[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23215-23219]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        OUR NATION'S IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.

[[Page 23216]]


  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about an issue that 
often compels me to come to this floor and express to my colleagues my 
concerns about, I think, one of the most pressing public policy issues 
that we face as this Nation, and certainly as the Congress of the 
United States, and that is the issue of massive immigration, legal and 
illegal, into the country and what that means for us as a Nation.
  And I say that, Mr. Speaker, because I believe with all my heart that 
there are massive, to use the word again, massive, implications of 
massive immigration, both legal and illegal.
  And some may be very good, some may have value, and some may be very, 
very bad. And it behooves us, it seems to me, as the body that is 
charged with the responsibility for being, perhaps, the foremost 
marketplace of ideas in the country, it behooves us to at least talk 
about these issues.
  And I suggest that we talk about it because I know, Mr. Speaker, that 
America is talking about it, America around the water cooler, America 
around the unemployment line, America across neighborhood fences, 
America is talking about this, and America is worried about this issue.
  They are worried about many things, and they are accepting of many 
things. They, I think for the most part, look at immigration as 
certainly I do, as being something that has been beneficial to the 
Nation, that has provided for us a diverse population and culture that 
certainly is the envy of the world in many respects and has been 
immensely rewarding to us as a Nation. It is a rich environment in 
which we all can exist and prosper.
  And so it is difficult, then, if you feel that way in your heart, 
which I, of course, do, that it is difficult to then lead us into the 
discussion of another aspect of it and that is a far more disconcerting 
aspect of immigration, massive immigration, I should say, not just 
immigration, but massive immigration on a scale we have never, ever 
experienced before at a time, I hasten to add, at a time when we also 
are going through a peculiar cultural phenomenon in the United States.
  I refer to this phenomenon as the culture of multiculturalism which 
has overtaken us. It is a philosophy peculiar in many, many ways, I 
think, and peculiar, I think, to many Americans, but it has nonetheless 
taken hold among the elite in the country, the academics, the media, 
certain groups within the United States political establishment, that 
see America, and in a broader sense Western civilization, as something 
that they have to be ashamed of.
  The values of Western civilization, many people who I would call 
cultists in the pursuit of this multiculturalism agenda, they see 
Western civilization as nothing of value and, as a matter of fact, for 
the most part something to be discounted. And they will actually talk 
about it in the most negative terms, and continually suggest to our 
children in school and to the public that pays the slightest bit of 
attention anymore to the national media, especially the media 
represented by or as exemplified, I should say, by commercial 
television, to those who still pay attention to those particular 
forums, these people look at this and think to themselves, maybe there 
is not anything really of value.
  And children will, unfortunately, grow up learning only the most 
negative things about the United States and about Western civilization 
and begin to lose any real connection to the goals and aspirations and 
ideals of America that were exemplified in the Constitution of the 
United States, that were articulated by the people who founded this 
country and for 200 years, the ideals to which and around which we all 
rallied. And I fear, in a way, that we are losing this kind of 
connection.
  I know this is somewhat esoteric, I know that this is not the typical 
kind of discussion that is held here on the floor of the House, but I 
ask that we do, in fact, engage in this discussion because I believe it 
is both meaningful and important to us as a Nation to discuss and to 
debate. The simple question is who are we? Who are we?
  Samuel Huntington, who is a well-respected historian and social 
scientist, has written several books, the most recent, at least that I 
read, was The Clash of Civilizations. And he is coming out with another 
one, I am told, relatively soon. And I am looking forward to it. It is 
called Who Are We? And it takes a very in-depth look at this particular 
issue and this question.
  He suggests that we are being sort of Balkanized in the United 
States, and in much of Western civilization for that matter. We are 
Balkanized into subgroups, subcategories, hyphenated categories as 
something American. And that this pressure to disconnect from a set of 
American ideals and ideas or those that we could call Judeo-Christian 
in nature, the precepts of Western civilization, that the disconnect 
from this is dangerous and that we should not be doing it.
  And I certainly agree that there, again, are implications to this 
kind of phenomenon that are worthy of our discussion.
  Beyond that, then, we have to think about what massive immigration 
means in this light and in this context, especially when it has changed 
so dramatically. Immigration and immigration policies have changed so 
dramatically over the last, let us say, 50 or 60 years but certainly in 
the last couple of decades.
  In the past, certainly when my grandparents, and perhaps yours, came 
to this country, they were encouraged in many ways. Certainly, there 
were all kinds of discrimination that my grandparents faced, I am sure 
every wave of new immigrants confronted a new set, or maybe an old set, 
of discriminatory tactics. But even in the face of those obstacles, 
they were able to overcome them, they were able to succeed, they were 
able to move on. And they did so for a variety of reasons. Certainly, 
there was some internal desire to do so.
  I remember, distinctly, my own grandparents talking about the fact 
that we should never ever think of ourselves as anything about 
Americans. We should never really connect to the old past. My 
grandparents all came from Italy. And although they were certainly 
proud of their heritage, they wanted to disconnect from the past and 
reconnect, or connect, I should say, to a new culture. And they wanted 
to be Americans in every sense of the word. So much so that, as I grew 
up, I never, ever, thought of myself as anything but an American.
  Mr. Speaker, if someone were to have said to me, what is your home 
country, I would have said, well, the United States. What is your home 
State? I would have said, Colorado, and thought, how silly to ask such 
a question. But that is how I grew up. That is what I thought of as my 
heritage.
  And my grandparents were forced to do other things. They were forced, 
whether they wanted to or not, of course, to work because there were no 
options. They would either work or they would starve. There was no 
welfare. There was no social service net to save them if they were to 
fail. They had to rely upon their own labor because they had few other 
skills but the labor they brought with them, the brawn, if you will.

