[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 81 (Monday, June 14, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H3952-H3955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WILLINGNESS TO ADMIT FAILURE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Garrett of New Jersey). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from
Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for half the remaining time until
midnight.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting discussion of
the issues of the day for the last hour or so by the opposing party,
and certainly I am sure that to a large extent the remarks are
heartfelt and are as a result of a distinct difference in opinion as to
exactly where this country should be and how the leadership should
actually be constructed.
It is intriguing to me in a way as I sat and listened to the
discussion about when the Members of the other side talk about the need
for admissions of wrongdoing or failure. It would be so much more, I
think, credible for them to approach this issue by first saying that we
on the left have to admit certain things that we now know to be
inaccurate.
Let us start with the fact that the entire world has disavowed our
economic theories of greater government control of the economy, of
cooperation with foreign governments, especially those governments that
were totalitarian in nature and Communist by design, but all of these
things have failed and we know it and the whole world recognizes it.
The fall of the Communist empire, as a result of the variety of
strategies employed by the United States and by others, including the
Pope, as a matter of fact, we now see that it was a house of cards that
had no real basis in reality; that could not sustain itself; that
socialism was not ever, ever able to deliver its promise of a better
life for the people under its control; that greater government control
of the economy, that larger government enterprises, that opposition to
Communism, that all of these things were failures. It would be so much
more credible for our friends on the other side of the aisle to
approach this discussion of the need for willingness to admit failure
had they started with that.
Had they started with saying, you know what, we have tried, we for 40
years, we had control of this body, Presidency, it was a Democratic-
controlled Congress, certainly for the majority of the 40 years prior
to 1994, and we pushed the idea of greater Federal involvement in the
lives of Americans. We did so because we believed it was right. We did
so because we believed the theories that were supposed to be there to
substantiate the claim that greater control of our lives by the
government, even control of the means of production by the government,
the things we call socialism today, those claims have now been proven
to be false.
It would be so refreshing to have them stand in front of the House,
Mr. Speaker, and say we were wrong and we are willing to admit it; we
are willing to admit that people do better throughout the world, as a
matter of fact, not just in the United States. But throughout the
world, it is the governments under which they live that are governments
that espouse a free enterprise, a democratic kind of government that
allows for individual liberty and individual enterprise. We were wrong
to suggest that we should not confront Communism as forcefully as
possible and that we should not, in fact, increase all of our Defense
appropriations so as to essentially force the Communist empire to
collapse under its own weight which is, of course, what we did, what
Ronald Reagan proposed and it worked.
Most of the leaders of the Free World, and even some leaders of what
was in the past a totalitarian country, came to the United States for
the purposes of paying homage to Ronald Reagan and admitted that his
strategy and his ability to see what was good for America and what was
good for the world was, in fact, the right way to go.
Yet, never did I hear in the discussion here for the preceding hour
that our friends were willing to concede the point that they were wrong
and that the whole world knows it, and that people, every time they
have had the opportunity, they voted to cast off totalitarian
dictatorships and socialist enterprises.
So, as I say, it would have been better, it would have been certainly
more convincing had they come here first with an apology for all of the
things that they have been espousing for the last half a century and
now they know to be incorrect and failures of policies, but they did
not do that. They just suggested that what we are doing today is wrong.
Well, what makes us think then that what their view is of today is any
better, any more correct, any more insightful, any more intuitive than
what their view of what was yesterday and the world in which we lived
up till today? Why should we trust them with guiding this Nation's
future?
I did not hear them disavow the principles upon which their party and
upon which, in fact, the left has been relying for years and today
only, only exists and are espoused in institutions of higher education
primarily in this country but perhaps even around the world; but
everywhere where the rubber hits the road, everywhere where people have
to actually go out and make a living for themselves and their families,
everywhere where people are struggling to overcome the kinds of
government tyranny under which they may live, everywhere where that
exists, people yearn for something quite different than what the left
offers them.
So that realization, that empirical evidence that we have to say that
all of those ideas were wrong, that evidence has not yet manifested
itself, and that realization of the error of their ways, it has not
manifested itself in any of the rhetoric I heard tonight while I was
waiting to deliver my remarks on, I should say, a totally different
subject.
Nonetheless, I thought I should comment on what is apparent to me to
be at least a discrepancy in the testimony that was provided here by
our friends on the other side of the aisle for the last hour.
