[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2318-2323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). 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.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting time. I sat 
listening to our friends on the other side of the aisle decry the 
effects of outsourcing of jobs, which of course I agree, there is a 
significant problem. It is interesting to note also that during this 
entire hour when we have talked about jobs and when we have talked 
about the fact that American workers, even those that are employed, are 
making less than they were before, that wage rates have been depressed 
throughout the country, which is undeniably true for people who are low 
skilled, and it is also the case for hundreds of thousands of Americans 
who have been displaced from high-tech jobs because of the number of 
people who have come into this country under H-1B visas. And it is also 
true that we are facing a crisis, I think, in our system and in our 
economy. The economy grows, but jobs do not. Job growth is not there, 
and the jobs that we are seeing being developed are jobs that by and 
large are not going to Americans.
  Recently California published a study which showed that although 
there had been a very marginal improvement in job growth in the State, 
when it was looked at carefully, it was found that those jobs did not 
go to American citizens. They went to people coming here from foreign 
countries, aliens, some legal, most not. Those are the people getting 
the jobs. Interestingly, we did not hear a word in 1 hour of discussion 
about jobs, and the problems with outsourcing and the rest, not one 
word was mentioned by the other side during their hour here about the 
fact that immigration, massive immigration into this country, costs 
Americans jobs.
  It also costs American workers wages because of course this is a 
supply-demand system; and the more supply there is, the more downward 
pressure there is on wages, and we see it all of the time throughout 
the country, but no one talked about that. No one dared mention the 
word ``immigration'' in this discussion of 1 hour about jobs. They want 
to blame it all on President Bush's policy or the administration's 
policies regarding outsourcing. I am certainly critical of the 
administration's policy on a number of issues, particularly their 
immigration policy; but I ask people to be evenhanded in their 
criticism of what the problem is.
  I have had a bill now for over a year, and certainly we will 
reintroduce, and I will be interested to see how many on the other side 
of the aisle will sign on. It is a bill that abolishes the H-1B visa 
program. This is a program where supposedly companies would be able to 
bring in people for a short period of time with very specific skills, 
skills that were not available here in the United States, no worker 
possessed them, they had to go overseas to get them.
  Now, we have to think about that. Really and truly, how many people 
do you think there are in the United States presently employed in the 
high-tech industry or have been employed in the high-tech industry who 
would not be able to meet the criteria that we have established for 
these jobs, these certain high-tech jobs? I suggest very few. I suggest 
that American citizens are quite capable. I believe that we are 
producing enough people in our colleges and university system to take 
the jobs that may be available; but, of course, the difference is 
American workers were demanding higher pay, and so corporations began 
to look at H-1B visas to bring in cheap labor. So they forgot about the 
provision that said you can only bring people into this country under 
this particular visa status that had special skills and that would go 
back in a short period of time.
  Mr. Speaker, guess what? Nobody has gone back. We have maybe a 
million people in the country with H-1B visas. Nobody has the slightest 
idea how many, if any, have gone back home after the 5 years were up 
that they were supposed to be able to work in the United States. I 
assure Members most, if not all, of them are still here.
  I have a bill to abolish that category. I do not think, no, I am 
positive there is not a single Member who spoke here for the last hour 
that is on that bill.
  How about the bill to attack the L-1 visas status which is now being 
used by major corporations to bring people in for the same reason 
because they will work cheaper? They are higher-skilled people. We are 
not talking about people working in low-paying jobs. These are highly 
skilled people, and companies are bringing them into the United States 
under the L-1 visas status.
  Where are these people when we are talking about what is happening to 
American people because our borders are porous and our immigration 
policy is dictated by the politics of it and not by the economics of 
it, at least not the economics of workers in the United States, but 
certainly the economics of major corporations? In fact, no one 
disagrees that massive immigration of both legal and illegal workers 
into this country is a benefit to employers. Cheap labor is a benefit 
to employers. Cheap labor is cheap to employers. It is not cheap to the 
rest of us, to the people who pay the taxes for the schools, for the 
highways, for the housing, for the health care, for the incarceration 
rates. Those all get passed on to the taxpayer so that there can be a 
higher profit rate.
  I understand that every corporation wants to achieve that; that is 
their primary goal, and it is under our system appropriate that they 
should be seeking the best returns possible for their investors. Then 
is it not, however, the responsibility of this government to try to do 
what we can to protect to the extent possible, without becoming 
incredibly protectionist and starting trade wars, but are there not 
things that we can do in this country to try to protect American 
workers? It is our responsibility to do so.
  Should we not be able to control the flow of immigration into this 
country, recognizing that that massive flow of immigration has an 
effect on working Americans, if not taking the jobs, certainly in terms 
of depressing wage rates? But nowhere in the diatribe that we heard for 
an hour was there one reference to this phenomenon, to the immigration 
phenomenon. Why? Why, because, of course, as they accuse the 
Republicans of being tools of big corporations, big business, they 
forget that for the most part they are tools of political subgroups 
that they look to for votes.

