[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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