[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 87 (Tuesday, June 22, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H4752-H4758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2100
SANCTUARY CITY POLICIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gerlach). 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, we have had an interesting discussion for
the last hour on the issue of security of the homeland and whether or
not our efforts in Iraq are on track, whether or not we are doing the
right thing. It is intriguing to me to listen to this discussion for a
variety of reasons because, regardless of whether or not anyone
believes that our efforts in Iraq are right and honorable and good, I
have yet to meet anyone who believes that the need to defend the
homeland from terrorist attack is not greater than it has ever been.
One may disagree entirely with whether the decisions made by the
President have been appropriate; but no one says, no one has dared to
say that we should do anything but aggressively pursue policies that
are designed to make us more secure from terrorists who we know are out
there, whether or not they conspired with the Iraqi Government, with
Saddam Hussein, or whether or not our efforts in Iraq will lessen that
particular threat. The reality is we know we have a threat and we know
that we should be doing everything possible to, in fact, defend
ourselves against that threat. That is a given. No one argued it.
Now, amazingly, Mr. Speaker, a couple of days ago I brought forward
to the floor of the House an amendment to the Homeland Security
Appropriations Act, and I have to give just a little bit of background
to help explain exactly what the amendment was all about because there
are people who are perhaps viewing this tonight who really are not
sure. But let me explain that Members of the Congress knew exactly what
this was all about.
There are, in fact, a number of cities and States around the country
that are pursuing policies that we describe as sanctuary city policies.
In the case of a State, the State of Maine is contemplating and
actually has proposed that they become a sanctuary State. What does
that mean? Sanctuary from what? Sanctuary from investigation by the
Bureau of Immigration Control and Enforcement. Because there are
cities, there are localities that are saying that they will not allow
their police forces, for instance, to, in fact, report the arrest or
the detention of anyone who is here illegally. They will not allow
their police force to report that to the Bureau of Immigration Control
and Enforcement because there is a desire to eliminate the category of
illegal immigrant from the whole lexicon. And so this is happening
throughout the country.
Why is this significant? In 1994, the Congress of the United States
passed a law, and the law said that no city or State could, in fact,
impede the flow of information to the Bureau, which then it was INS, or
from the INS so that we could be helped, the Federal Government could
be aided, in our efforts to try to control illegal immigration. That is
on the books. I was not even in the Congress of the United States when
that particular proposal was accepted and passed into law. But it is
the law. That is the given. We have a law that says that they cannot
hide these people, that no State or city can provide sanctuary for
people who are living here illegally; but, of course ,the unfortunate
aspect of that particular law is that it did not include any penalty
provision.
So cities and States are doing it. They are doing it all over the
country, and they are doing it to the detriment not just to the
security of the United States of America but to the security of their
own people in cities and States where these things are in place because
we have seen cases where people who are here illegally and who had been
arrested in the past for being here illegally, but not turned into the
Bureau of Immigration Control and Enforcement, were then allowed to go
back on
[[Page H4753]]
to the streets and commit other crimes, some of them heinous crimes.
In New York, four people raped, brutally raped, a woman. And at least
two of the four, perhaps three, were actually people who had been in
the past detained, found out to be here illegally, but not given over
to the INS and therefore not deported. So there are people being
affected by this in the most horrible ways. The story I just told is
replicated hundreds, if not thousands, of times across this country.
There was a march in Los Angeles about a month ago, 2,000 people
participated. It was a march to protest the policies of the government
that have allowed illegal immigrants to come into this country and
perpetrate horrendous crimes and then essentially escape punishment.
Not only, as I say, is this practice of sanctuary cities and
sanctuary States, not only is it a threat to the peace and security of
the people who live in those cities and States; it is also a threat to
the security of the United States of America. There are people who have
come into this country illegally not just for the purpose of obtaining
a job that no one else would take. I guess one could say maybe some of
these people came in to do a crime that no American would do because
there are plenty of them that are committing crimes.
Four hundred thousand people are here in this country, having come
into this country, having actually gone to a court of law, an
immigration law court, and been ordered to be deported because of some
violation of our law even beyond the fact that they were here
illegally. They had done something else. They had murdered, raped,
robbed, done some other thing. They have walked out and walked into
American society, and we have not the foggiest idea where they are.
Four hundred thousand people in that category.
Among those people who come into this country illegally just for the
purpose of taking a job that no one else would take, as we hear so
often, are people who are coming here for very, very bad things, to do
bad things, bad reasons. Some of them are coming in to kill every
single person here who does not agree with their perverted view of the
world and because their religion tells them that they cannot live in a
world in which free people can accept or, in fact, turn down the
opportunity to join their religious perspective.