                              {time}  2215

  It is a political problem we face. It is true that our side of the 
aisle caters to the business interests who want cheap labor. It is also 
true that the other side of the aisle caters to the immigration 
community and looks at them as a source of voters and as a political 
support base, and they are fearful of ever

[[Page 2319]]

saying anything that might discourage that political support base.
  If you are going to talk about this issue, then you better talk about 
all of that issue, all of the problems that we confront in this country 
because of the fact that we have immigration policies and economic 
policies that are detrimental to American workers.
  This issue, the immigration issue, is certainly one that is 
contentious, certainly one that causes a lot of very, very intense 
feelings to emanate out of the Members of the body here, and for a long 
time an issue no one wanted to talk about. I would come to this floor 
night after night to bring my concerns to the body and to those people 
who were listening, but it was a lonely struggle.
  I am happy to say that things do appear to be changing, that American 
voices are being heard. Not too long ago, the President of the United 
States proposed a new immigration plan, one that although he said was 
not amnesty was, from my point of view and, I think, from the point of 
view of most people, certainly an amnesty plan for people who would be 
coming here under some sort of guest worker arrangement, and all those 
people who are here illegally would be given the ability to stay even 
though they broke the law of the land coming in here.
  There has been a significant response to that proposal. Our office, 
my office in Denver and the office here in Washington combined over the 
course of about a day and a half or 2 days received almost 1,000 phone 
calls after the President made that speech. Nothing that has ever 
happened in this country, not the war, nothing, no proposal for any 
initiative ever generated that kind of response. 99.999 percent of the 
people calling were upset by the proposal, were furious, as a matter of 
fact, at the President for putting it forward. Some of my colleagues, 
in fact many of my colleagues, heard the message because their phones 
rang off the hook also. Their e-mails came in by the hundreds and 
thousands, something that they did not expect.
  I do not think it was something that even the White House expected. I 
think that they felt the President could make this speech, move on, 
satisfying a certain constituency, hoping that we would pass the bill 
eventually in this Congress, and that it would be something of 
relatively little note. But boy, oh boy, oh boy, were they wrong. 
People noticed, and they called, and they are still calling.
  It is important, I think, for people who listen to this to recognize 
that their voices can be heard. I know it is simply a frustrating 
experience to pick up the phone or write a letter to our Congressman. 
Does anybody really care? Does anybody really read it? Believe me, you 
were heard. You were heard. So much so that I do not believe the 
President's plan will even evolve into a piece of legislation that we 
will see on the floor of the House. If it does, I predict that it will 
fail. And it should.
  There are signs, as I say, that things are changing. Perhaps one of 
the most incredible things I have read in the recent past that 
indicates that there has been a change in the attitude of the American 
people when it comes to the issue of immigration and immigration 
control, not just a change on the part of the American people, because, 
frankly, that has been there for quite a while, poll after poll after 
poll tells us that 70 percent, maybe sometimes 75 percent, of the 
people in this country say no more illegal immigration. A majority say 
they want a reduction in legal immigration, until we can get a handle 
on the problem. And it is a problem.
  For the longest time major media outlets would simply ignore that, as 
well as the Members of Congress, as well as the President of the United 
States, be he George Bush or Bill Clinton, would ignore the fact that 
those people were out there and that they were telling pollsters how 
they felt, because we always assumed we could finesse this; that 
although people were upset about it, it was not their number one issue, 
and, by the way, we have this constituency we are trying to grab onto, 
this huge constituency, this growing number of people coming into this 
country as immigrants, and they will become voters, and we want to get 
their votes, and so we certainly cannot attack the whole process that 
allowed them to come here, legally or illegally. So we figure we can 
finesse this, and all the people who say in those polls that they are 
against it, they are going to say it, but that is not their number one 
issue, so they will let it slide.
  How did the major media approach this? Anyone that suggested we need 
to look at our immigration policy was xenophobic; at best xenophobic, 
at worst racist. That is the only way the media ever looked at it, 
because that is the only way they could explain how someone would stand 
up on the floor of the House or in a State legislature anywhere in the 
country, a city council or anyplace else and talk about the possibility 
that massive immigration into this country could be problematic, and 
that we had to be able to control it, and that we have to know who is 
coming into this country. We have to know how many, for what purpose 
and for how long. In order to call ourselves a Nation, that is a 
requirement, to be able to actually control your borders. That is a 
requirement.
  But the major media would follow the lead of papers like the Wall 
Street Journal that every single year for years on the Fourth of July 
would write an editorial saying that borders should be eliminated, they 
don't matter anymore, they are insignificant, and they just impede the 
flow of goods and services. And, after all, the only thing that should 
determine that flow of goods and services and people, the only thing 
that should determine that is the market. And so borders are 
irrelevant, they said. They wrote that every year, year after year, on 
the Fourth of July. All of the major media in this country followed 
along.
  9/11 comes along, a lot of things changed, and one thing that changed 
was the Wall Street Journal stopped printing that editorial on the 
Fourth of July. It does not mean they stopped believing it, they just 
stopped printing it for obvious reasons. But something is happening.
  This is a reprint of a cover story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, 
January 25, 2004, by a gentleman by the name of Lee Green. This is 
really an incredible article, incredible because, of course, I think it 
is very profound, it is certainly well written, it is well documented, 
but it appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
  The Los Angeles Times, I think if it had a logo, if it had a 
masthead, it would be of the three monkeys with their eyes covered, 
their ears covered, their mouth covered because they did not want to 
see, hear or talk about this problem. It did not exist in the Los 
Angeles Times. Immigration was not a problem for the Los Angeles Times. 
They could go to their offices, their ivory tower offices, and look out 
over a sprawling city and think, gee, you know, I'm sure those people 
down there are having a great time and life is good for them, so as 
long as I don't have to participate in any of this stuff, as long as I 
can get home easily, have my limo pick me up, and I don't have to worry 
about a lot of these kinds of things that the poor trash out there 
worry about, then we can continue to think about markets as being the 
only thing that should determine the flow of people.
  But, as I say, something happened. And so they agreed to publish this 
article. I am certainly not going to read it all, but I am going to 
take excerpts. It starts out:
  By birth, by foot, by automobile, from every other State and other 
country, legally and illegally, people have arrived in California for 
decades in unrelenting swells, human surf breaking steadily on a vast 
shore. Occasionally a big set rolls in and harasses State and local 
officials trying to determine how many new classrooms to build or where 
to bury the trash, but Californians take it in stride.
  You can complain, but what good would it do you? You can complain 
about winter, too, but it comes anyway. We tolerate endless strip 
malls, foul air, contaminated runoff, window-rattling boom boxes and 
the weekend crush at Costco and Home Depot. We