                              {time}  2115

  They had to rely upon family and friends, and they had to do 
something else that was incredibly important when you think back on it. 
It was important for many reasons, but some did not become, some of 
those reasons were not clear, as they are today, when you think back, 
and that is that they had to learn English. They were sort of forced 
into it. I do not know how willingly my grandfather learned the English 
language, how devoted he was to the study of it, but I do know this, 
that it consumed him in terms of the time he would try. Certainly my 
grandmother would tell him, you have to try harder and you have to 
speak English. Actually she would always say, speak American, and in 
that process what was happening is they were becoming part of a greater 
society, a greater culture, bigger culture, and they were integrated 
into that culture, again, overcoming the obstacles that they faced with 
discrimination, which they certainly did, and, as I say, every newly

[[Page 23217]]

arriving group in this country faces, but they were forced to learn 
English. They were forced to work. They were forced to actually 
integrate into the American mainstream.
  Today, because of this cult of multiculturalism that permeates our 
society, we set up obstacles. We not only set up obstacles to people 
coming into this country and feeling at home. I mean, there are 
certainly a lot of discriminatory tactics employed, and I am not 
suggesting for a moment that discrimination has been eliminated from 
the culture. It has not, but we have done something else in a very 
peculiar way, maybe in a response to what we consider this, the 
discrimination, as we have set up this other sort of agenda or culture, 
if you will, or phenomenon.
  I guess that is the best way to describe it because what we tell 
people today is they should not, in fact, reconnect, or they should not 
connect with America and with our culture and with American and Western 
civilization; that they should remain separate and distinct, in 
separate enclaves and retain their own language and retain their 
political affiliation and cultural affiliation with the country of 
their origin. And we tell them not to come into American mainstream, 
that there is nothing of value, and, therefore, they should essentially 
stay separate, all in this quest to make people feel at home or 
certainly make people feel that Western civilization offers them 
nothing of any consequence, and therefore, this separate and distinct 
set of societies that we are developing in the U.S. has greater value.
  Not too long ago, in fact just a couple of weeks ago, there was an 
article in the Los Angeles Times that I remember reading here on the 
floor, at least excerpting parts of, and it talked about an event in 
Los Angeles. I believe it was not Cinco de Mayo because it was just a 
few weeks ago. It may have been the celebration of Mexican Independence 
Day, and it talked about the fact that there were thousands and 
thousands of people on the streets of Los Angeles, all with Mexican 
flags, and all, as they said, experiencing the joy of their homeland in 
talking about and cheering the flags that went by of their States. And 
I remember thinking to myself, their homeland? Their homeland. What is 
their homeland? Is it not the United States of America? What is their 
State? Is it not California?
  We all have pride, as I say, in our heritage, but there was something 
peculiar about this article, I thought, because it does, once again, 
sort of focus in on what I am trying to describe here as a problem, at 
least I believe is a problem in this country, and that is our desire to 
ignore everything that would pull us together as a Nation and to, in 
fact, accentuate all the things that split us apart.
  As I say, from my point of view, Mr. Speaker, it is disconcerting to 
say the least, and I worry about what this means for America, and I 
wonder. And although I certainly will be the first to tell you I do not 
have all the answers, I know, and I can certainly ask a lot of 
questions, but I am well aware of the fact that this is a cultural 
phenomenon that deserves a great deal of attention. A lot of very 
important scholars should study it and think about it, but is it not 
something that we should think about even superficially a little bit? 
Should we not give some thought to what this means to our Nation? 
Should we not then, therefore, think about what kind of immigration 
policy we should establish in this country?
  Even if you sweep all of this aside and say it is all too highbrow, 
it is all too, again, esoteric, who wants to think about all that 
