[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6419-6424]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           OUR POROUS BORDERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burgess). 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 a couple of towns in Colorado that 
are approaching 500,000. I believe a town in my district, Aurora, 
Colorado, would be in that area somewhere. Just the last 6 months this 
Nation has added at least one more, Aurora, Colorado, and not by the 
fact that a group of American citizens or anybody presently living in 
the country had a number of children that all of a sudden would create 
a whole new city. We got this because we have porous borders and 
because, from October 1 last year to the end of March, approximately 
half a million people came through just one sector of our southern 
border, just one sector, the Tucson sector. We can be sure that it was 
at least that many because we know from experience, by how many we 
catch coming into this country, that there are at least two to three 
that get by us.
  So from the first of October to the end of March to the first of 
April, about a quarter of a million people were interdicted in that 
southern border in one sector, just the Tucson sector.
  This is astronomical. The numbers are unbelievable. They are up like 
50 percent. For every single person that we stop at the border, 
remember, two or three get by us, get by the Border Patrol. So that is 
why we know that in that 6-month period of time, a half million people 
came into this country illegally; and they did so in just one sector. 
We are not talking about the entire border of the United States of 
America, north and south.
  What does this mean? And, by the way, why do my colleagues think they 
are doing that, Mr. Speaker? Why, I wonder, are we having so many 
people right now coming into this country illegally? Every year we have 
literally hundreds of thousands of people who sneak into the country. 
We take in a million and a half people approximately every year 
legally. We are one of the most generous nations in the world.

                              {time}  1530

  It is certainly the most liberal policy when it comes to immigration. 
But beyond that, beyond the people that we bring into this country 
every year legally, another 1 million or so come in through the back 
door, another 1 million or so we do not know who they are, we do not 
know where they are, we do not know what they are doing here. We trust 
most of them are ``doing these jobs,'' I hear this constantly, ``that 
no one else wants.'' They are only coming to do jobs that no other 
American will do.
  I tell you, Mr. Speaker, with between 10 and 18 million Americans out 
of work today, I will bet you anything that there are millions of 
Americans who are willing to do the jobs, but they have been underbid, 
if you will, by people who have come here illegally. Their jobs have 
been taken by people who have said, I will do it for less.
  Then the next wave of immigration comes, and they do the same thing. 
They take jobs from the people who just came in. So that over the last 
10 years, our wage rates in this country have stayed flat; and wage 
rates, especially for low income people, have stayed very, very flat, 
because it is a depressing effect on wage rates when you have millions 
of people coming into the country illegally, especially people who are 
low-skilled and therefore low-wage people.
  But half a million through just one sector over the last 6 months. 
And why? I will tell you why, because the President of the United 
States made a speech, and in this speech he said that he wants a 
program of amnesty. And there is no other way to put it.
  He connected it with his plan for a guest worker program; but, in 
fact, because he allows people to stay in this country even if they are 
here illegally, it is an amnesty plan.
  Every time I go to the border, and I go down to the border quite 
often, Mr. Speaker, and up to our northern border, and every time I do 
I talk to someone who is Border Patrol, and they will say to you every 
single time, they will say, whatever you do, do not even use the word 
``amnesty'' when you start talking up there in the Congress, because 
every time you do that, then the flood that I am trying to stop down 
here turns into a tidal wave.
  That is exactly what happened. The numbers went up dramatically right 
after the President gave his speech, and they continue to go up. On the 
border, our Border Patrol people are even asking the people they 
interdict, why are you coming? They will tell them, to get the amnesty 
they think they are going to get. So now literally millions of people 
have come into this country illegally already to obtain this goal of 
amnesty, which we should never give to anyone.
  No one ever should get rewarded for breaking the law, and that is 
exactly what any amnesty plan is. And no one, no one as an employer, 
should be exempt from the law, simply because they hire a lot of people 
who are here illegally. In fact, they should be fined; they should face 
the full force of the law of the land here, because it is against the 
law, as you know, Mr. Speaker. It is against the law to hire people who 
are here illegally, although we do it. We do it quite consistently, and 
we do it by the millions, and we ignore it. It is because we have 
learned with immigration policy. We have learned that the law is like a 
Chinese menu in a Chinese restaurant. We will accept this, we will take 
that, we will not take this or will not take that. So we do not enforce 
the law against people who are hiring people who are here illegally, 
and we should.
  There are consequences to massive immigration, consequences that 
nobody wants to talk about, I know. Many people are concerned about 
this discussion.
  I am a Republican, Mr. Speaker, and I recognize that I many times 
rile my colleagues and even certainly the White House, because I do 
talk about this issue as often as I can. And I talk about it because I 
believe it is one of the most important public policy issues we can 
deal with here.
  It is something to live in Washington, D.C., or in Chicago, or in 
Billings, Montana, or Omaha, Nebraska. You will see the effects of 
illegal immigration, certainly. But you do not see them like you see 
them on the border, where in your backyard every night people are 
coming across by the thousands, and it is happening on our southern 
border especially. There are consequences to that.
  I want to read a letter I got from a constituent, not of mine, a lady 
that lives in Arizona. I will condense it. She says: ``This is my 
story.''
  This puts a face on this issue of illegal immigration, because it is 
not just numbers. When I come here and talk about the fact that a 
quarter of a million people were interdicted in just one sector in 6 
months' time coming in here, that is just a number to most of us. But 
to this lady and to the thousands of people who live on that border, it 
is far more than just numbers. It is a way of life that is being 
destroyed down there. And, believe me, what is happening on the border 
is going to be happening farther and farther north as time goes on.
  She says, ``I live in a world,'' she called this ``My Story.'' She 
says, ``I live in a world where I do not count. I am not a minority. I 
am poor, I do not have coalitions rallying for what I feel is 
important. I do not have news reporters writing about poor me. But I 
have views, I vote, I pay taxes, and I know there are millions of 
people in America just like me.
  ``I live next to a shelter built by politicians who are afraid to 
have an opinion about closing the border. Daily,