[[Page 2320]]

remain composed in the face of runaway housing prices, electricity 
shortages and crowded schools.
  But what we suffer even less well than crowded schools, the thing 
that makes even the most tolerant Californians realize that their 
cities have become overstuffed, is the endless, miserable, stinking, 
standing traffic. In Los Angeles, in San Diego, in Sacramento, in the 
Bay area, freeway traffic sits like an automotive still life, then 
inches along as we fume in the fumes. On a roadside in San Jose after a 
fender bender, a driver grabs another driver's small dog, Leo, and 
throws the helpless animal into oncoming traffic.
  This is what it has come to in California. We live in the age of Leo. 
If projections through 2040 by demographers in the State Department of 
Finance prove accurate, conditions will only get worse, much worse.
  New residents continue to wash over California's borders, but the 
State is neither attempting to restrain growth nor building adequate 
infrastructure to accommodate it. And the boat continues to fill. 
During the last half of the last century, an epoch encompassing most of 
the baby boom and, a generation later, all of the boom's echoes, the 
State population grew by more than 24 million. The next 24 million, 
more than the population of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska 
combined, will arrive more quickly, inflating the total to nearly 60 
million within 36 years. Barring the long overdue mother of all 
earthquakes, a tightening of Federal immigration policy, which is more 
unpredictable, by the way, than the earthquake, or the Rapture, 
California's population, currently at 36 million, likely will double 
within the lifetime of today's schoolchildren.
  A close look at the numbers suggests that the 1990s began a pattern 
in which California receives more new residents each decade than it did 
the previous decade. The 2020s will witness the greatest 10-year 
increase in State history, and the number in the 2030s will be even 
greater.
  Come to California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger urged the world 
more than once in his State of the State Address this month, but most 
residents are not happy about this trend. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein 
isn't happy about the numbers, either. I find them, she says, very 
distressing, and I'll tell you why. If the growth comes before the 
ability to handle the growth, what you inevitably will have is a 
backlash. That's what drove Proposition 187.
  The Eagles were right: This could be heaven, or this could be hell, 
but the more closely you examine California's plight, the more the 
heaven part looks iffy. No other State has so many residents. Texas 
ranks second, but with almost 40 percent fewer people. No other State 
comes close to matching California's annual net population increase. 
During the next 25 years, the region is projected to grow by 6 million 
people. This is not exactly a formula for a Golden State.
  Immigrants, specifically Latinos who constitute the majority of the 
State's more than 9 million immigrants, inflate the population not just 
by coming to California, but by having children once they are here. 
While the combined birthrate for California's U.S. citizens and 
immigrants who are not Latino has dropped to replacement level, the 
birthrate for Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America 
averages more than three children per mother.
  Changes in Federal policy since 1965 have elevated the number of 
immigrants legally admitted to the United States annually from a few 
hundred thousand to more than 1 million in recent years. California has 
long received far more immigrants, legal and illegal, than has any 
other State. It worked out well in some respects, cheap labor, ethnic 
diversity; not so well in others, social welfare costs, increasing 
poverty. While the costs are significant, the benefits are so vast and 
varied from critical high-tech expertise to breathtaking multicultural 
richness that anyone but an unrepentant xenophobe would agree that they 
are all incalculable, none of which alters the fact that immigration 
more than any other factor will probably determine how crowded and 
environmentally unsustainable California becomes in the years ahead. 
Immigration directly and indirectly accounts for more than two-thirds 
of the population growth nationwide.