Immigration Reform
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, let me go on to the discussion of an issue
that I have many times in the past tried to bring forward on this floor
and an issue that I believe to be of enormous importance to the country
and certainly an issue that I believe needs the attention and debate of
my friends and colleagues in the Congress of the United States and
certainly a reflection of the debate that goes on throughout the
country every single day around water coolers in offices and on work
sites throughout America and around dinner tables throughout America.
That debate and that discussion revolves around the issue of
immigration and immigration reform, and it has many, many implications
for who we are as a Nation, where we go from here, and how successful
we may be in trying to achieve whatever goals we establish for
ourselves.
It is connected to an even more significant challenge to the United
States, and that is the reestablishment of the idea of exactly who we
are, of what we are, what principles we espouse as a Nation, of what
principles we can adhere to as a people.
This part of the debate is an extremely important one, hard to bring
up, hard to articulate. Certainly it is
[[Page H3953]]
impossible to do so in a bumper-sticker fashion. It does require some
degree of analysis that goes beyond the 30-second or 60-second sound
bite, but I believe it to be a very important debate and discussion to
undertake.
If we are to believe the polls that have been taken for the last
decade or more on the issue of immigration, Americans generally believe
that, number one, we should, in fact, enforce the law against people
coming here illegally. That means enforcing our borders, making sure to
the extent possible that people do not come into this country without
our permission, people do not come here that we do not know about, and
that we make people come into this country through a normalized and
legal process.
The United States of America is unique in many ways. One way is that
we accept more people into this country every single year legally,
through a legal process of immigration and also temporary visitor
status, than any country in the world. We are and have been always a
beacon of light to the world, a beacon to which many people are
attracted.
It is peculiar, to say the least, that even with this policy, this
very liberal policy of immigration and legal access into our country
through temporary worker status, we still have and allow for millions
of people to enter this country illegally. We do not know who they are.
We do not know why they are coming. We do not know how long they are
staying, and we do not know where they are once they are here.
{time} 2245
Now, most Americans will say this is a bad policy to pursue, that it
is not good for America, it is not good for our future, and that we
should establish the concept of the nation-state and defend that
concept with essentially defending our borders.
Beyond that many people suggest, a majority of Americans even suggest
we need to reduce legal immigration until such time we can get this
problem under control. Every poll says that is what America wants. Now,
a dilemma is then created by the fact that this is the will of the
people, and it has been for a long, long time. It is not new; it did
not just happen after President Reagan said he wanted a guest worker/
amnesty program and that created quite a furor. It has been the case
for years that that is what the American people want. They want borders
enforced, they want controls on immigration, and yet this body and more
peculiarly, even cities and States throughout the Nation, which one
would think would be more reflective of local citizen input than even
the Congress of the United States, which we know has always been
historically way behind the curve in terms of popular sentiment, but
one would think that we would see reflected in city councils and State
legislatures, one would think we would see far more of a reflection of
the position that I have just described that is held by a majority of
people in the country.
The most difficult question we have to answer, why is that the case?
Why do our elected officials seem to be paying little attention to what
most Americans feel? There are a number of answers to that question.
They are not necessarily pleasant to discuss, but they are true. That
is for the most part we see legislatures and the Congress of the United
States and even city councils that are very responsive to pressure and
pressure groups and less responsive to the general will of the people
if it is not reflected through these pressure group-type of
organizations.
For the most part, politicians in the United States have concluded
that they can address this issue by essentially finessing it, by
agreeing theoretically with people when they are in an atmosphere, an
arena in which doing so would be to their political advantage. They can
agree there is a problem with immigration and that we should do
something about it and we should stop illegal immigration. Everybody
will mouth the platitudes connected to that concept.
But they believe also that they can finesse this issue by essentially
using the rhetoric to mollify a certain part of their constituency
while simultaneously doing things to attract another group; and these
are very powerful groups in many ways, certainly very vocal groups
which press for open borders, for relaxation of law enforcement, and
have a totally different opinion about how this country should actually
develop.
For the most part, they are trying to serve two masters here. Most
politicians are trying to serve two masters, and they have been
successful in doing this in many ways because for the most part people
in the United States when asked how do they feel about immigration come
down on our side, but are not organized in political pressure groups
designed to actually force politicians to acknowledging it. They are
simply voters and citizens who go to work every single day and have
other things on their minds.
It is also true that the parties themselves, the Democrats and the
Republicans, are both inclined to do exactly what I say that individual
politicians do, and that is pander on the one side to immigration, pro-
immigration groups, and on the other side placate those people who are
concerned about it, placate them through rhetoric, but not through
action. They are trying to play this dicey game, and sometimes it
works.