And so, therefore, when we do things like allow sanctuary city
policies to exist, we do a lot of bad things. First of all, of course,
we create literally hundreds of different immigration policies around
the country. So it is not just the United States of America that has a
policy about immigration, which, by the way, is one of the few powers
given to this Federal Government by the Constitution. We have, of
course, usurped many other powers and duties and responsibilities that
the Constitution does not provide, but this one is truly a Federal
Government responsibility. And we do not do a very good job of
enforcing the law or accepting our responsibility. It is true. But we
do not need the problems created by cities and States that are
captivated by the cult of multiculturalism and who have passed these
bizarre laws. We do not need that.
So I proposed an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations
bill, and it simply said that no city or State that does this, that
actually puts in place a proposal of this kind, can receive funding
from the Homeland Security Act. Again, I have said oftentimes that I
often wonder what would happen if we were to actually just put that
amendment out, and many others that deal with immigration, but if we
were just to put that out to the public and see how they would vote on
it. Mr. Speaker, I guarantee the Members that the response would be
overwhelmingly supportive. In this Congress, regardless of all the
rhetoric we heard from the other side tonight about their intent to
support national security, they just disagree with Iraq, regardless of
all that rhetoric, the fact is that all but two Democrats in the House
of Representatives voted against the amendment. Sixty-eight Republicans
voted against it. We had 148 Members voting in support.
This is not a tough issue. It is not complicated. It is very, very
upfront. And we had 148 Members. This is, by the way, about 20 Members
more than we had last year on the amendment; and we will do this again,
by the way, in a short time on the Commerce, Justice, and State bill. I
am going to propose a similar amendment, and I will propose an
amendment of this nature for as long as I am able to, as long as I am a
Member of the House and until it passes. And I will propose a variety
of other amendments, and I will propose legislation dealing with
immigration and immigration reform regardless of the fact that we are,
as I say, facing this cult of multiculturalism and the bloc that it
represents that prevent us from doing anything significant in terms of
immigration reform.
Of course, that group of people who are here, who are captivated by
this concept of radical multiculturalism and refuse to think about the
possibility that America's own identity is at stake in this debate over
immigration, they are allies of other groups in the Congress, other
very powerful interest groups. One, of course, is the Democratic Party
that sees massive immigration of legal and illegal aliens into this
country as a terrific source of voters, both present and future,
because many people who are here illegally go ahead and vote. So the
Democratic Party knows that they vote mostly for them; and therefore
they will not do anything to restrict the flow of immigration, either
legal or illegal, into the country.
On our side, unfortunately, there are too many people who are
committed to the allure of cheap labor. So the Republican side listens
to the political interest groups that rely on cheap labor, and they say
to us, do not stop that flow.
So we put all those things together, the sort of radical
multiculturalists, the political opportunists, and the cheap labor
lobby; and we realize that we are here essentially unable to do
anything significant in terms of immigration reform.
And I want to say that I am so proud of the 148 people that stood
with me on this issue and will certainly face the wrath of these
particular interest groups.
But it is, again, ironic that we sat here and listened to all this
talk about national security and the need to have it, just not to be
pursuing the war in Iraq. Okay. Again, whatever side one is on on that
policy, that is fine; and we can certainly argue it.
{time} 2115
But it is amazing to me that we could find only two Democrats that
would actually support a proposal to make our country more secure by
simply enforcing the law. Is that not incredible when you think about
it? It is a law this body passed. How hypocritical, to have passed this
law thinking, hoping, that it would never be enforced, and that any
attempt to do so would be a threat to the philosophy of radical multi-
culturalism, cheap labor and political opportunity.
But that is the way it is. As the commentator said, that is the way
it is here, and it is something we are going to have to deal with. I
assure you, I will continue to propose these kinds of measures, to try
to put people on record so that constituents can see exactly what
happened.
Now, everything can be spun in a variety of ways, and I have seen
attempts by people who voted against this amendment to say they were
really voting for national security because they wanted the money for
their communities, and even if their communities had declared
themselves to be sanctuary cities that would not report illegal aliens
that they had come in contact with, that that is okay; it is more
important to get the money.
Well, do you know what? We should not reward people or cities or
States for violating the law. There is not a Member of this House that
can I think in good faith can say they believe we should reward people
for breaking the law, but that is exactly what we are doing. Every
single grant that we hand out, every single tax break that we give,
anything that we provide for cities that are in fact violating the
Federal law is an advantage to them.
It is amazing. Again, I say, it is amazing, and I surely hope that
anyone who is observing this tonight will check and see exactly how
their representative voted. If they agree with it, tell them, and if
they do not, I hope they do that too, Mr. Speaker.