[[Page 6420]]

1,500 illegal aliens visit that shelter. It was supposed to keep those 
poor people from urinating and defecating on the streets. It did not. 
Now, if I were to defecate on the streets,'' she said, ``I would be 
fined.
  ``My home and vehicles have been broken into 22 times in 5 years. I 
stopped calling the police each time they do now, because they do not 
come anyway. Instead, we bought a gun. We scared off the last illegal 
alien trying to steal our truck. He knew enough English to say `sorry' 
as we pointed the gun at him. Three months later, we still have a towel 
over the smashed driver's side window.
  ``Not too long ago a car ran into the rear end of my car. The 
policeman came and said I would have to wait while he called for a 
back-up. My baby was screaming. The police had no film in the camera. 
The backup policeman had no fingerprinting ink or film. The illegal 
alien who hit me had an ID, but the police said there was nothing that 
could be done. The illegal would just get another fake ID and would 
never show up for court. He did not have insurance.
  ``The illegal alien who hit me said `sorry,' as he walked away. He 
was free to go. I was free to pay the deductible on my car and the 
chiropractor bills for my children and myself. If I drove without 
insurance and hurt someone or their possessions, I would be forced to 
pay for the damages.
  ``My husband works 6 days a week as a framing contractor. He pays 
FICA, Social Security, State taxes, Federal taxes, general liability 
insurance, workman's comp insurance, and probably others I do not even 
know about. His workman's comp just skyrocketed from $5,000 to $28,000 
a year. Now, I ask you, where am I going to come up with the extra 
$23,000? We had no claims. Should I take it from my food budget? My 
home insurance costs me $100 more annually because I live in a border 
State.'' She says, ``How long before Kansas becomes a border State?
  ``I have no medical insurance and have had no medical insurance for 
years. I cannot afford it. At 33, I got cancer. My doctor told me to go 
to the hospital, ACCHS. I do not remember how to spell the State's 
medical system, since they declined me anyway. My husband's company had 
no profits for 6 months due to theft. Without studying my receipts, I 
was declined. Interestingly, hundreds of illegal aliens standing in 
line were being given food stamps and medical care. They did not have 
Social Security numbers; they did not speak English.
  ``My son cries nightly because his arms and legs hurt. He has cried 
for almost 7 years. They do not know what is wrong with him.''
  They do not have insurance, and therefore are hesitant to just take 
him to the doctor, because they cannot afford to pay. But she goes on 
to say that when she has gone eventually to the emergency room, they 
cannot even take them, because there are so many people there ahead of 
them who are here in this country illegally.
  ``Two years ago,'' she says, ``I announced to my family there would 
be no turkey for Thanksgiving. We would eat pasta and be thankful we 
are a family. My Catholic friend made arrangements for me to get a box 
of food from her church. I went reluctantly. I drove up in my broken 
old van. I saw a lot of new stickers on new Suburbans. My van was the 
worst vehicle there, and it hit me that I really was poor.
  ``I stood in line for 20 minutes, amazed by the number of illegal 
aliens who could not show an ID when they were asked. When it was my 
turn to show an ID, I was told to leave. There was not enough food for 
me to take a box. I looked around, there were boxes of food everywhere. 
For a minute, I forgot: I did not count.
  ``Our church, our pastor, reminds us to stay hopeful. I struggle to 
make sense out of a system that has taken from me and given to those 
who have more than I do. Who will be my voice? Where is my coalition? I 
thought it was the leaders of America. I was wrong. They have sold me 
out, and millions like me. What is worse, I do not know why.'' Rhonda 