                              {time}  2230

  ``But Diane Feinstein says that trying to stem the ever-rising count 
is not a topic of discussion in the U.S. Senate. Though the Earth's 
population doubled to 5 billion in a mere 37 years and will more than 
double again this century, many countries, particularly in Europe, now 
have low fertility rates, relatively low immigration levels, and are 
losing population. In sharp contrast, the U.S., at more than 292 
million people, the world's third-most populous country behind 
behemoths China and India, will soon glide past 300 million en route to 
400 million before mid-century . . . '' ``United Nations projections 
show just eight countries accounting for half of the planet's 
population increase between now and 2050,'' and of course the United 
States is one of them.
  I will skip to the end of this here. ``Researchers at the Rand 
Corporation think tank,'' and the Rand Corporation, by the way, is not 
known as a conservative think tank by any means, ``spotted these 
troubling trends in 1997 after studying 30 years of economic and 
immigration data. Rand's review concluded that `the large scale of 
immigration flows, bigger families, and the concentration of low-
income, low-tax-paying immigrants making heavy use of public services 
are straining State and local budgets.''' California, a $38 billion 
deficit. Yes, it is definitely straining local budgets.
  ``The lifeboat keeps sitting lower, water spilling over the gunwales, 
provisions stretching thin. Yet we keep taking on more passengers, and 
nobody's doing much bailing. Is this any way to run paradise?
  ``Shall we just paint ourselves into an overcrowded corner and then 
see if we can figure a way out?
  ``There is more at stake here than mere comfort and convenience. 
Apply enough stress to any biological system and eventually it falters. 
`The economy is inside an environment. The environment is not inside 
the economy. Which is to say, the laws of nature will ultimately 
prevail over the laws of economics.'''
  He ends by saying, ``But if the people entrusted to lead the State 
are not having this discussion, if they're not grappling with these 
issues, then who is? That's a fine thing to think about the next time 
you're stuck in traffic. Which will be soon.''
  It is a great article, much lengthier, of course, than I was able to 
state here tonight. But people can all go on line, of course, and pull 
it up. It is called ``Infinite Ingress'' by Lee Green for the Los 
Angeles Times, January 25, 2004. It is a great article.
  There are astronomical types of issues to deal with here, enormous 
problems. Certainly they are issues dealing with the environment. I 
mean, this piece concentrates on that. What is the impact of massive 
growth rates in this country? Is it always good? Is growth always good? 
Some will benefit, it is true. Many will not.
  The President mentioned in his speech on immigration that we need to 
match every willing worker with every willing employer. That is a 
sentiment I know many of my colleagues even in this House believe in. 
It is sort of an admirable goal. We can say things like that, and at 
first glance we would say, sure, that is true, absolutely. What is 
wrong with that, matching a willing worker with every willing employer?
  The one thing that I can tell the Members that strikes me right off 
the bat that may be wrong with it is this: There are billions of 
willing workers out there, billions, willing to come, be matched up 
with millions of employers here in the United States who are quite 
desirous of obtaining cheaper labor. Do we really mean that? Do we 
really mean that we will match every willing worker in the world with 
every willing employer? Do we think that that will not have an impact 
on our society, on our system? Of course it will. And I do not think we 
really and truly mean that. At least I hope we do not, because, of 
course, there is a role for us