[[Page H4754]]
There will be a number of other proposals that I will put forward in
the near future. One will deal with the issue of remittances. Again,
this takes a bit of explanation.
Remittances. What are remittances? Well, it turns out that millions
and millions of people who are here in this country, most of whom are
here illegally, are employed, and they take part of the salary they
make at their job, and sometimes I have seen estimates of up to 50
percent of the people who are here illegally are employed off the
books. That is to say, we are not getting any tax dollars from them.
They are not paying into workman's comp, Social Security or anything
else of that nature. But they take the dollars that they are making and
they send them home to relatives in other countries.
A report just came out not too long ago saying that about $30 billion
a year flows out of the United States just to Latin America in the form
of remittances. There are seven or eight countries in the world that
have more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product coming to
them in the form of remittances from the United States or countries
outside their boundaries, but primarily from the United States; $30
billion alone to Latin America.
Where does this money come from? It comes, of course, from the people
who work here; who, if they were not sending that money home, they
would be investing it in the communities in which they live. But since
they are not, those communities are denied the benefits of that
multiplier effect. The jobs are not being created, the economy is not
being stimulated in these communities, and the money is going primarily
south.
So, I have been thinking about this for a while, and when I saw this
report I felt that maybe something could be done in the following
manner: We every year send billions of dollars overseas to many
countries in the form of foreign aid. Much of this money, as everyone
knows, ends up in the hands of corrupt dictators or corrupt
governments, even if they call themselves democratically-elected, and
it oftentimes never, ever, ever gets to the most worthy recipient.
So I am going to propose an amendment to the foreign operations bill
that says that every dollar that we send in the form of a remittance to
some other country will be deducted from the money we send them in the
form of foreign aid.
Now, this will be quite controversial, of course. It should not be
controversial to any Member of the Congress of the United States. It
will certainly be opposed by the governments of Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, Jordan and Haiti. All of these countries will be furious at
the possibility that their check will be reduced by the amount of money
that their nationals are sending back to people in their country.
But, after all, Mr. Speaker, if in fact foreign aid is simply the
transfer of wealth from one country to another, then why is a
remittance not that same thing? In fact, it is going to people who
probably really need it, and it is far more efficient, far more
efficient than the check we send to corrupt governments in terms of the
usage.
So I am going to propose that. And we have a couple of other things
we will be dealing with. Of course, we have a lot of legislation that
we think this body ought to consider that will improve our immigration
policy dramatically.
There are organizations like NumbersUSA, which people can identify by
simply going to that site, NumbersUSA.com, and they are very heavily
involved with trying to promote immigration reform efforts. There are
people and groups all over the country of this ilk. We hear from them
all the time.
When I get done on the floor of the House with these special orders
and go back to my office, oftentimes the phones are lit up, or the e-
mails are coming in from people all over, and 99.9 percent are quite
supportive of our efforts, and I know that most Americans are
supportive of our efforts. In fact, if we put any of these issues out
there for a debate, for a vote, a national plebiscite, if you will, of
course, we do not have that in America, but if we did have such a thing
as a national election on issues that could be brought by citizens, all
of these things would win overwhelmingly. It is only the stubborn
reluctance to allow the people of this country to work their will on
this issue that prevents us from doing so in this body.
But things are changing, Mr. Speaker, and are getting a lot better
for our side. The momentum is definitely shifting to us. I have been in
this Congress now 6 years, and I assure you if anyone had proposed a
guest worker plan that included some sort of amnesty provision for
people here illegally, if they proposed this a couple of years ago it
would have gone through here without much opposition. I would have, of
course, opposed it, but I would have been in the very small minority.
Things are changing. There are five or six different bills being
proposed by very powerful Members of both the House and the Senate, and
these bills all include a provision for amnesty. They are hidden most
of the time; they obfuscate, they call it different things, ag-jobs,
agricultural jobs. But all of them have that one common theme, except
for the bill I have proposed, H.R. 3534; all the rest include some form
of amnesty.
I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that any one of those bills would have
passed through this body, as I say, a couple of years ago, just like
that. But, do you know what? They are not going to make it this year. I
do not think they are going to make it to the floor of either House,
either body, and I do not think that if they did, they would actually
ever become law, because the people are beginning to have their voices
heard here, and it is great to see.
It is great to see some of my colleagues, who in the past have come
up to me after I have made presentations like this, and said, ``You
know, Tom, you were right on this, but I could never support you,
because I have this political problem in my district.''