Rose is her name.
  We get literally hundreds in my office, hundreds of e-mails. When I 
come on the floor here, as I try to do often, to speak on this issue, 
we go back and the e-mails start. And I want to hear from these people, 
because, you know, they all tell stories like this, and they ask us to 
continue to work and try to do something about this illegal immigration 
problem. I feel like I am overwhelmed by their cries for help.
  I know that there are other colleagues who care about this issue, Mr. 
Speaker, but I do not see it translating in any sort of way into help 
for these people. We are fearful of doing anything that would actually 
secure those borders. We are fearful of doing anything that would 
actually enforce the law in this country.
  Why are we fearful? What are we afraid of in this Congress? Why will 
we ignore the laws on the books? Why will we tell people like her that 
we will abandon them? Because, Mr. Speaker, as you and I both know, on 
that side of the aisle they will do nothing about immigration, legal or 
illegal. They want to encourage it, because they know it turns into 
votes for them. On our side of the aisle, we do nothing to stop it 
because we believe that it is cheap labor. And those two powerful 
interests have stopped us from doing anything significant about this 
issue.
  It is the fear of the political ramification. What would happen? You 
know, we have been on this floor for days talking about jobs, about how 
we cannot possibly go on outsourcing jobs, how many jobs Americans have 
lost in every industry and what each candidate for President is going 
to do about it, and candidates for the House of Representatives, what 
they are going to do.
  We discuss how we are going to change this. Should we put on tariffs? 
Should we try somehow to be protectionist and stop allowing imports? 
Should we actually pass laws saying corporations cannot offshore, as if 
we could actually stop it, considering the Internet and the movement of 
jobs-to-jobs to workers all over the world in an instant?
  But we say those things. We are thinking. We are pulling our hair out 
trying to think about how to create more jobs in this country, how to 
stop the offshoring of jobs, because we know it is going to be a 
political issue. But we cannot seem to come up with a real plan, 
because no one will want to address this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, where do you think those 500,000 people are today that 
came in in the last 6 months through the Tucson sector? Do you think 
they all just simply went on welfare? Many of them, of course, most of 
them, are working somewhere in this Nation. And where did they get this 
job? Was it a job no American wanted? Was it a job that happened to be 
posted in a newspaper, or was it a job that somebody else had that they 
have now displaced?
  I am told every day that there are not enough jobs available for 
Americans who want to work, and we are trying to think of ways to 
create jobs. Yet, we refuse to secure the border; we refuse to do 
anything about the people who are already working here illegally.
  We can create 10 million jobs tomorrow if we just enforce our own 
laws against illegal immigration. We would not have to do anything. We 
would not even have to get involved with the World Court because we 
introduced a concept, an idea, that could be seen as being 
protectionist.
  This would only be enforcing the laws that America actually has on 
the books, and we will not do that. We do not have the political will.
  How are we going to answer these people, or the hundreds of others 
that call our office, and, I know, other offices of other Members? Not 
too long, after the President's speech, we had almost 1,000 calls into 
our office in 2 days. I came on this floor and I talked to other 
people; and they told me the same thing, that there in fact had been 
hundreds of thousands of calls coming in to all the offices for all the 
Members.