stuff; it does not matter, and it is just grist for social study 
textbooks. Okay. Forget about it. Let us talk about other more mundane 
but certainly dramatic aspects of massive immigration into this 
country, both legal and illegal. Let us talk about money. Let us talk 
about costs. Let us talk about the fact that today in the United States 
we expend far more money as taxpayers in the infrastructural support 
necessary for those people who have come here both legally and 
illegally than we ever obtain from those same folks in terms of the 
taxes, quote, they pay. And I say ``quote'' because many, of course, 
pay no taxes whatsoever because of our peculiar system, the system we 
have developed over a series of years. It is a big difference, I 
explained, to what my grandparents faced.
  You come to the United States and really do not have to work. Not 
only that, but you work and earn a little amount of money, we will pay 
you in the form of something called the earned income tax credit, and 
many, many immigrants, both legal and illegal, thousands in fact, 
hundreds of thousands by the latest count, actually file income tax 
forms for one purpose, to obtain the earned income tax credit. It is 
not to pay taxes, because they do not pay taxes for the most part. They 
do not make enough money, but they will claim a certain number of 
people. Even when they work here illegally, they still file income tax 
forms.
  We found them in what are called pick-up sites. These are places 
throughout the desert in the Southeast where illegal immigrants gather. 
As they come across on foot, they gather at certain areas to be picked 
up by some sort of vehicle, trucks or cars, and taken into the 
interior, and these sites sometimes are places where literally 
thousands of people will have gathered over a period of time, and they 
are strewn with trash; unfortunately, I mean, it is an indelicate thing 
to talk about, but tons of human waste and very, very unpleasant from 
many respects.
  But we were going through one of these sites, and I happened to look 
down, and I saw all these IRS forms laying on the ground, and I picked 
them up. We still have them in my office, and I will never forget. I 
mean, one guy had filed his income tax, used a fake Social Security 
number, but had received, we found out later because we checked this 
out, and he filed an income tax claim that he had made $7,800, 
something like that, in the course of the year. He listed four or five 
dependents, all of whom lived in Mexico, but were given taxpayer 
identification numbers by the IRS. All you have to do is request a 
number for a dependent, whether they exist or not, who knows, because 
they are in a different country, but he filed this claiming four or 
five dependents in another country, using their ITIN numbers and said 
that he paid something like $94 in taxes on those $7,000 that he 
earned, but he claimed $3,800 in earned income tax credit.
  We do this for people. This is part of who we are, but it changes the 
whole idea, the whole philosophy, the whole phenomenon of immigration 
into this country, changes it dramatically from what it used to be 
because we provide this.
  So, as I say, forget about all of the cultural implications, whether 
you think they exist or not, as I have described them. Think about the 
actual costs to the United States, to the taxpayer of the United 
States. We are encouraged to keep open borders and allow illegal 
immigration into this country because we know, on our side of the aisle 
anyway, and many people on the other side of the aisle, by the way, 
believe in the concept of cheap labor, that businesses should be able 
to hire the cheapest labor possible, and if you get that across the 
border illegally, so be it. The other side of the aisle is much more 
interested in the votes that may accrue to them by the increase in the 
number of people who are here in this country as immigrants, either 
legal or illegal, but together this causes a very big problem because 
it is hard to actually then do something about it.
  It is hard to stop it. It is hard to actually address it or reform it 
when you have got these two pressures and pressure groups, the 
political pressure group on that side of the aisle, the cheap labor 
group on our side. And I say all the time cheap labor is only cheap to 
the employer. It is not cheap to the American public. It costs us 
greatly. It costs us an enormous amount of money to provide the 
infrastructure for those people who are here working for very little 
and for very low wages.
  Not only do we find that there are tax implications for us in terms 
of just