We have seen throughout the land the development of a very
interesting phenomenon whereby foreign countries have used their
consular offices in the United States to lobby States and city
governments to get them to accept for purposes of identification
something called the matricular consular ID card that is given to a
person not by the United States of America but by a foreign government.
And then that government comes to an American city, county, or State
and says please accept the card we give out as proper identification.
Now of course Members have to understand that the only reason that
the card is necessary is because we have millions and millions of
people who are living here illegally. Those are the only folks to whom
such a card would be important. If a person is here in this country
legally, of course, they have a document which we have given them, a
visa, a passport stamp, something that the United States of America has
said this allows you to enter our country. Even if you are not here as
a citizen, you are a legal alien resident. That is the term.
So the only people who need the matricular consular are illegally
present in the United States, and everybody knows that. The governments
that are pushing it, and the cities and States that are accepting these
things know that they are only helpful to people who are here
illegally, and they are only helpful if a city or State agrees to
accept that card, thereby making it very difficult for people who
actually enforce immigration law in this country. Making it very easy,
on the other hand, to live here if you are here illegally. You will get
all of the benefits of anyone who is here legally. You will be afforded
a variety of privileges that have heretofore been allowed only to those
people who were citizens of the United States or at least here with the
permission of our government. That is happening throughout the country.
We have seen it. We have seen cities capitulate. We have actually seen
cities, it is bizarre as you can imagine, we have seen cities that
actually allow people to vote if they are not legal residents of this
country.
The Mayor of this city, Washington, D.C., the District, proposed this
several months ago for D.C. He said that anybody who is here as a
resident should be able to vote regardless of whether or not they are
citizens. Again, if we put this up for a vote, a vote of the people,
the specific issue to allow people who are here illegally to vote, how
many places in America can you imagine that would pass? Maybe in D.C.,
that is true, but not too many other places in this country would say
that is okay; but cities and States are doing it.
In the next few days we will be debating a number of appropriations
bills, one which will fund the Department of Homeland Security, the
Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill. I will offer a series of
amendments to that bill. I will tell Members right now those amendments
will fail on the House floor. They have done so in the past. That
certainly will not stop me from introducing them again.
But I suggest, every one of the amendments that I propose, if I
proposed them to the American people in the form of some initiative
process or
[[Page H3954]]
some way to let all America vote, I know and certainly all polls tell
us they would pass. One, I will propose that no city that has
established a sanctuary policy, that is a policy that allows people to
come into that city who are here illegally and be protected from the
Federal Government's attempts to actually enforce immigration law,
where cities that will pass legislation, pass municipal ordinances
saying if a person is here illegally, that will not effect the way
people are treated by their own police department. In fact, if police
pick someone up for violating a law, robbery, rape, murder or going
through a red light, if they find that person is here illegally, they
will not report that to the Department of Immigration Control and
Enforcement.
Those laws are on the books in various cities throughout the country,
and even States are undertaking similar types of proposals. Maine has
recently declared itself, or is in the process of declaring itself, to
be a sanctuary State.
I am going to suggest in the form of an amendment to an
appropriations bill that no city or State that adopts these kinds of
policies should be able to obtain any of the grants that are available
through the bill through the Department of Homeland Security.
I have in fact done that in the past, and I think we got about 110 or
120 votes, I cannot remember now; and it will probably not be much more
than that when I introduce that amendment again.
I have another amendment that says any city or State that gives
illegal aliens driver's licenses will likewise be restricted from
obtaining Federal funds under the act.
It is amazing to think about the fact that we have States that are
willing to do this and in fact have done this, provide people who are
here illegally with the form of identification as close to a national
ID as we have that will allow people to have access to every aspect of
American life as a regular citizen would have, and make it therefore
much easier for someone to be in this country illegally. That goes for
the person who is here, quote, to only do the job that no other
American will do, as if there in fact was such a job, and it also goes
for the person who is here to kill every single one of us and our
children. They can use that passport into American society that we call
a driver's license just as well as the person who is only here to do a
job no one else will do; and yet these things are happening, and I will
go ahead and suggest that, in fact, my amendments will fail.
