[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4355-H4360]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            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, tonight I want to bring to the attention 
of the body another member of a group that we are referring to as 
homeland heroes. This is a group that has not had the attention that it 
deserves. It is a group of people who have suffered mightily as a 
result of the fact that the Federal Government has chosen to abandon 
them. And yet they fight on, sometimes facing overwhelming odds, 
sometimes facing the scorn of many of the people in their own 
community, some of the members of the press. But, nonetheless, they 
fight on for their own lives, for their life-style, and for the 
generations behind them that have paved the way for their existence in 
the area around Douglas, Arizona, and on our southern border even 
beyond that.
  Tonight I want to pay a tribute to a lady I had the opportunity, the 
great opportunity to meet when I visited the Douglas, Arizona, area a 
couple of months ago. She came at that time to tell her story, and I 
found it quite compelling. Her name is Olga Robles. She is a second-
generation Mexican American. She lives in Douglas, Arizona. Olga Robles 
describes herself as an American citizen with Mexican roots. That is 
where she got into trouble with her Mexican neighbors about a half mile 
south of her home in Douglas, Arizona. Olga Robles is criticized and 
attacked because she does not want to be called a Mexican American. She 
says she is not a hyphenated American. She is 100 percent American. She 
was born, raised, and educated in Douglas, Arizona.
  For the first 18 years of her life, she lived two blocks from the 
Arizona-Mexico border. Her mother still lives in that house, and Olga 
is a full-time caretaker for her mother, who is now 89 years old. Her 
own home is eight blocks from the border. She is married to Frank 
Robles, a retired Phelps Dodge worker, and has two sons. She is a 
registered nurse and has worked at Douglas Hospital as a health 
professional and as a health professional for EPA and Vision Quest.
  From 1979 to 1984, she was an elected local official, a councilwoman 
in the city of Douglas. She served her community with dignity and great 
energy. All her life she had been a hardworking citizen, and she is 
widely known and respected in her community.
  Why do I call Olga Robles a homeland hero? I do so because she has 
suffered, and she is suffering today, for standing up for her rights as 
a citizen and speaking out against the permissive policies that this 
government employs toward illegal aliens. She has been personally 
vilified and shunned by the advocates of unrestricted immigration and 
proponents of open borders. When she speaks openly and candidly about 
the problems caused by illegal aliens, she is attacked and told to shut 
up and ``be a good Mexican.''
  In December, 1999, she was attacked and vilified by name in the 
Mexican newspaper El Clarion in the town of Agua Prieta, a town right 
on the border. She was called a traitor and a racist for opposing 
illegal immigration. She was called these things for saying that the 
laws of this land should be upheld, the laws that she has obeyed, the 
laws her family has obeyed, the laws that she has every single right to 
expect her neighbors and her countrymen to obey.
  One illegal alien who was caught on her property told her angrily, 
``We have a right to be here. Santa Ana sold it too cheap, and we want 
it back.''
  Now, Olga Robles grew up two blocks from the border and had Mexican 
parents and grandparents. She said she never had a personal problem 
with illegal aliens until about 10 years ago, when the situation 
changed. And, Mr. Speaker, it is amazing to me that time after time, as 
I have come to this floor and introduced this topic and sort of 
inducted someone into the Hall of Homeland Heroes, that there is a 
similarity in their stories. They have all been living through very 
difficult times. They have all been challenged by what is happening on 
the border, by the flow of illegal immigration into this country, and 
they all say it is a relatively recent or relatively new phenomenon.
  Beginning in the early 1990s, the illegal aliens started coming 
across the border in larger numbers, she says. About 5 years ago, the 
flow of illegal aliens through Douglas became really heavy and created 
a big increase in local crime. The illegal aliens have torn down the 
fences on her property seven times as they hurry to get through her 
yard and further away from the border. She would call police and the 
police would say, we cannot do anything; they are illegals. Call the 
border patrol.
  Now, every single resident of Douglas, Arizona, and in every city in 
this Nation has a right to expect their local police department to come 
and help them if their rights are being violated, if their land is 
being despoiled, if their property is being destroyed. But along the 
border, this has become commonplace, and police departments, for one 
reason or another, have decided to shirk their own responsibility and 
duties. And I will tell you there are sheriff departments and police 
departments along that border that have become corrupted by the 
phenomenon of illegal immigration and the drug money that is attendant 
to it.