[[Page 2321]]

to play in this body, and that is to control that flow.
  We hear all the time that there are all these jobs going begging, all 
these jobs that Americans will not take. I will tell the Members right 
now that I believe with all my heart when we have got 5.6 or 5.7 
percent unemployment rate in a free economy, there is no such thing as 
a job an American will not take. It is just a matter of how much one is 
willing to pay to get the worker. And as long as we continue to import 
cheap labor, we will be absolved of the desire to actually provide a 
good job for Americans and will say that the better thing is to just 
simply have cheaper products coming into our stores. But it does 
require somebody here to buy those products, and we cannot have an 
economy that is a two-tiered economy of most folks living at lowest 
level and some folks at the highest, and that is, I think, a future 
that comes into view when we think about this kind of world, a world of 
infinite ingress into the United States.
  Something will change. And I will not ask a question. I will tell my 
colleagues that I do believe that it is true that there are a lot of 
folks here even in this body, maybe even in the administration, who 
believe that borders are irrelevant, they are of no consequence, and 
they impede the flow of goods and services and, yes, people, and that 
soon we will be able to achieve a new world order in which there are no 
real borders, or if there are borders between countries, they will be 
like one that was described by someone I was debating from the Cato 
Institute, a libertarian think tank here in Washington, who said, yes, 
we will still have borders, but they will simply be like the borders 
between Kansas and Colorado and Nebraska, of no real consequence.
  That is a world view. It is a world view held by a lot of people. It 
is not a world view I hold, nor one that I will accept without a lot of 
fighting, but it is something that a lot of people want to see, and 
that is why we can see this constant movement toward a world and a 
country in which the whole concept of citizenship is completely and 
totally obliterated, where it just does not matter anymore if one is a 
citizen of the United States, of Mexico, of Canada or anyplace else. 
They are just a resident of where they happen to be.
  We see cities in the United States passing laws, calling themselves 
sanctuary cities, laws telling people that they really do not need to 
show us anything except perhaps a utility bill to show that they are a 
resident and we will let them vote. One of those cities is not too far 
from here, College Park, Maryland, but they are all over the country. 
The State of Maine is proposing that the State be the first sanctuary 
State.
  Among other things, we would see these States and cities not 
cooperate with the INS, with now the Bureau of Immigration Control and 
Enforcement; not have their police forces, the State patrol and the 
local police, help the Federal Government enforce immigration laws, not 
that we do a very good job at it anyway, but they are saying the cities 
will not be allowed to do that. Four cities in my State have done this, 
have passed these laws.
  What is the end result of this process? It is to achieve a place in 
which we are simply residents, we are not citizens, that citizenship 
does not matter; that if one comes here across our borders even without 
our permission, we will give them free schooling for their children. We 
do that. If they come here, cross our borders, even without our 
permission, we will give them access to our health care system. We do 
that. If they come here, we will give them access to our Social 
Security system. We are proposing that. Even if they are here 
illegally, the President is proposing a totalization agreement with 
Mexico, saying that any Mexican worker who is here, even here 
illegally, after only six quarters of work would be able to be vested 
in the United States Social Security system. So we do that. We are 
proposing that. We are even telling them, as I say, that if they come 
here even without our permission, they can vote.
  So I ask the Members if one can come into this country as an illegal 
immigrant, an illegal alien, and obtain all of these benefits, then 
what is the difference between that person and the person who has lived 
here all of his or her life and is, in fact, an American citizen? What 
is the difference? None. It does not matter. And that is a goal that a 
lot of people in this body want. It is not what I believe is an 
appropriate goal certainly, and one that I certainly will fight in 
every way I can.
  Not too long ago there was a bill on the floor. We were fighting over 
the budget for the newly created homeland security agency. I think we 
just had its first year anniversary here a day or so ago. But on the 
floor of the House when we were creating the budget for this newly 
created agency, I proposed that no city that passes these plans, these 
amnesty plans, these sanctuary city policies, would be able to get any 
funds under that particular grant system, the grants from Homeland 
Security. I got 122 votes out of 435. Everybody kept saying this is not 
the time or the place to talk about that, and it got very contentious. 
It was about midnight on the floor here, and people got very upset, did 
not want to fight this issue, did not want me to even bring it up, kept 
saying it was just a divisive issue.
  Why is it divisive? What in the world is divisive about it when we 
simply say, okay, there is already a law, it is already on the books in 
the Federal Government, we passed it in 1994. It says no State or city 
can impede the flow of information to the INS or restrict the flow of 
information from the INS. It is on the books. We have it.
  There is one little tiny problem. There is absolutely no penalty for 
its violation; so States and cities routinely violate it. And when I 
tried to say let us really take a tiny little penalty, all I was saying 
at that point in time was they should not be able to get a grant under 
the homeland security agency if they are passing laws saying that they 
will not even tell the INS if they have arrested an illegal alien 
within their city boundaries. We could not pass it. We could not pass 
that amendment. Of course I will try again, and we will continue to 
tell as many people as we can about the Members who chose to vote 
against it, and they will have to explain why.
  I would love to actually hear an explanation for opposition to that 
particular proposal. It is really fascinating, other than to say we 
simply do not want to alienate our constituency. I have had Members to 
say to me on the floor, after maybe a little 1-hour thing like this, 
people say, You are right, Tom. You are right about that, but I am not 
going to support you on this stuff. I have a huge minority constituency 
in my district.
  And I am saying, so what?