[[Page 23218]]

the money that we will pay somebody for being here and having a low 
income, but, of course, there are the costs for schools. There are the 
costs for highways. There are the costs for hospitals and health care 
in a broader sense. All of these things, of course, are charged to the 
American taxpayer.
  So I would suggest that if for no other reason we have a legitimate 
cause here, a legitimate concern based around the fiscal issues 
presented by massive immigration. And our opponents will say, well, 
these people come, they work, they provide value. Again, they do work, 
they provide value, mostly for employers who oftentimes exploit them, 
who oftentimes use that labor, pay them less than even minimum wage, 
refuse to give them benefits, and, in many ways, make their lives 
something close to those of indentured servants.
  So it seems to me, as I say, that we have a legitimate interest, a 
legitimate concern, but sweep that aside, forget it for a moment. Say, 
okay, there is no cultural issue I care about listening to, and there 
is no fiscal issue that concerns me. Think about national security. 
Does that matter to anyone in this body? Should it matter to anyone in 
this body? Should it matter that our borders are porous? Does it matter 
that we have absolutely no control over who comes into this country? We 
do not know who they are. We do not know for how long they are here. We 
do not know for what purpose.
  To the credit of people like Asa Hutchinson, whom I admire, he is 
trying his best, I think, to gain some degree of control over the 
immigration process, and we are working to devise better mechanisms to 
actually identify people who are coming across the border at our ports 
of entry. We are giving them cards, and unfortunately there is no 
hardware, there is no machinery there to actually scan these cards and 
to get the information. But a lot of people have cards now that carry 
some information we call biometric identifiers, and that is good, and I 
am happy. But, of course, those ports of entry are tiny, tiny pebbles 
that we have placed in the huge river of immigration. At those ports of 
entry we may have a better sense of who is coming across, and we may be 
doing a better job, but every place between those ports of entry, Mr. 
Speaker, unfortunately it is still ``olly olly oxen free.''
  I flew over the port of entry in Nogales not too long ago, and it was 
a great metaphor for what I am saying. We looked down. Here was the 
port of entry with a line of cars maybe a mile deep into Mexico waiting 
to come into the United States, everybody being checked, but, of 
course, Nogales is in a desert area, very flat area, and we were flying 
in a helicopter, and so we looked at that, and it was ironic to say the 
least that not more than a mile on either side of that port of entry 
where everybody was being stopped, you could watch people walking 
across, sometimes simply driving off of a road in Mexico and into the 
United States through our national park down there, Organ Pipe Cactus 
National Park.