I am going to do another amendment as soon as the bill for foreign
appropriations comes to the floor, and that is just another way of
saying foreign aid. When our foreign aid bill comes to the floor, I am
going to introduce an amendment saying that the foreign aid to any
country will be reduced by the amount of money that is flowing from
this country, from the nationals of the foreign country who are working
here, anybody who is working here and sending money back to the country
of origin, and that is called remittances, that is how we refer to the
dollars sent back from people working here for the most part illegally,
and taking money out of our communities and not allowing that money to
go to work to create jobs and improve the economy of the communities in
which the folks here are living, most of them communities in desperate
need of economic stimulus; but those dollars are flowing to people in
countries outside of the United States.
We had a report not too long ago that that number, the number of
dollars that flow just to Latin America, not to the rest of the world,
just to Latin America is about $30 billion a year.
There are several countries in the world that have more than 10
percent of their gross domestic product made up from remittances from
the United States of America.
{time} 2300
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that if foreign aid is the simple transfer of
wealth from one country, in this case America, to another country, that
we can do it better through remittances than through writing a check to
a corrupt government that will skim off almost all of the dollars
before they ever get to anybody who actually may need them. So as a
result, I think we should punish those countries for the economic
policies they have adopted that have caused the populations in their
country to despair and to be subjected to impoverishment. We should not
reward the thugs that run these countries. We should stop giving them
money and we should say, okay, we know you are getting billions of
dollars a year from the United States going straight to people who are
certainly in need in your country, so we will not be giving you that
money in foreign aid anymore, we will just allow the flow of
remittances to make up for that.
Most of the countries in the Western hemisphere that have been
lobbying so hard to get the United States to maintain an open door
policy toward immigration, in fact, the elimination of borders, it is
interesting, many people have asked me why it is in fact that Mexico
and Guatemala and El Salvador and a number of these countries have been
so adamant about getting us to open our borders to their nationals.
There is a reason, Mr. Speaker, and it is not just simply because they
want to see the people in their country prosper. It is because they
want to see the people in their country become the source of revenue
for the folks in their own country. They recognize that they can
maintain their power more easily if the masses are being provided the
sustenance they need through the remittances that are coming from the
United States, then they can rely on the foreign aid that we send them
to go into their pockets and to prop up their regime. I think we should
reduce that. I think we should stop that. I will propose an amendment
to the foreign ops bill to do exactly that.
If we put that amendment to the country, Mr. Speaker, is there anyone
in this room, is there anyone on either side of the aisle that really
and truly believes that would fail in the eyes of the American people?
No, of course not. We all know it would pass overwhelmingly if the
American people were allowed to vote on it individually. It will fail
here in this body. But I will continue to do that. I will continue to
offer amendments of this nature. I will continue to talk about the need
to do something about immigration and immigration control because I
believe it is perhaps the most important domestic policy issue we face
as a nation.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, Mr. Speaker, the issue of
immigration and that sort of thing does not just revolve around the
issue of jobs although it is enormously important to America. It is a
fact that we are importing massive numbers of low-skilled, low-wage
people who in fact hold down the wage rates of low-skilled, low-wage
American workers, making it even more difficult for them to ever work
their way out of the cycle of poverty. It is absolutely true that that
occurs. No one suggests that massive importation of cheap labor has
helped the low-income wage earner in America. Nobody suggests that.
Even the most devoted pro-immigration lobby never suggests that it
helps the poor in America. It increases the number of the poor. In
fact, when we do our surveys every year about people living in poverty,
it is amazing, but a huge percentage, somewhere near 90 percent of
those people whom we now identify as in poverty in the United States
are people who are in fact noncitizens of the United States. It is also
true that those people who have dropped out of the job market, who have
had a harder and harder time to actually get a better job and crawl
their way up out of their particular situation have been negatively
affected and that job is made much more difficult by the massive number
of people who are here illegally or by immigrants here legally or not.
So it is an important issue.
The fact that we export all of our high tech jobs to India and other
places while simultaneously importing very high tech, very capable
people to take the place of American workers because they will work for
less and that in turn holds down the wage rates of middle-income
workers in this country, all of those things are true.
We will certainly see and do see as we look around the country the
economic effects of open borders. It does benefit multinational
corporations, that is true. It does not benefit the people who in fact
work for them or the nations in which those multinational corporations
exist or call home. Few corporations today can even be thought of as
[[Page H3955]]
being American corporations. In fact, I think it was Ralph Nader sent a
request to all of the huge corporations in America asking them to begin
their board meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. Few even responded
but those that did were irate that he would suggest such a thing,
suggesting that there is no allegiance to a nation state, that their
allegiance is to a corporate bottom line. And if that bottom line can
be enhanced by ignoring the needs of the country in which they are
housed, that is okay, they are going to do it because that is exactly
what they are constructed for.