                              {time}  2045

  Mr. Speaker, they told a resident of the city to forget about it. 
They are illegal aliens. It is somebody else's problem. No, it is the 
problem of any law enforcement official in the United States of 
America. When she did call the Border Patrol, they would come too late 
and never capture anyone.
  Because there has been a lot of attention paid to the problems in 
Douglas, Arizona, and because there has been a lot of attention paid to 
the problems with the administration in Douglas, Arizona, with the 
mayor and other members of the city administration, because people are 
becoming concerned that their city government may not be in fact as 
responsive as it should be on these issues and there may be reasons for 
that, allegations of corruption certainly abound, and because of that, 
things are beginning to change in Douglas.
  Police now come quicker and will apprehend illegal aliens if they are 
breaking the law, and they will turn them over to the Border Patrol. 
Illegal aliens often showed up in her yard in broad daylight. If she 
called the Border Patrol, the aliens would threaten her and call her 
names.
  There are people who bring people into this country illegally and get 
paid for that. There is a story about this kind of thing happening in 
the papers here recently. It is a horrible, horrible story about the 
death of 19 people, including a small child, as a result of the actions 
taken by people who were smuggling these folks into the United States 
illegally. They are called coyotes, who are Mexican tour guides, in 
quotes, who will help a group of illegal aliens get across the border 
for a hefty price of between $1,000 and $1,500. These coyotes scout out 
vacant houses in Douglas and the surrounding area and tell the illegal 
aliens how to find them. They become safe houses. These vacant homes 
and homes for sale are fair game for these criminal gangs.

[[Page H4356]]

  The drug cartels on the Mexican side of the border are very well 
organized and sometimes very ingenious. Drug smugglers equip trucks and 
vans with corporate logos from local companies like Quest and have also 
used trucks disguised as City of Douglas vehicles.
  Not long ago, it was an interesting event down there on the border 
where they had actually stolen a vehicle, drug smugglers had stolen a 
vehicle that looked like a vehicle that would be used by the Border 
Patrol. They took it into Mexico. They carefully and with great 
precision painted the vehicle so it looked exactly like a Border Patrol 
vehicle. They put the wire mesh inside and even got U.S. Government 
license plates put on the vehicle, and they used it to smuggle drugs 
into the United States.
  Now, these things are all happening right in sight of Olga and her 
family and her friends. These things happen every day. She observes 
them and calls the police. She does what a good citizen of this country 
should do. She expects her government to help her. It has been very 
late in responding and very hesitant to do so, and it only responds to 
her demands, to her concerns, when the pressure gets so great that they 
cannot look the other way.
  So one of the things I hope to do by creating this Hall of Homeland 
Heroes is to keep the pressure on. I want the people in Douglas, 
Arizona, I want that mayor in Douglas, Arizona, to know that people are 
watching him; and I want the police force to know that there are folks 
who are interested in how well they are enforcing the law. I want 
people to know throughout this land that there is great concern about 
what is happening to the cities and towns, police departments, even 
Border Patrol agents, customs officials.
  I want them to wonder what is happening around that border, because 
there is a great deal of corruption spilling over from the Mexican 
side, all brought about as a result of the drug trade and the trade in 
human beings. You can not only smuggle a Mexican national into the 
United States for between $1,000 to $1,500, and when we consider how 
many come across that border every day, tens of thousands a day, it 
becomes big money. But you can get an even bigger price, demand a lot 
more money, up to $30,000 to smuggle someone into the United States who 
is coming from a Middle East country, coming from a country on the 
Terrorist Watch List.
  In fact, there is a road not too far from Douglas, Arizona, that the 
locals refer to as the Arab highway, the Arab road, because so many 
people from the Middle East come across that road being smuggled in by 
these coyotes. For $30,000, maybe you get better transportation, you 
get business class transportation into the United States. It is a very 
lucrative endeavor. You combine that with the drug trade on the border, 
and we can see why there is a corrupting influence on the border.
  We have evidence of high school students along the border driving big 
brand new cars and SUVs and trucks, and when you try to find out how 
they could possibly get the money, they have been working for the 
people or drug smugglers. You can make a lot of money in a very short 
period of time doing something illegal along that border.

