
have your children educated, if you can have all of that, get your 
driver's license, send your kids to college and have it paid for by the 
taxpayers of this country, if you can do all of that, then you tell me, 
Mr. Speaker, what is the difference between a citizen of this country 
and a noncitizen? How do we distinguish it? It becomes impossible. That 
distinction is blurred.
  That is the desired goal of many people who are on what I call the 
open-borders part of this discussion. Some of them are organizations 
like Maldev, like La Raza. There are many others. You can go on the Web 
and see these sites. Barrio Warriors. You can see how they talk about 
taking back the United States, taking back part of the Southwest. You 
can see what they say about the fact that they have already done it. 
They will state clearly that they believe that in large measure they 
have already taken back parts of the United States and that they have 
not simply come to the United States and become part of our society, 
our culture and our political system; they have simply moved theirs 
with them.
  There are areas along the Texas border, inside Texas, where there are 
places called colonias. These are communities that have grown up of 
illegals, communities often not served by some of the infrastructural 
services available; they may not have water, but there are thousands 
and thousands of people living there. And there are places to which law 
enforcement officials will not go. They are afraid to enter one foot 
into these colonias because it is so dangerous. So they have a separate 
community, actually a separate country existing within the United 
States. They can then claim quite honestly that they have begun to 
reclaim this country from what they consider to be the outrageous 
tragedy of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ceded part of what is now the 
southwest part of the United States to the United States and took it 
from Mexico.
  These are claims that these people make. I am not making this up. You 
can go on their Web site and see it. There is a movement they call 
Aztlan, Return to Aztlan. Aztlan is a term they use to describe that 
part of the southwestern United States that they believe should be 
returned to Mexico or made a separate country in and of itself. This 
all sounds bizarre to most people, but there are many people out there 
who are committed to this concept. We see the way they talk about 
Anglos. If you want to use the word ``racist'' to describe somebody in 
this debate, it could certainly be used to describe the people who push 
this kind of separatist agenda.
  We are making it more difficult to integrate into society and on the 
other hand making it very easy for people who choose not to integrate 
into our society. This certainly can be, and I think will be, a major 
threat to our existence.
  A recent survey was sent out by the Republican National Congressional 
Committee. We all get these surveys; the Democratic National Committee 
does exactly the same thing. They send you out a questionnaire. They 
say, what do you think are the big issues or what do you think about 
these big issues? Send this back. They usually ask, send it back with a 
check. It was interesting because Phyllis Schlafly, the head of Eagle 
Forum, got one of these questionnaires. She writes in a column that was 
picked up by the Copley News Service. She says, ``Whoever produced the 
survey must have the same world view as inside-the-Beltway policy wonks 
whose sensitivity to public opinion is bounded by The Washington Post 
in the morning and Dan Rather in the evening. They are clueless about 
what grassroots America thinks. Out of the 54 detailed questions sorted 
into 13 different issues, there was only one about border security and 
immigration. The lone question appears at the bottom of the page titled 
Foreign Affairs. There is a section on homeland security but it 
contains no mention of border security or immigration. I'm going to 
help the Republican Congressional Committee by providing a list of 20 
questions for which the answers would be helpful to party leaders.''
  I would suggest to the party, both parties, if they are going to send 
out questionnaires, they should ask some of the questions Mrs. Schlafly 
puts forward here.
  Number one. Do you favor President Bush's plan to give amnesty to 
undocumented aliens, putting people who violate our laws in line ahead 
of those who lawfully apply for entry? What do you think the answer to 
that would be?
  Do you favor the repeal of Senator Kennedy's diversity visa lottery 
which admits 50,000 aliens per year, mostly from non-Western countries, 
including countries that sponsor terrorism? What do you think the 
answer to that would be? How do you think that would come back from 
most Americans?
  Should the U.S. State Department stop issuing visas in countries that 
sponsor terrorism? Oh, gee, let me think about that one for a while, 
Phyllis. How should I answer that one?
  Do you favor closing our borders to undocumented aliens, illegal 
drugs, and contagious diseases by whatever means necessary, including 
electronic fences and National Guard troops? Mr. Speaker, I will 
include this article in its entirety for the Record.
  The text of the article is as follows:

                     GOP Survey Avoids Immigration

                         (By Phyllis Schlafly)

       The National Republican Congressional Committee has mailed 
     a survey to a selected list of grass-roots Republicans 
     seeking opinions on ``issues of greatest concern'' so that 
     the party can be strengthened ``by getting more Americans 
     involved.''
       Of course, it is really a fund-raiser (send your ``most 
     generous contribution''), but it is artfully designed to look 
     like authentic market research using catchphrases such as 
     ``registered survey number,'' ``classified document'' and 
     ``data entry control number for office use only.''
       Whoever produced the survey must have the same worldview as 
     Inside-the-Beltway policy wonks whose sensitivity to public 
     opinion is bounded by the Washington Post in the morning and 
     Dan Rather in the evening. They are clueless about what 
     grass-roots Americans think. Out of 54 detailed questions 
     sorted into 13 different issues, there is only one about 
     border security and immigration. That lone question appears 
     at the bottom of the page titled Foreign Affairs. There is a 
     section on homeland security, but it contains no mention of 
     border security or immigration. I'm going to help the 
     Republican Congressional Committee by providing a list of 20 
     questions for which the answers would be helpful to party 
     leaders.
       1. Do you favor President George W. Bush's plan to give 
     amnesty to undocumented aliens, putting people who violate 
     our laws in line ahead of those who lawfully apply for entry?
       2. Do you favor the repeal of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. 
     Edward M. Kennedy's Diversity Visa Lottery, which admits 
     50,000 aliens per year, mostly from non-Western countries, 
     including countries that sponsor terrorism?
       3. Should the U.S. State Department stop issuing visas in 
     countries that sponsor terrorism?
       4. Do you favor closing our borders to undocumented aliens, 
     illegal drugs and contagious diseases by whatever means 
     necessary, including electronic fences and National Guard 
     troops?
       5. Do you favor requiring visual inspection of the contents 
     of at least 50 percent of trucks entering the United States 
     from Mexico and Canada, instead of the current 1 percent to 2 
     percent?
       6. Do you favor prohibiting the State Department from 
     negotiating a plan with Mexico to give Social Security 
     benefits to undocumented aliens?
       7. Do you favor repealing the federal requirement that 
     hospitals must give free medical care, including scarce organ 
     transplants, to undocumented aliens, an unfunded mandate that 
     is bankrupting many hospitals and increasing the price of 
     medical care to U.S. citizens?
       8. Do you favor cutting off federal funding to state 
     universities that give lower in-state tuition to undocumented 
     aliens in violation of current federal law, or that refuse to 
     cooperate with the foreign student tracking system?

[[Page H4201]]

       9. Will you vote to revoke the citizenship of naturalized 
     citizens who betray their oath of U.S. citizenship by 
     claiming dual citizenship with their native country?
       10. Do you favor stopping the issuance of driver's licenses 
     to undocumented aliens since many of the 9/11 hijackers 
     boarded the fatal planes by showing their driver's licenses?
       11. Do you favor penalties for local public officials who 
     refuse to cooperate with immigration officials in identifying 
     undocumented aliens?
       12. Do you favor prohibiting government agencies from 
     accepting foreign-issued identity cards, such as Mexico's 
     matricula consular, as acceptable identification?
       13. Do you favor strict health screening of foreigners 
     entering the United States in order to stop the extraordinary 
     rise in cases of tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis B, 
     intestinal parasites, Chagas' disease, West Nile virus and 
     SARS?
       14. Do you favor stopping the racket of smuggling pregnant 
     aliens into the United States so they can give birth to their 
     babies in the United States, thereby making their children 
     immediately eligible for citizenship and welfare?
       15. Do you favor a timeout on immigration and visas until 
     the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a functioning 
     computer system to track aliens, not U.S. citizens, through 
     smart identification cards?
       16. Do you favor rescinding Bill Clinton's Executive Order 
     13166 requiring anyone who receives federal funds, such as 
     doctors and hospitals, to provide their services in foreign 
     languages?
       17. Do you favor abolishing federal requirements to provide 
     foreign-language ballots, since the ability to speak, read 
     and write basic English is a requirement to become a 
     naturalized U.S. citizen and only citizens are eligible to 
     vote?
       18. Do you favor a general policy of drawing a bright line 
     of difference between U.S. citizens and aliens so that law-
     abiding U.S. citizens are not treated like potential 
     terrorists or hijackers?
       19. Do you favor a Republican Party policy of rejecting 
     political contributions from individuals and corporations 
     that hire undocumented aliens?
       20. Is the reason why questions about border security and 
     immigration were omitted from the Republican survey because 
     our leaders don't want to know the answers?