                              {time}  2130

  It looks like a racetrack. It is not a national park any more; it is 
a combination of a dump and a racetrack, where everywhere you look 
tracks have come through. People have simply driven over into the 
deserts, driven into the United States. You can fly over and see all 
these tracks looking like spiderwebs every place.
  They have ruined the environment. They have destroyed much of the 
environment to the point that I cannot believe the Sierra Club does not 
go down there and really go ballistic. But of course they will not, 
because this is a politically incorrect thing for them to do, to 
complain about the degradation of the environment being done by illegal 
immigration.
  And so we watched as people came into the country, of course 
completely undetected, except for the fact we happened to be flying 
over and watching it. But certainly we do not know who they are and, 
for the most part, of course, they are coming for the benign reason of 
a job. Absolutely true. But how do I know all of them come for that 
purpose?
  And I guaranty you all of them do not come for that purpose, because 
of course we could also see the remnants of the drug trafficking, which 
is enormous. We picked up sacks all over the landscape where people had 
carried them in because they were coming in illegally and they were 
being used as what they call mules to bring the stuff in on their 
backs. And by the way, this is observable certainly on the southern 
border, but it is absolutely as rampant on the northern border, 
especially the drug traffic. So it is not just a southern border 
problem. It is a huge problem for America.
  We do not know who is coming. We know that there are cartels in South 
and Central America that have now specialized in the importation of 
people, not drugs any more. They have changed their marketing tactics, 
their sales or whatever, because they are now importing people because 
it is more lucrative. It is $1,500 to $2,000 for a poor Mexican peasant 
to come into the United States paying a coyote; it is up to $55,000 for 
someone coming from the Middle East or Asia. It is a very lucrative 
endeavor.
  And what do they have invested in it? Hardly anything. It is not like 
they need to pay the grower to take care of the plants and all that 
kind of investment there is in drugs. You do not have that in people. 
And if they lose a load, there is plenty more where they came from, so 
it is no big deal.
  So now there is a cartel in what is called the tri-border area. This 
is in southwestern Brazil, the corner of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina. 
The tri-border area is a very lawless area, and it is the site of an 
enormous amount of smuggling activities and that sort of thing, but it 
is also the site of this Mexican mafia cartel that no longer deals in 
drugs specifically, it deals now primarily in people, and it wants to 
concentrate on Middle Easterners coming in because they pay the most, 
$55,000.
  So Middle Easterners will come into South and Central America, coming 
into what is called the tri-border region, be acclimated there in 
Brazil for a little bit, and then they are moved into Mexico and then 
into the United States. Some of them may be for jobs. Maybe they are 
all coming to do jobs Americans just will not do. I hear that all the 
time, of course. That is the only reason why we have illegal 
immigration; it is because we have so many jobs Americans will not do.
  So therefore we have to bring in Saudis and Pakistanis and Iranians 
and Chinese? Well, no, Mr. Speaker, there are other reasons people are 
coming here, and some of them are nefarious. Some of the reasons are 
very, very scary. But our borders are porous, and they can come across 
at their will. And we are shirking the most basic responsibility we 
have in this body.
  It may be bizarre to say such a thing here, but our primary 
responsibility in this House is not to educate America's children, it 
is not to provide welfare benefits to America's disenfranchised and 
poor, it is not to provide highways, and it is not to provide 
recreational services. Those things are not any of the identified 
responsibilities of this body in the Constitution of this country, 
which is supposed to be our guiding light.
  Every Member takes an oath. We stand here at the beginning of the 
session, and we do not take an oath to the President. And we do not 
take an oath to our party. We take an oath to the Constitution. And 
when you look at the Constitution, what does it say about educating 
children or any of the other things? At least you are going to have to 
sort of interpret. But what does it say about our responsibility to 
defend America? What is the Federal Government's role here? Clear, 
unambiguous, it is our primary role. It is the one thing we are 
supposed to do: defend the Nation.
  And, therefore, I say to you, Mr. Speaker, we shirk our primary 
responsibility here when we refuse to defend our own borders because of 
the politics of cheap labor. And that is the reason we do not defend 
our borders. That is it. As ugly and as uncomfortable as that is to 
deal with, here, 2 years after the most devastating attack on our 
shores we have ever experienced, we

[[Page 23219]]

still do not defend our own borders and enforce them because of that 
fear, the fear that we would stop cheap labor. It is politics. It is 
unacceptable. It is disgusting, in many ways.
  So, yes, I am here tonight, as I am on the floor many nights, and I 
am speaking on this, which I have spoken on hundreds of occasions. And 
I will continue to do so because I believe with all my heart that this 
issue warrants our attention, our concern, and at least, Mr. Speaker, a 
debate.

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