  As I mentioned before, Olga Robles is a registered nurse. She has 
personally witnessed the decline in health care services in her 
community because of the financial impact of the flood of illegal 
aliens who must by law be treated, but they do not pay the bills. The 
Southeast Medical Center in Douglas, Arizona, is almost closed now. It 
offers only emergency room services, and if this particular facility 
closes we were told when we were down there, and, as I say, the threat 
of the closure of this facility is very real, and it is coming about 
because they have had to provide services to illegal aliens coming 
across the border by the thousands, and they get no reimbursement for 
it, and if that place closes, there is no facility like it around for a 
hundred miles in any direction.
  A citizen who needs to see a specialist must now go to Wilcox or 
Tucson, whereas specialists used to come to Douglas and see patients at 
the Southeast Medical Center. There is no longer an OB/GYN service in 
Douglas. Women must go to Bisby to see their specialist or have a baby. 
Olga Robles has seen this problem grow and grow over the past decade. 
She has had personal encounters on her own property and suffered 
vilification for speaking out against our lax Border Patrol and law 
enforcement.
  But Mrs. Robles' primary concern, her main worry is not for her 
personal safety or her property, she is mostly worried about what is 
happening to her country, her country. She worries about what is 
happening to her city's schools where overcrowding is directly traced 
to the hundreds of children coming in from across the border illegally. 
They falsify their residency, and no one from the school district 
checks up on them.
  She worries about the impact on local hospitals and medical services. 
She worries about the rising crime rate. She worries about the 
influence of drug cartels on the American side of the border. The 
corruption of Mexican police and military is now taken for granted by 
her and most residents of Cochise County, but it is now seeping into 
the Arizona side of local government and law enforcement.
  People in the Douglas area in Cochise County wonder about their own 
sheriff. His reluctance to become involved with the issues of drug 
smuggling and people smuggling make people wonder why. Ms. Robles 
worries about the growth of drug abuse among schoolchildren throughout 
the county because marijuana and cocaine are so widely available.
  I think we should honor citizens like Olga, and there are thousands 
and thousands more like her, but they do not have the courage to speak 
out. We should all recognize the fact that they exist, their stories 
deserve to be told just like Olga's, but they do not have the courage 
to come forward for fear of what their own community might do to them. 
Olga is a woman of great courage. She is an American with Mexican 
roots. She welcomes new Mexican immigrants who come here legally and 
want to become American citizens, as we all do and should welcome 
anyone who wants to come to this country legally and become American 
citizens.
  What we should not welcome is the massive flow of illegal aliens. I 
salute Olga Robles for her courage and integrity, and I hope that some 
day the political leaders of this country will follow her example.
  There are many other stories. I will be bringing more to the floor of 
the House in the weeks to come of the people whom we are inducting into 
the Homeland Hall of Heroes. This is one way that we want to try and 
get the story across to the American people.
  This is a challenging experience to try and get this story across to 
the American people. Because what you find, what amazingly you find is, 
for the most part, the American people are pretty much aware of it. 
They get it. Poll after poll tells us that large, vast majorities, 70 
percent of the American people when polled say there is something 
wrong, there is something desperately wrong with our immigration 
policy. We should review it. We should secure our borders. We should 
make it more difficult for people to come into this country illegally. 
We should find people who are here illegally and deport them and 
operate a system like every other nation on the face of the earth where 
we try to actually control the flow of people into this country so it 
benefits this country and the people coming in.
  Most people get it. Most Americans understand it. Why then is it so 
hard for my colleagues to get it? Why is it so hard for the 
administration to get the point? People want their borders secure. How 
much more clearly can we present this issue? How much more of an outcry 
can there be from American citizens like Mrs. Robles? How many more 
people have to die coming into this country illegally, as the 19 people 
who died in the back of that truck, in the back of that semi, including 
one small child, while they were tearing away the panels on the truck 
exterior to try to get air?

                              {time}  2100

  Imagine the horror inside of that truck. Imagine the screaming. 
Imagine the prayers. And now imagine some of the causes for that kind 
of thing to happen. Certainly, if you are looking around for blame, you 
say, well, they came here illegally. They took a risk. That is true. 
And some of the blame