Now that political problem is becoming a problem for them if they do
not support us in our efforts to reform immigration. That is the most
amazing thing I can say. It is incredible. People's voices are being
heard. The faxes, the e-mails and the calls, they are being heard. It
takes time to change this body, to change their perspective point of
view, but it is happening, and it is just the greatest thing I have
seen in a long, long time.
The fact that few people are willing to pursue this, even the
President of the United States after he made his speech in December has
been unwilling to aggressively pursue this issue of amnesty and guest
worker.
There is no reason to provide amnesty for anyone who has violated the
law. There is no reason to do that. It only encourages, of course, more
violations of the law. It is pretty logical to understand that. Either
we are a Nation that respects the law and will in fact enforce it, or
we should repeal it. We should not ignore it. We should not look the
other way.
We should not pretend that when you bring an amendment to the floor
that says we need to enforce the law against cities and States that are
violating the law, we need to enforce it, we should not allow our
colleagues to obfuscate the issue by saying things like, well, it is
really a bad vote because our community would not get the money if they
have the sanctuary city law. That is not a good idea. That is not a
good idea, to reward illegal behavior. It is not a good idea to reward
cities, it is not a good idea to reward people who violate the law.
I know that many of the people agree, millions of Americans from whom
I hear on this issue and who are good enough to write and e-mail. It is
just great, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you. You go back to the office and
you get all these great e-mails from people in and out of your
district, all over America. ``I am listening to your immigration speech
on C-SPAN. Your ideas are being heard. Keep up the good work. We need
more people like you,'' blah, blah, blah. ``Respectfully, Diane Furness
from Minnetonka, Minnesota,'' and Rome, Georgia, and Weathered Rock
Road in Jefferson City, Missouri, and Monroe, New York. All over
America. These things come in night after night, day after day, and it
is wonderful to see them.
It does recharge my battery, certainly, because I stand up here often
on the floor of the House often, as I do tonight, by myself, in pursuit
of this particular policy change. It is good to know that Americans do
in fact watch
[[Page H4755]]
and do in fact care, and that they will in turn try their best to
influence their elected representatives here.
That is what the process is all about. It is a good one. It does
work. It does take time, and it sometimes seems so incredibly,
incredibly slow, but it is happening, and that is the good news.
There is another bit of good news I wanted to give the people who are
listening to this, Mr. Speaker. The Border Patrol and interior
enforcement efforts help yield positive results, by the way, also
increasing the ire of Mexican diplomats. Here is what is happening.
More than 150 suspected illegal aliens have been arrested by the
Border Patrol in a sweep of newly created ``interior checkpoints'' in
several Southern California communities, signaling a change in
enforcement strategy. The sweeps, which began last week and are
scheduled to continues indefinitely, targeted illegal aliens at public
locations in communities as far as 100 miles north of the border. The
order followed the August 2 arrest by the Border Patrol of five members
of a Mexican family outside the Mexican consulate near downtown San
Diego, all of whom were returned to Mexico.
{time} 2130
The five who were en route to the consulate to apply for their
matricula consular cards. I will explain what that is in a minute.
Deputy Consul General Javier Diaz met with Chief Veal to protest the
arrests, while Mexican Consul General Rodulfo Figueroa issued a
statement saying he was astonished by the arrests because of their
proximity to his office. Oh, my goodness. Could it possibly be that
people who are here illegally are going to the Mexican consulate to get
their matricula card? How can this be? I am shocked, as the line goes
in the movie ``Casablanca.'' I am shocked.
Mr. Speaker, it is idiotic to think the people would not be coming.
In fact, they come in droves. The lines to the Mexican consulates,
Guatemalan consulates and others who are handing out these sort of get-
out-of-jail-free cards to their nationals living there, the lines are
blocks long. They never were there before the government started
handing out these cards and we started saying in cities and localities,
they were called sanctuary cities, that we would accept them. What an
amazing, amazing thing. Sure, we have people lined up to the Mexican
consulate. Sure, they are here illegally. If you are here legally, you
do not need the card. This is an ID card that is given to you by a
foreign government, and then that foreign government tells us we have
to accept it, and many of our cities and States do so as a form of ID.
Now, if you are here legally, Mr. Speaker, you have a form of ID that
we gave you. It is called a green card or a visa or a stamp on your
passport, something that the United States Government gives you to tell
you that you are here legally. The only people who need the matricula
consular card are people who are here illegally. And, yes, they are
lining up at Mexican consulates throughout the country.