                              {time}  1545

  So I know people did respond. And we know what that means, Mr. 
Speaker, because so many people called their Congressmen and 
Congresswomen in

[[Page 6421]]

their districts: that plan that the President proposed is dead on 
arrival. It is not going to pass, my colleagues and I all know it. I am 
glad that it is not going to pass, and he is a President of my party, 
and I respect him and admire him and I will support him in many ways, 
but he is as wrong as he can be on this issue, Mr. President, and Mr. 
Speaker, and Mr. President, if you are listening.
  I see a colleague of mine has joined me. I am going to make an 
assumption that he has joined me because he wants to join in this 
debate. I say that because I know him and I know his heart, and I know 
where he is on this issue.
  We are now going to confuse a lot of people, because we are told 
often that we look very similar, and we are confused often as we go 
around the House here. I am sorry for him if that is the case, if he 
does look like me. He is much more handsome than I. But my colleague, 
the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), has joined me; and I will be glad 
to yield to him.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's 
assumption that I came here asking for you to yield and saying that 
that is where my heart is and my head is. Without preparation, I did 
want to also listen to your presentation, which I did last night on C-
SPAN, by the way, and I know millions of Americans were listening as 
well. I thank the gentleman for the leadership he has provided on this 
issue.
  In this Congress and in politics around the country, whether it is 
State legislatures or city councils or county supervisors, there is a 
thing that has to happen in the dynamics in order for good public 
policy to be formed, and that is that there are always two sides to an 
issue, or it would not be an issue. As those issues get pulled and 
tugged and massaged and people in the middle start to weigh in for and 
against the increments of that policy, over time, that policy is shaped 
in such a way where you finally get to the point where there is enough 
agreement where we can pass such a policy. We are a long, long ways 
from that in this immigration policy in the United States today.
  I look back to the years when Pat Buchanan was running for President 
and he insisted that we have a nationwide debate on immigration. I 
regret that we were not able to move that debate forward at that time, 
shape this policy before we got to this critical situation that we are 
in today, with massive numbers flowing over the border and not a policy 
to deal with it.
  I understand the President's motivation. I think his head and his 
heart want to go down that path to help 10 or 12 or 14 million people. 
The other side of this equation is one the gentleman from Colorado and 
I agree on, and many, many members of this Congress and even a greater 
percentage of people across the country that intuitively understand, 
that an immigration policy which by Constitution is vested within the 
responsibility of the United States Congress, an immigration policy 
must be designed to enhance the economic, the social, and the cultural 
well-being of the United States of America. What other purpose would we 
have?
  I look at some things that happened in my State. We have an 
affirmative action program within our universities that has been 
approved by the board of regents. It is an 8.5 percent, we cannot call 
it a quota, it is an 8.5 percent minority ``goal.'' Well, this minority 
goal almost moved some State legislation that would have imposed the 
equivalent of a high burden on the taxpayers of the State to try to 
reach this 8.5 percent. In Iowa, we have about a 3 percent minority, 
but we would do an 8.5 percent minority goal.
  Well, in an effort to reach that goal, within one of our regents' 
institutions, that institution set up a recruitment center down in San 
Antonio, Texas. I would like to be recruiting those folks of the same 
ethnicity if we need to do that from Iowa. We have sufficient numbers 
that are not accessing education, but yet the recruitment office in San 
Antonio was recruiting Hispanics to meet part of this 8.5 percent goal 