[[Page H4357]]

rests with them, with the 80 or more people who paid the coyote to help 
them break the laws of this country to come in here and get a job, seek 
a better life as most people coming into the country do. So some of the 
blame rests with them, that is true; but there is a lot of blame to go 
around. I hope that the lesson, if any lesson is learned by an event of 
this nature, by a tragedy of this dimension, and my heart breaks for 
the people who died in that and for the family members who now grieve, 
but I must tell you that there are many people in this country that 
share the blame and there are many people in the other country on the 
other side of the border that share the blame.
  Let us start with employers over here in this country who knowingly 
hire people illegally, who are here illegally and, therefore, are 
hiring illegally. It is against the law to hire someone who is here 
illegally. Yet we all know, there is not a person here who does not 
know that this happens quite consistently. Everywhere we look it is a 
wink and a nod, well, maybe they are, maybe they are not but I am not 
going to pay any attention because I need this service or that service.
  We have companies, Tyson Foods, major, huge U.S. corporations that 
become involved, at least are accused, I should say, RICO statutes have 
been used to try and convict some of the executives at Tyson Foods 
because they say not only did these people, or the allegation is that 
not only did Tyson executives knowingly hire thousands of people who 
were here illegally but they actually helped in the business of 
importing them. They became part of the coyote network. They went and 
sent people down apparently to scout and learn and get these people 
smuggled into the country, so they all became part of a smuggling 
network, not just a chicken-producing company but a smuggling company. 
These people have a responsibility for the deaths of these 19 
individuals, for the pain of their families today.
  Everybody who does this and, therefore, entices people to come to 
this country illegally to seek a job, they are responsible, they are 
partially responsible for the death of these people and for the 
hundreds of others who die in the deserts who we do not know. We do not 
hear their screams. We do not witness their demise. We witness only the 
remains. We find them from time to time, what is left of them, in the 
desert. Many times they have been abused by the coyotes who bring them 
in. They get them to the line, they will rape the women, they steal all 
the money from the family, and they shove them into the desert. Those 
cries go unheard most of the time except I have actually had a homeland 
hero, I think it was last week, who said that on a clear night in the 
desert, you can hear the screams of these people being abused, of the 
women being raped, of the families being robbed and beaten.
  There are others who I suggest share some responsibility for the 
deaths of these people, the people trying to come into this country 
illegally. Again I do not absolve anyone. They have a responsibility 
themselves. They took a risk. There are warning signs all over. In the 
desert we have signs up in the desert about how dangerous it is to come 
through that area. People put up water. There are groups that go down 
there and put up water for them along the border. I blame them. I blame 
some of them. Those groups have a responsibility in the deaths because 
they entice people forward. I blame our own government for refusing to 
secure our own borders. When you make it illegal to enter the country 
but then make it possible to do so, you are in a way encouraging people 
to break the law and in fact put themselves in peril.
  The charade of immigration law that we operate with, where we have 
laws on the books, we have big organizations, border patrol, Customs, 
Forest Service people, these people are charged with the responsibility 
of, quote, border security, especially the border patrol and Customs; 
yet we all know you can go down and talk to anybody on that border in 
any of those services and they will tell you what a joke it is. And to 
pretend to have Members come on this floor as they did just a little 
bit ago in the different hour and talk about how important homeland 
security is and how the fact that maybe somebody tried to manipulate 
homeland security to go find some Texas legislator and oh, my goodness, 
what a travesty because they could be out, what? Defending the border? 
When was the last time that happened? And when was the last time they 
demanded it? I would love to have seen anytime in the past when any 
Member who was here protesting the use of homeland security for other 
than border security, or homeland security, I would love to have seen 
when they were demanding that our borders become secure and that we use 
the people for that purpose.