                              {time}  2245

  If you think I am right about what I say is happening to this country 
and the potential for what is going to happen to the country, how can 
you just so cavalierly say, yes, but I cannot vote for you?
  For the last part of this hour, I want to talk a little bit about 
another aspect of this problem that I think is quite disturbing. It 
gets to the problem of assimilation, the ability of the United States 
of America to assimilate huge numbers of people into our society when 
we are laboring with something else inside the United States. This is 
not the fault of any immigrant; it is not the fault of massive 
immigration. It is a result of it, but it is not the fault of it. It is 
something we are doing to ourselves.
  We are becoming wrapped up in, and, really, this has been going on 
for a number of years, we are becoming wrapped up in this philosophy I 
sometimes call the cult of multi-culturalism. Now, this is not just the 
multi-culturist philosophy you say simply references the value of 
diversity and the fact we have many different cultures that we can 
explore and we can enjoy in this country. That is all true, and I, 
certainly, as an Italian and the grandson of Italian immigrants, I am 
well aware of the value added by immigrants coming to this country from 
all over the world. I am not arguing that.
  I am talking about a different kind of multi-culturalism, a different 
brand of

[[Page 2322]]

multi-culturalism. This multi-culturalism is radical multi-culturalism. 
It says that not only should we enjoy the diversity, but we should make 
it our universal characteristic. The one thing we should all strive 
for, and the only thing that is of value as a national goal, is 
diversity, and that any idea that there is a common set of values, 
attitudes and ideas that we call America, or, worse yet, Western 
Civilization, any of these things should be erased from the textbooks, 
taken out of the discussion in classrooms; that we should encourage 
children to think of themselves not as Americans, not as Americans, but 
as part of some sub-group, usually some victimized class seeking a 
redress for that victimization from those who perpetrated it, mostly 
those, ``those'' being the code word for Western Civilization itself.
  Textbooks all over the country, we pulled out just a few, and I have 
on our Web site we have a lot more, but a few things as an example of 
what I am talking about here. In the textbook ``Across the Centuries'' 
used for seventh grade history, the book defines the word ``jihad'' as 
``to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil.''
  Does anybody really believe that is the definition of jihad, that a 
textbook would be given to children in the United States, considering 
the fact that 9/11 was another example of jihad? ``To do one's best to 
resist temptation and overcome evil.''
  In 2002, the ``New Guidelines for Teaching History'' in the New 
Jersey public schools failed even to mention America's Founding 
Fathers, the Pilgrims, the Mayflower. These were the guidelines for 
teaching history. What history? Whose history? Not ours. Because, of 
course, maybe somebody who read this could not relate to the Pilgrims 
or the Founding Fathers.
  I will tell you that in my life, as I mentioned to you, I am the 
grandson of immigrants who had a deep love and respect for their home 
country of Italy, but had absolutely no desire to have themselves or 
their families attached to that country in any other way than some sort 
of fond nostalgia and periodically going down to something called the 
Feast of St. Rocco, believe it or not, and another one called the Feast 
of St. Anthony. I used to joke about the fact could there really be a 
St. Rocco. There was, evidently. But that was about it.
  But in terms of who we were as individuals, what was our heritage, 
what was the country we connected to. There was never any doubt in my 
mind, never any doubt, that my heritage was the Pilgrims, the Founding 
Fathers. That is what I thought of, because that is what my textbooks 
taught me, that is what my grandparents taught me, that is what the 
schools taught me. But we refuse to even mention them in our history 
textbooks.
  In a Prentice Hall history textbook used by students in Palm Beach 
County High School titled ``A World Conflict,'' the first five pages of 
the World War II chapter focused almost entirely on topics such as 
gender roles in the Armed Forces, racial segregation and the war, 
internment camps and the women in the war effort. That was World War 
II, okay? That was it.
  Gender roles in the Armed Forces. That was the discussion of World 
War II. Now, it maybe deserves a line, maybe a paragraph, but this is 
the analysis of World War II in a history textbook?