for minorities, and then they got overzealous and they went across the 
border and they brought in Mexican nationals from Mexico City to meet a 
goal for a minority set-aside in Iowa.
  What is going on, America? I cannot connect my logic with this.
  I will go back to affirmative action. If we take it back to its 
inception, it was designed to correct the institutionalization of 
segregation of American blacks in the South. That was the specific, 
narrow goal of affirmative action, and it is preferential treatment in 
jobs and educational opportunities. I do not know how we would have 
fixed that. That is a sin against this Nation. And maybe there was a 
better way, but I am not wise enough to tell what we should have done. 
So I am going to let that one pass for a moment and just say we needed 
to fix that. And we have, to a large degree, repaired the 
institutionalization of segregation of American blacks in the South. 
Now they are coming up in job opportunities.
  But that affirmative action program that was instituted then, for 
what arguably was a good cause, now has grown into this monstrosity of 
a policy that decides that every family reunion has to take place in 
the United States; it cannot take place in any other country. So we 
have a repatriation policy that allows someone to reach out and bring 
their family members into the United States, and that does not fit that 
equation of what is good for the economic, social, and cultural well-
being of the United States.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the economic, 
social, and cultural well-being of the United States, now that is an 
interesting phrase; and it is an important one. Because it is important 
to understand that massive immigration into the country, both legal and 
illegal, that phenomenon has, in fact, huge, huge implications for 
America, for who we are, where we are going, and what we are going to 
be. And this is an even more dangerous situation than what we were 
talking about earlier in terms of just the numbers and how they affect 
us.
  Mr. Speaker, there is an assault. People ask me all the time, I am 
sure they ask the gentleman from Iowa also, they ask, why is this 
different now? Why are you arguing this issue? What makes immigration 
today different than when your grandparents, and it was my 
grandparents, by the way, who came? My folks did not come over on the 
Mayflower. I am a relatively new American. What is the difference? Why 
was it okay then and not okay now?
  I said, well, there are two main reasons, as far as I am concerned, 
two things. First of all, it is a different country. We are a different 
country than the country to which my grandparents came in many ways. 
One, of course, is that when my grandparents came, and I will bet the 
gentleman from Iowa's too, there were either of two choices for them: 
they either worked or they starved. That was it. There was nothing 
else. There was no such thing as a welfare plan. And there was also no 
such thing as a radical multiculturalism that permeated our society.
  Now, what do I mean by that? I am talking about a philosophy, an idea 
that has seeped into the absolute soul of our society, and it is what 
we teach our children in schools, that there is nothing of value in 
America.
  Example: Los Angeles, I heard this on radio just the other day. A Los 
Angeles school, Roosevelt High School, where an eleventh grade teacher 
told a nationally syndicated radio program that she ``hates the 
textbooks she has been told to use and the state-mandated history 
curriculum'' because they ``ignore students of Mexican ancestry,'' 
because the students do not see themselves in the curriculum. The 
teacher has chosen to modify the curriculum by replacing it with 
activities like mural walks that are intended to open the eyes of the 
students to their indigenous culture.
  Another person who actually created one of these murals was on the 
radio talking to the students; and he said to them, this is not your 
country. You should have absolutely no allegiance to this country. Your 
education has been a big lie, he told them, one big lie after another. 
And we know that this is one tiny example of something that happens in 
schools all over this Nation,