  And internal security in this country meaning we identify people who 
are here illegally and deport them. That is what homeland security is 
all about. If on the one hand you have demanded that from this agency, 
then you have every right to complain about the fact that they may be 
misused in some partisan political venture. But believe me, believe me 
when I say that for years the INS and the border patrol were misused 
for partisan political purposes, and the most blatant partisan 
political purpose was when we used them to tell people, to tell 
Americans that we had border security, that everything was okay 
because, after all, we have X number of thousands of people on the 
border; but we sent laws down to them telling them to ignore illegal 
aliens crossing. We sent regulations telling them that they should wink 
and look the other way while we continued to tell the American people 
we have a border policy.
  And what happens when you do things like that? People die. People 
die. Because they are trying to come across and do something that is 
still illegal, but they know that their chances of making it are pretty 
good, so they roll the dice. Well, these people lost. And who is 
responsible? I am telling you, it lies in this body, in this 
government, because we do not secure the border. It lies in Mexico and 
with the Mexican Government, the Mexican Government that actually 
encourages people to move northward into the United States. They 
encourage it because they are trying to do something about the huge 
number of unemployed they have.
  When you have got the population of Mexico, the population under 25, 
Mexicans under 25 have doubled in the last 10 years or so. It is 
enormous. Most of them are unemployed. It is a very dangerous, very 
difficult situation. And so Mexico says, gee, how do we do it? Do we 
actually try to improve our economy by privatizing a lot of the 
businesses that years ago were made government, specifically Pemex? And 
what an uproar that caused not too long ago when a committee on which I 
sit passed an amendment to the State Department reauthorization bill 
and it said that we should encourage Mexico to actually privatize their 
state-owned oil companies because if you want to have a better economy, 
that is one place to start.
  But does Mexico try to change their own structure to try and actually 
address the problems, the economic problems that Mexico faces? On the 
contrary. No, they told us, mind our own business. And they were 
absolutely right. It is really not our business. It only becomes our 
business when they continue to shove their unemployed into the United 
States. Then it is my business. And I have every right to tell Mexico, 
shape up, fix your economy. Stop the corruption that goes from the cop 
on the beat to the highest levels of government. Who does not know 
about it?
  You talk about another charade. The whole government of Mexico in a 
way is a charade. It is a charade that pretends to be a true government 
and in fact it is like a huge mob. It is like the Mexican Mafia, only 
in this case it is in many ways the government. Corruption from the cop 
on the beat to the highest levels of government. Everybody knows it 
exists. When you combine that level of corruption with a tendency 
toward a socialistic economy, believe me, you are going to have some 
big economic problems. You are going to have horrendous unemployment. 
You are going to have an under-class that cannot seem to find a way out 
and that will take any opportunity, take anything available to escape 
the grinding poverty that your own failed system places on them.
  So it is my business. It is the business of every American and 
especially every Congressman to tell Mexico to fix their own economy 
when they continue to send us their problems, and

[[Page H4358]]

they do so for various purposes. Mexico sends us their unemployed 
because naturally it helps reduce the pressure, the political pressure 
that they would otherwise apply in Mexico. It also helps them because 
when they get here, Mexicans dutifully send home large portions of 
their own salaries. $10 billion is the very conservative estimate of 
exactly how much money is sent to Mexico; $10 billion a year, that is. 
That is a huge sum. It is 30 percent of the GDP in Mexico.
  This is a problem, therefore, for the United States. There is a 
challenge to us all, I think, to expect more and to challenge Mexico to 
do more and expect more because Mexico, by the way, not only receives 
this economic opportunity and economic benefit by moving their people 
into the United States that are unemployed but they also achieve a 
political benefit as was told to me in the most blatant and candid 
terms by the director of the bureau in Mexico that is a newly created 
division of the Mexican Government called the Ministry for Mexicans 
Living in the United States. A fascinating title, if nothing else. 
Newly created.
  According to its director, Mr. Juan Hernandez, its purpose was to 
move Mexicans into the United States in as many numbers, as big a 
number as possible, as great a number as possible, to achieve all the 
benefits I just described: to reduce the political pressure by a large 
number of unemployed on the one hand; secondly, to gain what they call 
remittances, the dollars coming back into Mexico making up the 30 
percent of their GDP. And another thing that he mentioned that was 
really amazing and very interesting and something that we should pay 
attention to. He said, you know, they will influence your government. 
Millions of Mexicans living in the United States who retain a political 
allegiance to Mexico, and that was part of his job, to make sure that 
they did so. He would speak up here for 3 days a week, speak in Mexico 
for 4 days a week, but his job was to get as many Mexicans, he said, 
into the United States and then have them retain a political allegiance 
to Mexico so that they could then bring pressure on our government to 
change our policies vis-a-vis Mexico.
  This is a great plan. You have to admit, it works really well. It is 
a logical thing for the Mexican Government to do. It is also, however, 
logical, it seems to me, for us to say, wait a minute. Wait a minute. 
This is not the relationship we expect with a friendly country. We 
expect you to help us control our borders, especially after 9/11, 
especially after we know that people are coming into this country, and 
we have now gone to code orange again, a heightened level of security. 
It is heightened here. You will notice it as you come to the Capitol, 
there will be different things that you see when we get to different 
levels of security.
  But I will tell you what you do not see is you do not see any real 
attempt to make our borders more secure. You do not really see anything 
where somebody says it is time at this level, we now have to place the 
military on our borders, we have to employ our military assets to help 
our border patrol, help our Forest Service and help our Customs 
officials defend the border. You do not hear it. You do not see it. 
That is not part of the plan. There is no level, there is no color 
level of danger that says at this point we actually defend our borders. 
It could be. It could be the color red, the color of blood, because it 
is American blood that moves us into action sometimes. It is 3,000 
dead.