  In Washington State, a teacher substituted the word ``winter'' for 
the word ``Christmas'' in a carol to be sung at a school program so as 
not to appear to be favoring one faith over another. The lyrics in Dale 
Wood's ``Carol from an Irish Cabin'' was changed to read ``harsh winds 
blow down from the mountains and blow a white winter to me.''
  I was in a school in my district in Colorado not too long ago around 
Christmastime. I was leaving, and I said ``Merry Christmas'' to the 
children I had been talking to in an elementary school. I noticed there 
was sort of a strange reaction. Some said, ``Merry Christmas? Yes, what 
did he say?'' I thought that was weird.
  As we were walking out, the teacher said to me, ``The principal 
doesn't really like us using that word.'' I said, ``What word?'' 
``Christmas.''
  This is a public school in my district. I went back to the school and 
I yelled, I said, ``Hey, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.'' They were 
all excited that somebody would actually say it; they could be actually 
allowed to say it in the school, Merry Christmas.
  In a school district in New Mexico, the introduction to a textbook 
called ``500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures'' states this is why 
the book was written, ``In response to the bicentennial celebration of 
the 1776 American Revolution and its lies.'' Its stated purpose is ``to 
celebrate our resistance to being colonized and absorbed by racist 
empire builders.'' The book describes defenders of the Alamo as slave 
owners, land speculators and Indian killers; Davy Crockett as a 
cannibal; and the 1857 war on Mexico as an unprovoked U.S. invasion.
  The chapter headings included ``Death to the Invader,'' ``U.S. 
Conquest and Betrayal,'' ``We Are Now a U.S. Colony in Occupied 
America,'' and ``They Stole the Lands.''
  ``McDougal's,'' another textbook, I remember using a McDougal's 
textbook when I was teaching ninth graders in Jefferson County, 
Colorado, well, the new McDougal's textbook, ``The Americas,'' that is 
the name of the textbook, states that the Reagan-Bush conservative 
agenda limits advances in civil rights for minorities.
  This is not an observation, this is not an opinion, this is what the 
textbook says was the Reagan-Bush administration; and that 
conservatives' bid to dismantle the Great Society social programs could 
be compared to ``abandoning the Nation.'' It goes on to include text 
stating that communism had potentially totalitarian under-
pinnings. Potentially. This goes on and on and on and on. We have 
hundreds of examples like this.
  Now, why do I bring this up in conjunction with this immigration 
discussion? Because, I will tell you, it matters. It matters. It 
matters that we are telling our own children, I went into a school in 
my own district just a couple of weeks ago, had, again, probably 200, 
these were high school students, however. They brought them into the 
auditorium, 200, 250, something like that.
  At the end some kid wrote a note to me and said, ``What is the most 
serious problem you think we face in the Nation?'' I said, ``Let me ask 
you a question and I can tell you that.'' I said, ``How many people in 
here believe you live in the best Nation in the world?'' And there were 
maybe two dozen hands, at most, two dozen hands went up, a tenth of the 
group. A lot of people again very uncomfortable, looking at the 
teachers on the side of the wall thinking, Gee, I don't know.
  I had the distinct impression that a lot of kids wanted to answer 
yes, but they were afraid to, because what would they say if somebody 
challenged them? How would they actually defend that statement? So they 
just did not say a word.
  So I said, ``Let me ask you, should we be proud of the fact that we 
are a product of Western Civilization and there are some incredible 
things Western Civilization has brought to the world, including, among 
others, the idea that society should be based upon laws and not upon 
men; that individuals matter more than the collective? These are 
uniquely Western thoughts, and we can be proud of them, and we should 
be proud of them. We have all kinds of warts, I know it is true. There 
are plenty of things we have done wrong. But to only emphasize the 
worst in America, the worst things that have happened, and even rewrite 
history to make events even more problematic for us is despicable; and 
it makes us wonder, it makes children wonder, it makes Americans wonder 
who they really are and whether this is all really worth it, it seems 
to me; who are we, where are we going, and how are we going to get 
there.
  Now, if we have a hard time trying to transfer this knowledge to the 
children that are coming out of our public schools, think how hard it 
is to transfer that knowledge also to the people who are coming here as 
immigrants,