[[Page 6422]]

where children are told that they, in fact, should not attach 
themselves to what we called the American dream when my grandparents 
came here; that they should stay separate; that they should keep their 
separate language and cultural and even political affiliation with the 
country from which they came. This is what we tell them today. That is 
why it is a different country. And it may be also that we have a 
different type of immigration policy.
  I met recently with the bishop of Denver, Bishop Gomez; and he said 
something I will never forget. This was at a breakfast and we were 
discussing this issue, and he said to me, Congressman, I do not know 
why you are so worried about immigration from Mexico. And by the way, 
it is not just Mexico; he happened to be talking about Mexico. He said, 
I do not know why you are so worried about immigration from Mexico. He 
said, The Mexicans that are coming here do not want to be Americans. 
Those were his exact words.
  I said, well, Bishop, to the extent that that is true, if what you 
said is true, then that is the problem. That is what I am worried 
about. It is not them coming here; it is them coming here not wanting 
to be Americans on one side and us on the other side telling them we do 
not want you to either, we want you to stay separate, Balkanized and 
divided. This is a serious problem for America. I yield to my friend.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I would add to that there is a 
different philosophy today than there was when your grandparents came 
here or when mine came here. My grandmother came over from Germany.
  I remember her advice to my father who went off to kindergarten on 
his first day speaking German only and when he came home from the first 
day, walked into the house and said hello to his mother in German, and 
she turned to him and said, speaking German in this household is for 
you from now on verboten, because we came here to be Americans, and you 
are going to learn English in school and bring it home and teach to it 
me.
  I wish I could say that in German today, but it conveys a philosophy 
of buying into this culture and this civilization. Yes, there are many 
immigrants that come into this country who do buy into the philosophy; 
but sadly, millions of them are met at the border with radical 
multiculturalists, the cult of multiculturalism with, I used to say 
hundreds of millions of dollars funding, and now today I say it is in 
the billions of dollars, funding this multicul-
turalism that is infused into every level of our curriculum, every 
level of our lives, and it rejects a greater American civilization. It 
rejects the very concept that America is a great Nation or that we have 
the lead culture, economy, and military in the world, or that we are 
the unchallenged superpower in the world. They focus on the things that 
they can be critical of, what they call America's failures.
  Mr. Speaker, multiculturalism draws a new line. This new line is, 
everybody belongs to a group, except for the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Tancredo) and myself and other folks who fit in our category.
  I went to a college campus, and before I went there to speak, I went 
to their little search engine on their home page and I typed in 
``multiculturalism'' and I hit search. What came back was 59 different 
multicultural groups registered on campus, starting with Asians, ends 
with Zeitgeists, and in between, and every one, virtually, a victim's 
group. As I talked to those young people and I said, look at this. When 
you arrive here as a freshman on the first day, there might as well be 
59 card tables set up out here in the parking lot and you can go down 
through here and choose your victims group. Start with Asians, ends 
with Zeitgeists, you will belong to 5, 6, 7, 8, or 10 of them before 
you get down through this line, and everyone will tell you why you 
ought to have the sweat off of somebody else's brow, everyone will tell 
you that you are a victim and you deserve special rights and group 
rights by virtue of this merit of being a victim.
  But if I might conclude, then, so your grandparents and my 
grandparents that came here did not see themselves as victims. They saw 
themselves as being extraordinarily fortunate individuals that had the 
opportunity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I yield back to 
my colleague.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, let me give some more examples of exactly 
what the gentleman is saying here and the problems we face. A school 
district in New Mexico, the introduction of a textbook called ``500 
Years of Chicano History in Pictures,'' and it was written, now listen 
to this, it states that it was written in response to the bicentennial 
celebration of the 1776 American Revolution and its lies. That is why 
this textbook was produced, because of the lies of the bicentennial. 
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 1847 war on Mexico is an unprovoked 
U.S. invasion.
  The chapter headings include Death to the Invader, U.S. Conquest and 
Betrayal, We are Now a U.S. Colony in Occupied America, and They Stole 
the Land. This is a textbook, mind you, that was introduced into 
classrooms in New Mexico.
  This, by the way, this is a quote by a gentleman who is the president 
of La Raza. La Raza is probably one of the most significant of the 
Hispanic organizations and it means the people, La Raza. Many would 
suggest that the positions that they take are antithetical to true 
democratic principles and that they are part of the problem of dividing 
people up into these victimized groups. Here is what the president of 
La Raza said. By the way, this is traditionally supported mass 
immigration, but today sees a more pressing issue for Hispanics. This 
is his quote: ``I think the biggest problem we have is a culture clash, 
a clash between our values and the values in American society.'' That 
is what he told the Fort Worth Star.
  This is a clash of values, he said, that they are not our values. 
Well, of course, I believe to a large extent they are common values. 
But if we do not teach children in our public school system to believe 
and understand who they are and what their heritage really is, the 
value of a Western Civilization that they can share, if we do not do 
that and we are not doing it, we are afraid of doing it, then how can 
we ever expect them to in fact support and defend that concept?
  I went into a school in my district not too long ago, brand-new 
school, built in Douglas County, Colorado, which is one of the fastest 
growing and also one of the counties with the highest per capita income 
in the country. Needless to say, I do not live in that particular 
county, but it is a county of fairly wealthy people.