                              {time}  2115

  That is why we sometimes get into a discussion of the problems that 
confront us on our borders.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a very, very dangerous situation we face, and it 
is made more complicated every single day by the inaction of our own 
government and by the activities of those who demand that we have open 
borders, demand that we reduce our vigilance to the extent it exists 
anyway, demand amnesty for people who are living here illegally. All of 
these people are really and truly making it more difficult for us to 
protect American citizens, and they are making it easier for people to 
come into this country illegally and, in fact, walk into harm as the 
folks in this truck did, and as I say, it happens throughout the 
American Southwest that people die in the process.
  There is a great deal of blame to go around. We should accept it. We 
should do something to stop it.
  And we really have only two choices Mr. Speaker, only two choices. We 
can either abandon the border entirely and completely, repeal all the 
laws that presently are on the books about immigration control, declare 
ourselves to be an open state, declare the borders to be erased, take 
away the ports of entry, remove the Customs officials, remove the 
Border Patrol, disband those services and let people come and go as 
they want to. That is one way that we can stop this kind of thing from 
happening. People will not die trying to cross into the United States 
if there if it is not illegal for them to do so without our permission. 
That is one way.
  I am a no vote, believe me. I am a no vote. I happen to believe that 
borders matter. I happen to believe that national identity has meaning, 
that national sovereignty is an important aspect of who we are as 
Americans. So there are a hundred reasons I can give tonight for being 
a no vote. But I am saying I would like for this to be put for a vote. 
I would love for this to be put to a vote.
  And the only two options I think we should have are either the one I 
just described, where we erase the border so we no longer put these 
people in harm's way and we no longer put our own people in harm's way. 
We no longer have to go to funerals in Ajo, Arizona, for people who 
were killed in defense of the border, young men like Kris Eggle and 
hundreds of others who have died or been harmed along those borders 
trying to protect a system that really and truly says to them do not 
try too hard, let them go by.
  But if one is going to do their job, if one is a person of principle 
as these folks were and certainly Kris Eggle, one is going to do their 
job to the utmost, one is going to give 100 percent, and he gave his 
life. I do not want to see that anymore. I do not want to go to any 
more funerals for people who died on the border in defense of the 
border, if we are not going to truly defend the border. I would rather 
give it up, give it all up than to put all these people in harm's way 
and to tell the American people that there is this thing called the 
Border Patrol and do not worry, everything is going to be okay. I would 
rather just play it straight with the American people than I would 
continue this charade.
  But the other alternative, one to which I subscribe, by the way, is 
one in which we secure our borders. And believe me, Mr. Speaker, even 
though there are all kinds of people who keep saying this is not 
possible, that the borders are far too long, far too difficult, the 
terrain is far too difficult, we cannot do it, I assure my colleagues 
that is inaccurate. I assure my colleagues that this country has the 
ability to defend its own borders by the use of technology and the use 
of human resources. We can do it.
  The only thing we do not have, what is missing in the equation, what 
is missing in the concoction to actually try to defend our border, the 
theory, the agenda, what is missing is the will to defend our border. 
It is the will to use the military for fear of the political 
consequences of doing so.
  There is something else that I want to pay just some attention to 
here briefly. The other issue that needs our attention this evening, 
because this is rising to a boiling point, is something I hope that we 
are all going to pay close attention to. There is something going on 
here that needs our attention.
  Mr. Speaker, not too long ago the Mexican Government embarked upon a 
program to use its consular offices in the United States for the 
distribution of a card. We call it the matricula consular. This is a 
card that any government can give to their nationals for the purposes 
of identification. Nothing wrong with that. Other countries have done 
it in the past, not to any great extent. A few hundred people may have 
needed it for some purpose or other.
  But Mexico decided not too long ago that if they could not achieve 
the goal of open borders through this process, if they could not get 
the United States to abandon the borders and give amnesty to everybody 
who is here illegally, they would accomplish the goal another way. They 
knew that there are between 13- and 20 million people who living here 
illegally. A huge number of those