So it is true that this issue is a jobs issue. It is certainly true
that this issue is a national security issue. As I said, there are
people who are coming into this country hidden among those who are
coming here for relatively benign purposes but there are people coming
in to do us great, great harm, undeniably true. We have found some here
already. We have arrested them. Some of them we have been able to
actually take out of circulation not necessarily because we can
immediately bring them to trial on the basis of espionage or some sort
of allegation that deals directly with their support of terrorism but
because they have violated immigration laws. That is the first thing we
go to. They are here illegally. It is nice we have something to use and
it is nice that we would actually use it, but the fact is that even
these things are not as important in totality as the issue I discussed
earlier, and that is the very difficult problem we are going through in
America with identifying who we are.
There is a great book that has just come out. It is in fact called
``Who Are We?'' It is by Samuel Huntington. I consider him to be an
enormously talented observer of the American political and social
scene. He has written other books, one called ``The Clash of
Civilizations'' that I have read several times over. I am about halfway
through ``Who Are We?'' I find it to be a fascinating read. I believe
that that is the ultimate question with which we are dealing, who are
we? Where are we going? What is it we are going to try and accomplish
as Americans? What does it mean to be an American?
Our students in our classrooms throughout the country are being fed a
steady diet of anti-Americanism, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt.
This diet includes a revision of history that creates a picture I think
totally and completely incorrect and certainly skewed that would show
American history and Western civilization itself as being inherently
evil, something out of which nothing good could come. A textbook I
remember picking up in a junior high I was in in my district, this was
a couple of years ago now, started out, the chapter on American
history, as Columbus came here and destroyed paradise.
{time} 2310
That was not in italics. It was not just a quote they were going to
then analyze. That was the way the textbook portrayed Columbus's trip
and his landing here on our shores, on the shores of North America.
That kind of thing where we have made it very confusing for Americans
to even understand or identify who, in fact, or what we are, combined
with massive immigration where that same message is given to people who
are not necessarily coming here, by the way, to become Americans but to
simply achieve a greater economic level of existence and prosperity,
which certainly is an admirable and laudable and understandable goal.
But it behooves us, I think, to change the way in which we teach our
children, the way in which we discuss this issue of multiculturalism,
which has gotten to the point where it becomes almost a cult and that
anything that is said to suggest that American culture, that American
history, and that Western Civilization is, in fact, worthy of analysis,
worthy of allegiance, anything that suggests that is determined to be
sort of against the grain; and it is certainly not going to be accepted
by academia as a legitimate subject matter.
I recently had the opportunity of going to a high school in my
district where 250 students were asked to assemble. And we talked for a
while, and one of them asked me a question. They sent these questions
up. And it was written out, and it said what do I think is the most
serious problem facing America today? And I said, Before I answer that
question, let me ask you something: How many in this room, 250,
approximately, students, how many in this auditorium would agree with
the statement that you live in the greatest country in the world? And
about maybe two dozen raised their hands, and they did so sheepishly,
the ones that did. It was none of that immediately hands go up, sure,
of course, naturally, we live in the greatest country in the world.
That did not happen.
And they looked along the walls where their teachers were lined up in
this auditorium, and I could see in their faces that they were
concerned. I am not saying that the ones that did not answer were
suggesting that they did not like America, hated America. I am just
saying that they did not have the slightest idea, they had absolutely
no intellectual ammunition to defend themselves if they were to
postulate that, in fact, America is the greatest country in the world.
They were not taught anything that would lead them to that. In fact,
they were taught things that would make them feel very sheepish and
sensitive about making that kind of statement.
That is what I consider to be the real issue with which we are
involved and which we should be debating: changing the way in which we
look at ourselves, changing the way in which we teach our children
about who we are, and certainly changing the way in which we try to
bring immigrants into American mainstream, which today does not exist.
Today we tell them they should stay separate, keep a separate language,
even keep political affiliations with countries other than the United
States. This is all done to our great and long-lasting disadvantage. It
is a very serious issue, one that, as I say, requires more time and
attention and analysis than can be given during a 30-second or even 1-
minute ad during a political campaign. But it is the reason why I do
come to the floor as often as I do to try to raise the issue.
I could be, of course, 180 percent off course here. I could be
totally wrong. But I believe with all my heart that at least this
deserves the debate, that this body should afford it, and that this
arena would be the perfect place for that to occur.
____________________