Thank God somebody has decided to do something about it. I actually
wrote a letter when this first started about a year ago, I wrote a
letter to the Bureau of Immigration Control and Enforcement in my
district, in my area, in Denver; and I suggested to them that this
would be a perfect location for them to go with a big bus and just
round up all of these people who are, in fact, there waiting in line,
because 99.999 percent of them are here illegally. They said, well,
what about that one-one thousandth of a percent of the number that
might be here legally. We better not do it. Well, somehow, some way,
they found a way to actually begin the operation of enforcing the law
even as far as 100 miles inland, and I say, thank you, thank you, thank
you. I say thank you to the Border Patrol, and I say thank you to the
American public who have, in fact, forced this.
I assure my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, it would not be happening
tonight if it were not for the tremendous pressure being placed on the
Congress and on the administration to enforce the law. And it is
happening, and there is this shift. Sometimes imperceptible, certainly
not fast enough, but it is happening. This is the good news. We are
actually arresting people who are here illegally, arresting them in
places where they gather.
This has never happened before. In fact, in the past, Border Patrol
agents were given a spot on the border, an X, literally, a big X, their
car was parked there, they were told they could not move from that spot
and that their only purpose was to try and stop people, try and
intimidate people from actually coming across the line and walking by
their car, by the Border Patrol car. It is idiotic, but that was the
rule; and, in fact, many of them are still under that rule. And people
said, are you crazy? That is not enforcing the law, that is making a
mockery of it. I mean, we had Border Patrol agents who could watch
people scurrying across the line and pass them; but they were told they
could not leave the mark, the X.
Goofy? Yes. Idiotic? Yes. Frustrating? Enormously. Not just to those
of us who care about immigration, but to the Border Patrol themselves.
How would you like to have that job, Mr. Speaker? How would you like to
be there all day long and told you have to sit on that spot and you
cannot even arrest those who are running past you on the sides? You are
there just as a sort of deterrent. If somebody looks at you and thinks,
gee, I probably should not run right into that car, but if I run to the
side of it either way, I am okay. Idiotic.
So now we are beginning to actually enforce the laws behind those
spots. Now, it is only in one place, that is true. It is in Southern
California. I have great hope. And of course, what is happening? The
immigration crowd, the open-borders crowd, the cult of
multiculturalists, they are going crazy about this. I heard somebody
say here the other day, a Member, I believe it was, that people were
afraid to go to school or afraid to go to work or afraid to go to
church because they might be rounded up by the Border Patrol. Well, of
course, nobody is arresting people for being at church or at school;
but I am glad that they are afraid to go, because it is beginning to
sound as though we are actually threatening to and even taking steps to
enforce the law.
Now, if that law is not a good law, if we should not in fact have
such a law on the books, there is a way to handle that in this
Republic. It is to, in fact, repeal it. That is the way to do it. Bring
a law to the floor saying we should not enforce; well, we will simply
repeal any law against people who are here illegally, because we need
the cheap labor and we want the votes, and we want this country to be
influenced by the cult of multiculturalism; and let us see if we can
get it passed. If we get it passed, let us see if we can pass it in the
other body, and if so, let us see if we can get the President to sign
it. He may do it. Because there are a lot of people in this body and in
the other body who believe that borders are, in fact, nothing of
consequence, nothing that anybody should pay much attention to.
Well, there are people in this room that feel that way, but
relatively few Americans feel that way. And night after night I would
stand up here and talk about the fact that there is this huge gap
between what the people of this country want and what this government
is willing to provide for them in terms of border security. But do my
colleagues know what, I say to my colleagues. That gap is narrowing.
Again, slowly, but it is narrowing. The momentum is shifting to our
side of this debate. These things make the difference. One night of
these things, and then night after night after night after night, it
does begin to make a difference.
I know that we are making a difference when I see that I and other
Members are attacked in publications around the country, conservative,
sometimes conservative Republican publications, but publications
nonetheless that are committed to the concept of free, or cheap, labor,
I should say. It is okay with me to be identified as the culprit here,
as the bad guy, the guy who is trying to stop immigration. Well, it is
not immigration. It is illegal immigration, and it is my desire to
reduce dramatically the number of even legal immigrants because we need
to get a handle on this problem.
The problem is enormous. It is bigger, in fact, than just the issue
of jobs.
[[Page H4756]]
It is bigger than the issue of false identification at the voting
booth. It is bigger than all of the costs of illegal immigration into
the country, which are enormous; far, far greater, by the way, Mr.
Speaker, than the ``taxes'' that these folks pay. Most of the people
here are here providing labor that is low-skill and, therefore, low-
wage labor. So even those who are paying taxes are paying a very small
amount.
However, even those folks have learned how to scam the system. What
they do is to claim, many of them, claim four or five or 10 children
living in another country. The IRS will give them an ITIN, an
Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, for each of those children.