[[Page 2323]]

many of whom are not coming for the purpose of being an American. Many 
of them are coming simply for the purpose of getting a better job. The 
whole concept of integration and assimilation goes out the window when 
it clashes with or comes in contact with, because it is really not a 
clash, but comes in contact with this cult of multi-culturalism, and 
that is why it matters. That is why immigration policy fits into this 
discussion.
  We need to rethink the way we teach our children and we need to 
rethink what we tell immigrants. Instead of telling immigrants that 
there is no reason for them to integrate into our society, that we want 
them to stay separate, we want them to keep a separate language in the 
schools, we want them even to keep their own political associations of 
the countries from which they came, which now we have almost 10 million 
people in the country living here with dual citizenship.
  I had an interesting conversation with a bishop in Denver, Bishop 
Gomez, who was arguing with me about this issue, and he said to me at 
one point, ``I don't know why you are worried about the Mexicans who 
are coming into this country.'' By the way, I am not worried about 
``the Mexicans''; I am worried about massive immigration. He says, 
``But I don't know why you are worried about the Mexicans coming into 
this country.'' He said, ``They don't want to be Americans.'' Those 
were his exact words: ``They don't want to be Americans.''
  They are coming here for a job. They love Mexico. They want to keep 
their Mexican heritage, their Mexican citizenship. Of course, today it 
is a lot easier to do so than it was when my parents came from Italy, a 
land very far away, very difficult to get back and forth. Now, of 
course, all over the world it is a short hop to wherever it was we may 
have come from. The world has gotten much smaller, and it is a heck of 
a lot easier to retain those ties than it was before. He says, ``They 
don't want to be Americans.''
  I said, ``Well, Bishop, of course, that is the problem. To the extent 
that you are right, to the extent that what you said is true,'' it is 
certainly not true for everyone coming, ``but to the extent you are 
right, that is the problem.''
  That is what is fearful, and that is why we need to think about what 
we teach children and what we say to immigrants, and that is why we 
need to get a handle on immigration, reduce even the amount of legal 
immigrants, and certainly stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the 
country, until we can in fact get a handle on this problem.
  I have a Web site. On our Web site, WWW.House.Gov/Tancredo, you can 
go there and see a little pop up thing that says ``Our Heritage, Our 
Hope.'' If you go on that you will see these things that I pulled out 
of the textbooks, and you will see a resolution that I am going to 
introduce on the 3rd of March.

                              {time}  2300

  I hope that maybe 8 or 10, maybe more, of my colleagues will join me, 
however many have the guts to do so, and it will be a very simple 
resolution. It will say that the Congress of the United States wants to 
encourage all schools in this Nation to produce children who will be 
able to articulate an appreciation for Western civilization.
  Now, one may not think that that should start anything, but I 
guarantee my colleagues that it will. I guarantee my colleagues it 
will. I really and truly look with enthusiasm and exhilaration, a 
certain amount of exhilaration, to that debate; to hearing somebody 
explain to me why we should not teach children to appreciate Western 
civilization. Appreciate. I did not say that they had to disparage any 
other civilization; I just say that they should be able to articulate 
an appreciation of Western civilization. Do we think that they can do 
it today? How many do we think could do that today? Do we think that 
they should be able to? Do we think any child should be able to do that 
graduating from a public school in the United States, or any school, 
actually? What would be wrong with having that as a goal? I would love 
to have this debate. Well, we are going to.
  And then I am going to ask State legislatures all over the country; 
we have now I do not know how many signed up already, but quite a few 
State legislatures, and simultaneously they are going to introduce a 
State resolution in their legislatures saying the same thing. Then we 
are going to ask parents to go to school districts and bring that 
resolution to their school district and ask the school district to do 
exactly the same thing. You can go on line, go to Our Heritage, Our 
Hope page on our Website, and you can get all the information you want, 
and you can sign up to help us in this endeavor, and I hope you will. I 
hope everybody will, because I need your help. But this will be a 
great, great battle for us to enjoin. It is about time we did so.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a reason. There is something of value in 
Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian heritage, and this place 
we call the United States, which is the greatest example of that 
heritage. And as I say, I know that there are warts, and I do not mean 
to ignore them. I am not asking children to be told that there are only 
wonderful things about Western civilization or about America, I am just 
asking that they be told the truth, both the bad side and the good 
side, because today, they will always, I guarantee my colleagues, 
children will be able to articulate a problem with Western 
civilization, but I wonder how many can actually stand up today, a high 
school senior, and be able to effectively say what is good about 
Western civilization and the country in which they live and be able to 
defend it. I certainly want that to happen before we get more people 
here as immigrants, legal or illegal, who are not coming because they 
do not want to be Americans.

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