[[Page H4359]]

are from Mexico. So they decided to begin handing out these cards to 
their nationals living in the United States.
  What is interesting about this, of course, is that the card is only, 
it is only important to someone who is here illegally. If one is here 
as a legal guest of this country, if one is a legal alien in the United 
States, they have something that identifies them that the United States 
Government gave them. It is a stamp on their passport. It is a visa or 
it is a green card. It is an I-94. There is something we have given 
them to show that they are here legally. They do not need any other 
form of identification for our purposes.
  So the only real purpose is to give illegal aliens a form of 
identification that they can then use to obtain services. How does one 
get the services? Well, they send their consular officers out all over 
the United States, they go to State legislators, they go to city 
councils, they go to police departments, and they ask them, and they 
get the banks to help them with this.
  They ask them to accept the matricula consular for purposes of 
opening bank accounts, opening charge accounts, getting social 
services, doing all of the things that a ``citizen'' would do and be 
able to do just because they are a citizen of the United States, a 
legal resident.
  They have been extremely successful. The Mexican consuls and the 
Mexican Government have been extremely successful in getting cities and 
counties to do this. In fact, the State of California has, if I am not 
mistaken, already passed a law saying they have to or at least the law 
is in process saying that the State has to take the matricula consular.
  This is akin to establishing another immigration system in the United 
States. How many immigration systems are we going to run? One by the 
INS, supposedly, we give them that responsibility for homeland 
security, and one by every bank, one by every city and county in the 
United States. But that is what is happening.
  The banks started this. Wells Fargo was the beginning. Wells Fargo 
Bank looked out there and said wow, I have got this what they call 
``unbanked population.'' This is a euphemism for illegal alien, and I 
want to get them into my bank, and I want to charge them fees. So what 
do I do? How do they open an account? They are not here legally. I 
know. Let us work with the Mexican Government. Let us use this 
matricula consular. We can get them all accounts that are open.
  Now of course banks all over America, Citibank, Citibank is doing 
this. Most federally chartered banks have now begun to do this or 
accept the matricula consular. And what happened here just a couple of 
weeks ago but the United States Department of Treasury promulgated 
regulations. Get this, if there is not some incredible irony. In 
reaction to the PATRIOT Act, which was designed, of course, to increase 
security measures in the United States and so the Department of 
Treasury had promulgated regulations to implement certain parts of the 
PATRIOT Act, and so the other week the Department of Treasury in really 
cooperation with the banks said it is okay to use the matricula 
consular to open an account. If this is not just an incredible irony. A 
bill to enhance our security was used to open a loophole a mile wide 
for somebody to actually use to violate our security.
  Because we do not know, no way, no how can anyone possibly tell me 
that that Mexican matricula consular is in fact a valid document when I 
have already seen somebody get arrested with that in Colorado who had 
seven of them. His picture, seven different names. I have seen vans in 
Chicago that hand these cards out on the street corner. There is no way 
that they are ``valid'' or ``verifiable.'' But now the banks can use 
them. They can use them for identification purposes when somebody comes 
in to open an account. And I understand that today Treasury was over at 
the White House lobbying the President of the United States to get him 
to issue an executive order to say that the whole Federal Government 
will accept the matricula consular.
  This is bizarre beyond imagination. I happen to know, Mr. Speaker, 
that there are a lot of people in the government, especially in 
Homeland Security, who are absolutely opposed to this; and they do not 
want this Government to accept a foreign government ID for our 
purposes, for purposes of identification, especially in the banks, so 
they can launder money, so they can move money around from various 
accounts.
  Because I guarantee the Members that there is absolutely nothing that 
says that if we can accept the matricula consular from Mexico, what 
says we cannot possibly accept it from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, 
Iran, or anywhere else? Their nationals will come here, and already 
five other countries are now involved with this because they see this 
as a great way to avoid our immigration law, a way to avoid immigration 
law. And here the Treasury is aiding and abetting it in reaction to the 
PATRIOT Act, the PATRIOT Act which tells us that we cannot go rent a 
library book and not have to worry about the Feds coming to see what we 
are reading. That is the level of security that we are supposed to 
employ, and yet they use the PATRIOT Act to write regs to allow people 
to violate the law.
  This is incredible. Banks all over this country are doing it. I am 
searching for a bank in Colorado that I can withdraw my funds, both my 
private funds and my campaign funds, because the banks I am presently 
with accept the matricula consular. I am looking for a bank that does 
it because I want to move my money, and I certainly would encourage 
anyone to do exactly the same thing.
  The task is trying to find a bank that will not accept the matricula 
consular now. Because they say to me, hey, the Treasury just said it 
was okay; and it is now a competitive issue. As the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) was saying, I guess they cannot blame the 
pharmaceutical companies. Blame us for allowing them to do what they 
do. That is true. A bank is a profit-making center. They care about one 
thing, the bottom line. They could not care less whether or not they 
are aiding and abetting people who are living here illegally, which 
they are doing. They could not care less. Their issue is, what is the 
profit here?
  And these are multinational banks for the most part. I say 
multinational because they have absolutely no concern about this 
country's welfare. They have one concern, and that is the concern of 
the bottom line.
  And, okay, that is the system we live in. That is capitalism. So be 
it. But what else is capitalism? Capitalism is when we say to Americans 
we have a right to voice our concern, boycott, do something to show we 
do not like what they are doing. That is also the right of an American 
consumer, and I certainly encourage people to do exactly like that.
  Like I say, the problem is trying to find somebody that is not 
already in bed with the traffickers and a bank that is willing to say, 
no, this is wrong; we will not accept it.
  I am told, Mr. Speaker, that World Savings is a bank that will not 
accept it, and that is great except it is not a commercial bank, and we 
have to have a commercial account especially for our campaign, for 
one's business. So we need a national bank, a federally chartered bank, 
a commercial bank that would agree to live up to a responsibility that 
we should place on them as good citizens.
  And it is amazing. ``Citigroup Announces Precedent-Setting 
Partnership with the National Council of La Raza and Commits $105 
Million to Revitalize Hispanic Communities.''