They then become dependents on the tax form, and so the person not only
ends up paying no taxes because they paid relatively few in to begin
with, a few dollars in to begin with, but then they get an earned
income tax credit on top of it. So we pay people to come here and work
illegally. All they have to do is use a fake Social Security number,
turn in the 1040, and get their check.
We spend hundreds of millions, in fact billions, of dollars every
single year providing the infrastructure for people who are here
illegally. We provided for people whose children we educate in our K
through 12 system, we provide it for children of illegals who come in
here and send their kids even to higher education; and in many States
they are allowed, or else the proposals are there, I should say, to
allow them to be subsidized by the State. In many cases the State does
not even check to see if anyone is a real legal citizen of this
country, if they are here legally; and they will give them tuition,
because they will get reimbursed by the State and the taxpayer. So
there are billions of dollars going there. There are billions of
dollars being spent in pursuit of health care benefits for people who
are here illegally.
Not many people realize this, Mr. Speaker, but part of the bill that
we passed here not too long ago, the very controversial bill known as
the Medicare/prescription drug bill, not only created the biggest
entitlement program since the creation of Medicare itself, thanks to
your Republican Congress and President, but a part of that bill was a
$1 billion payment to hospitals for the treatment of illegal immigrants
who are seeking health care. Mr. Speaker, $1 billion in our Medicare
bill. This is at a time, of course, when we have about a $700 billion
deficit in this country which will be extremely exacerbated by the
creation of a new entitlement program and beyond that, $1 billion. And
the line item actually said for the care, for the medical care of
illegal immigrants in this country, illegal aliens in the country.
We had a colleague here who used to say when he would read things
like this or see things like that, ``Beam me up, Mr. Speaker.'' I
cannot be on the right planet. I can certainly understand it. Beam me
up. You really mean we are going to take $1 billion out of a pot of
money which actually does not exist, we are going to have to actually
print or go to the bond pool and try to sell government bonds in order
to get the money to pay it which, of course, creates a debt for the
government; we are going to do that to pay for only $1 billion and, by
the way, the hospitals complained about that and said that is not
nearly enough, but they are experiencing far, far heavier drains on
their reserves to provide health care for illegal aliens. We are doing
that, and that is a problem.
It is a problem for our environment. Generally speaking, Mr. Speaker,
the growth of this country, 90 percent of the growth is a result of
immigration, both legal and illegal, and the progeny of people who come
in here illegally; and a lot of people think that is good. That is
where all the growth is coming from; that is great; we will have it.
Well, there are really some very, very significant downsides to this
thing called growth. If my colleagues do not believe that, just ask
almost anyone in my neighborhood in Denver who are expatriates of
California who have fled from the State of California, fleeing the
growth in that State and fleeing all over the country, including
Colorado, and, of course, making our problems with growth even more
difficult: schools, hospitals, highways, housing. When you are stuck on
the highway anywhere in this country, you have to ask yourself, how is
it that the country is growing this quickly if we actually have a
fairly stable birth rate? There is one reason, it is called
immigration, both legal and illegal. That is the source of almost all
of the growth in this country.
Along with that growth, of course, as I say, comes some big problems
in terms of the environment. People coming into this country illegally
have essentially destroyed large chunks of our pristine desert area
along the southern border. Millions upon millions of feet going across
that border have created thousands of foot paths that will not be
something that can be overcome by the natural environment for
centuries. They have driven their cars into the desert. They have
polluted the water resources in the area. They gather in places called
pickup sites where they discard their belongings and their clothes,
many times, much of their clothing. A lot of human waste accumulates
there while they wait to be picked up by a truck that would bring them
farther inland. Sometimes these places are areas where thousands have
gathered along the southern border. I have been there. I have gone
through them.
{time} 2145
And they are creating tremendous environmental problems that, of
course, neither the EPA, that is another proposal that we have in the
works, Mr. Speaker, is to require an environmental impact statement on
immigration. Would not it be fascinating to know how immigration is, in
fact, affecting our environment?
Strangely, I have not heard a positive response from the EPA or from
the Sierra Club. I am sure that it is forthcoming. I am sure that, any
day now, they are going to say to me, Congressman, we are so happy that
you are trying to do something about the environment and we are going
to even score this, if it ever gets to the floor, we will score it in
favor, it is a vote in favor of the environment if we actually require
an environmental impact statement on immigration. We have a bill like
that. I will not take any bets about how quickly that will be allowed
to come to the floor, or even be heard, of course, but I would love to
see it.
