[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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