                              {time}  2130

  You read this thing, and what you find is they can revitalize it. 
What they are doing is paying off La Raza, just exactly the same way 
other businesses have been forced into, coerced into, blackmailed into, 
funding Jessie Jackson's group. It is the same exact thing going on 
here.
  I wish people would go to their banks and would ask them what their 
policy is about the matricula consular, and the States, because 
Colorado just passed a law, the first State in the Nation, passed a law 
making it illegal for any State agency to accept the matricula 
consular. This is an important thing. It goes to exactly what we are 
talking about here in terms of what does it mean to be a citizen. Does 
it matter that we make laws against people coming in illegally? Does it 
matter if we are stopping people from getting amnesty if they have come 
illegally?

[[Page H4360]]

  What if the entire decision is made at the local level by banks, by 
city councils, who are themselves so fearful of the electorate in their 
area, so they say I have to make friends with this constituency, so let 
us accept this matricula consular. Let us tell our police to accept it, 
tell our cities, our urban authorities, our housing authorities to 
accept it. Let us go ahead and give amnesty. The Congress will not do 
it, so we will do it.
  Well, I hope, Mr. Speaker, that people all over this country will 
look at this issue, will ask their banks, will ask their city council, 
will ask their police, why are you accepting this bogus form of 
identity that is not given to you by the Government of the United 
States or by the State of whatever, but by a foreign government, at a 
time when we are suspicious and fearful of exactly what kind of thing 
can happen when people come in and steal identities in the United 
States, open up accounts under bogus names, transfer money into 
terrorist organizations?
  There are all kinds of things that can happen. It becomes a breeder 
document. This is a very dangerous thing, and I wonder what our 
government is going to do. I wonder what happened today at the White 
House, after the Treasury Department was over there trying to get them, 
Treasury and State were trying to get the Federal Government, the 
President, to agree to accept this matricula.
  I know the Homeland Defense Agency is opposed to it. I know. I saw a 
draft that was produced by Homeland Defense that said this should not 
be, that no Federal agency should accept this, and that draft was 
making its way up to the White House, up to the highest level. That is 
why all of a sudden all of the activity is over there, because they are 
getting ready to announce the policy of the Federal Government on the 
matricula consular. And I urge everyone, Mr. Speaker, everyone to 
understand that, to recognize it, and to pay close attention to what 
happens here. This is important for us all as Americans. Pay close 
attention to this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, this issue of the matricula consular is just one of many 
that we have to deal with in terms of immigration and immigration 
reform, but it is a great example of the threat we face and the many 
facets of immigration and the need for immigration reform. I will, for 
as long as I can anyway, continue to bring these issues to the 
attention of this body and to the American people.

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