  These questions are answered every day in my office. We receive 
literally hundreds of e-mails and letters, calls into my office with 
the answers to these questions. In case anybody wonders, let me tell 
you clearly that a vast majority of Americans believe that we should 
secure our borders. A vast majority of Americans believe that we should 
crack down on illegal immigration. A vast number believe that we should 
reduce even legal immigration. A vast number believe that we should 
employ whatever we need to employ to secure those borders, including 
the use of the military.
  Most Americans want it. Most Americans understand those categories 
that I said that this immigration debate breaks down into. Most of them 
believe that there is a problem in each one of those areas and it has 
to be addressed through talking about and dealing with our immigration 
policy, dealing forcefully with it. The only reluctance to do so is in 
this body and also in the White House. That is the only place where we 
are fearful of doing something that, I think I can say without any 
equivocation, a majority of people in this country want us to do.
  Never have I seen an issue, Mr. Speaker, that separates the American 
people from their government like this one does. Never have I seen an 
issue the feeling about which is so deep on the part of the people and 
so shallow on the part of their government. It has gotten to the point 
where there are places along the border where people have taken up 
their own defense and armed themselves. I do not encourage that, Mr. 
Speaker, but I understand the frustration that leads to it. If you are 
fearful of your children getting to school without being harmed; you 
are fearful about your wife, her safety and her home on your ranch 
while you are gone; if you are fearful about people coming through and 
destroying your way of life, destroying your corrals, your barns; and 
if you cannot get anyone to answer your call, if you cannot get this 
government to respond to you, what would you do? I wonder, Mr. Speaker. 
What would any of us do? Can we really blame people who say if you will 
not protect me, I will have to try and protect myself.
  I want this government to protect them. I want this government to do 
what we were elected to do. And I will guarantee you, Mr. Speaker, that 
there are millions of people who are here as immigrants themselves, 
relatively new, millions of Hispanic Americans who support this effort. 
They came here usually the right way. They came here legally. They are 
legal residents of this country, whether it was their grandparents or 
whomever, just like I am, just like anybody else. They look at the 
inequity that exists when it is so easy to come here illegally and so 
difficult to come legally. They recognize that it is a slap in the face 
to everybody who has come into this country legally and to the millions 
who are waiting to come into the country legally to allow people to 
wander across your border and then give them all of the benefits of 
citizenship.
  They know it is a bad policy. They will support us in our efforts. We 
should not be afraid; we should not be politically frightened because 
the loudest voices in that community suggest that they will not vote 
for us if we try to enforce our own laws on the border. Even if they 
are right, even if we do not get the votes, it should not be what 
determines whether or not we enforce our own law. Or if we have gotten 
to the point where that sentiment is the majority sentiment in this 
country, then let us admit to it. Let us abandon the borders. Bring 
back those people who are in harm's way. Take them out of harm's way. 
Let people come into the country at their will. The hundreds of 
millions who wish to come into the United States, let them do so. 
Abandon this charade. Or defend the border. Those are the only two 
choices we have.

                          ____________________