Because it is just great to point out the hypocrisy of the
establishment on this issue. The people that come into our committee,
the Committee on Resources on which I sit and talk about the
degradation of the land, and they will talk about it as long as one
does not bring up what immigration is doing to the land, one does not
bring up the hundreds of thousands of acres that have been burned along
our southern border by people who have come in illegally they make camp
fires, move on in the morning, camp fire, of course, gets out of
control, burns hundreds of thousands of acres, Arizona, New Mexico,
Texas, California. Nobody says anything about that.
I would venture a guess, Mr. Speaker, that most of the people
listening tonight do not know about the environmental degradation of
our land as a result of illegal immigration into the country, but it is
enormous. It is horrendous.
Now, that is a problem and, of course, national security is a problem
when it comes to illegal immigration. The fact that we continue to
press for open borders, we continue to say that people should not come
into this country, or we continue to say that we will not restrict the
flow of illegal immigration, creates huge problems for us in the
standpoint of national security.
Over the weekend, I was on the northern border. And about 20 or 30
miles north of Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, we went and talked to the Customs
officials there at the port of entry and talked about the problems they
face, talked about the fact that we have been able to do a much better
job of creating a much more secure border crossing at the ports of
entry. But, of course, all that means that all those miles between
ports of entry, and there are thousands of miles, are completely open
or, at least for the most part, open.
So as you make it more difficult to come into this country illegally
through a port of entry, naturally, people will seek the weakest link
in your defenses and those are the places between the ports of entry.
And they are still coming.
[[Page H4757]]
We are still seeing people who are paying upwards of $50,000 to be
smuggled into the United States. Now, these are people, almost all of
whom are from the Middle East or from Asia. You have to ask yourself,
Mr. Speaker, why would anybody pay $50,000 to be smuggled into the
United States? It is not to work the local 7-Eleven store. No. It is
probably to do something very bad once you get here and you do not want
to be known as having come across the border. So you will not go to the
port of entry.
It is one of those things that kids would do, when you would say do
you think if you want to come into this country illegally you will go
through a port of entry and they would go, ``Duh? Are you crazy? Of
course not. Stupid?'' No. One would go around it. That is right. That
is what they do. So it is good that we have, in fact, made our ports of
entry more secure. It is idiotic that we refuse to make the miles of
border in between them more secure.
So people are coming into this country with very bad, very bad things
on their mind to do to us. Of course, there is the question. People
talk about the illegal immigration being important for the economy.
Well, let me tell you what it does to the economy. Massive importation
of cheap labor is a very, very, very bad phenomenon and has a negative
effect on low skilled, low wage American workers because it depresses
their wage rates.
And one can look at any of the information we have, the statistical
information we have on this and one will see that low income Americans
have not seen an increase in their wages. So people come here to the
floor and demand that we artificially increase them by increasing the
minimum wage. But, of course, if we allowed the market to work,
restricted the flow of cheap labor, you would see an increase, a
natural increase in the wage rates of people who are here and who are
poor.
Because, of course, if one wants to really and truly be a purist
about that kind of economics, one would say that, as the President
said, we should allow, for every single person who wants to work, find
an employer who wants to employ them.
Well, if one thinks about that, at first it sounds perfectly logical
and right and good, but if one thinks about it for a minute, one has to
realize that there are, of course, billions of people out there on the
other side of the world or on our borders who, in fact, are willing and
desirous of a job, a job presently held by an American citizen for X
number of dollars, and these people are willing to come here and take
it for X minus something.
And then, of course, if one moves a little farther out to other parts
of the Third World, there are more people who are willing to come and
replace those who just came in at an even lower rate. So naturally,
this massive immigration, legal and illegal, has a detrimental effect
on low income earners in America.
It also, frankly, when we do things like export high tech jobs or
import high tech workers from India or anywhere else on the abuse of
the H-1B or L-1 visa, what that does, of course, is to actually also
put a damper on the wages for middle income people, higher income
people. This does not help us. It helps certain companies, that is
true. It does not help America.
And so we look at the economic implications of massive immigration,
we look at the environmental implications, we look at the national
security implications. One comes to the conclusion, I think, if one
looks at all of these things in an objective way, one comes to the
conclusion that there is at least the room for debate as to whether or
not immigration is all that good, or if we should not control it much
more effectively than we do, even if it is good. Should we not know who
is coming in, for what purpose, and for how long they are going to be
here?
So there are a whole bunch of reasons why we should all be concerned
about immigration into this country, especially illegal immigration.
But there is one that is even more significant, an issue that I think
is overriding all of it. And that is the fact that there is something
else happening in America that deserves our attention. We are as a
Nation becoming less and less sure of who we are. We are being more and
more confused about what the idea of being an American really is. We
are being pressured constantly by the cult of multiculturalism.
To suggest that there is nothing good or valuable about Western
civilization or that everything that we represent to the world is a
negative, and that our efforts have been, generally speaking,
unproductive at the best, and, probably, at the worst they have been
detrimental to the benefit of humanity, this is what we put in the
textbooks. This is what we teach children. This is what our movies show
us. This is a phenomena that is absolutely fascinating to watch.
There was a book written in the 1970s, and I read it, it was by a
gentleman by the name of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. He is a liberal. I am
a conservative. But I must admit to you this was a captivating book in
many ways because of what it said about who we are. And the title of
the book that you can still get, I am sure, in fact, I got another one
just a couple of months ago, the title of the book is, ``The Disuniting
of America'' by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
He is talking about the multiculturalist phenomena that everything
where we go and everything we see is designed to split us apart in
America instead of pulling us together. That we will become divided
into all of these subgroups, these Balkanized ethnic groups or some
group victimized in their own minds and divided up so that it becomes
harder and harder to understand what America is really all about. In
fact, it becomes harder and harder to identify those ideas and ideals
that hold us all together as Americans.
He talked about this 30 years ago. There have been books subsequent
to that written by people like Samuel Huntington. Mr. Huntington, one
of his books in the 1990s was called ``The Clash of Civilizations.'' It
talks about this. His most recent book that came out last month is
called, ``Who Are We?'' I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in
this issue, anyone who thinks about this issue beyond the most
superficial level.
Who are we as Americans? Do we really know? Are we really and truly
doing those things that are designed to have everybody who is here,
whether they are from Azerbaijan or Zimbabwe, regardless of the country
of origin with redoing those things that encourage people who come here
as immigrants and people who are born here and in our school systems,
are we doing those things that encourage those people to connect with
the idea of America? Are we telling them that they should stay
separate? Are we telling them that they will teach them in their own
language even if that language is not English? Yes, of course, we are.
Are we encouraging them to keep their political affiliations to other
countries, not just the United States? Yes, in fact, we are. We now
have somewhere near 10 million people it is estimated who live in this
country with dual citizenships. We are seeing other countries in the
world take advantage of this cult of multiculturalism that permeates
our societies.
We are seeing, in fact, the President of Mexico who was here just a
few days ago, June 18, this is an article out of the Phoenix paper,
Mexico City, ``Mexican President Vincente Fox announced Tuesday he
planned to send a bill to Congress asking law makers to give Mexicans
living abroad the right to vote in their elections in Mexico in 2006.''
Currently, Mexicans have to return to their home country to vote.
More than 20 million people of Mexican heritage live in the United
States, and half of those are Mexican born. Mr. Fox also came here to
the United States just a few days ago and was essentially campaigning
here in America for votes from the Mexican American community or I
should just perhaps say Mexican community, because I do not know what
attachment they have to America. But he is telling them that they
should not attach to America, that they should retain their political
ties to Mexico, vote in Mexican elections.
Now, why is he doing this? I will tell you. There are a couple of
reasons. One is that he wants them here in the United States, he wants
to encourage more people to come from Mexico to the United States, but
he also wants to make sure that when they get here they continue to
have an allegiance to Mexico and therefore they will send home
remittances, the money I was
[[Page H4758]]
talking about earlier, the money that is made by people who work here
but sent home that now accounts for about $15 billion to the Mexican
government and the Mexican economy.
And now it is higher, that is a greater amount than any other foreign
investment in the country. It is greater than the amount invested by
tourists in Mexico. It is second only in terms of the dollars brought
into the country to PEMEX who is their Mexican-owned, government-owned
oil company.
So do you now understand why President Fox was here in the United
States essentially campaigning for his presidency by asking people here
to remain connected to Mexico and complaining, by the way, about their
rights that he says are being violated by the United States? And that
he says I will take up this issue of your rights here with the
President of the United States, the rights of people who have violated
the law to come into the country to begin with.
{time} 2200
It is true that anybody here certainly has a certain degree of human
rights. They have the right to life, but in terms of all the other
``rights of citizenship,'' the right to vote, the right to get driver's
licenses, the right to send your children to higher education, all
those are supposedly reserved for people who are here legally, whether
they came from Mexico or Guatemala or Hungary or Italy or China,
wherever they came from. If they came here legally, they have a right
to all of those things.
If you come here illegally, the question is what are your rights, and
certainly it is not the business of the President of Mexico or any
other foreign government to come in here and lecture us about the
``rights'' we are providing or not providing to citizens from other
countries. I would just end by saying, if they are coming here
illegally, there is a solution to the problem. They can return. If
their rights are being violated, they can return home. They are not
doing that.
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