                              {time}  1600

  These kids were great kids and bright, and they had all the 
advantages of having a school in that area and all the accoutrements of 
a beautiful school. They came in and talked. We were in an auditorium. 
There were about 200 kids. They were good kids. I do not mean for a 
moment to suggest that they were not. But they got to the end, and one 
of them sent a note up to the thing and said, ``What do you think is 
the most significant problem facing the country?''
  I said, ``Well, I am going to ask you a question and maybe it can 
help me make that decision.'' I said, ``How many people in this 
auditorium right now will agree with the following statement: You live 
and we live in the greatest country on earth?''
  Two hundred people, 200 kids, brightest, best educated, healthiest, 
the product of Western civilization that has created that we have 
today, and maybe 2 dozen raised their hands out of 200.
  I stood there in shock in a way. I have been a teacher. When I looked 
out at those kids, I saw on a lot of faces something I had seen it 
before, a lot of kids wanted to say yes to the issue. They did not hate 
America. They wanted to say yes. But I have seen that look where they 
said, if I put my hand up, he might actually call on me. So they did 
not.
  They were afraid to put their hand up to say yes to that question 
because

[[Page 6423]]

they were intellectually disarmed. They could not possibly have made 
the case. They were afraid if they said yes, yes, I believe I live in 
the best country in the world, what if I would have said, ``Okay. Prove 
it. Why?'' And that is what they were fearful of. Because they had not 
been taught why they should.
  As a teacher, kids come into schools, some have an innate knowledge 
and love of music. Very few. Some have just an innate knowledge and 
love of great art or great literature. Very few. Our task as teachers 
is to teach them why they should appreciate it.
  It is exactly the same thing with our society. They do not come in 
with an innate knowledge and appreciation of Western civilization. They 
need to be taught. If we do not do so, then it is to our peril.
  The children around the room, I could tell, they even looked at the 
teachers who were standing along the aisles leading down to the stage, 
and there was some degree of hesitancy that made them very 
uncomfortable to be placed in this position of having to try to defend 
this concept.
  I suggest that this is because we have become so captivated by the 
cult of multiculturalism that we are afraid to say the obvious, that we 
are in the greatest Nation, we do live in the greatest Nation of the 
world. If we do not tell our children that and if we tell immigrants 
that that is not the truth and they should never connect us to that 
kind of a country, will we have a country at all? What will it look 
like? I do not mean by color, I just mean by division. Is it Balkanized 
America or is it united America?
  Mr. KING. Mr. Speaker, I think I have an anecdote on this scenario 
that I painted here. That is, some years ago I drafted some 
legislation, and I began to identify these same things. What is great 
about this Nation and what are the weaknesses that we have within our 
educational system that does not infuse this into the minds of young 
people anymore like it was infused into our mind as we grew up? It was 
part of our family and educational system, something we learned in 
church as well.
  I drafted legislation, and I called it the God and Country Bill. It 
simply states that each child in America shall be taught that the 
United States of America is the unchallenged greatest Nation in the 
world, and we derive our strength from biblical values, free enterprise 
capitalism, and Western civilization.
  Now, unless you have been there you cannot imagine how many names I 
got called, how many nasty letters and e-mails and phone calls came my 
way for stating something that I believe ought to be obvious to the 
vast majority of Americans. One particular e-mail came, and I noticed 
it had an educational e-mail address. It said, ``We get plenty of 
Western civilization. You are trying to impose something on America, 
and we do not really believe we are the greatest nation in the world.'' 
It gave a whole list of these things.
  By the way, it was not friendly toward Christopher Columbus. I point 
that out particularly.
  But, nonetheless, ``We get 2 years of American history. We get enough 
Western civilization. We do not need to teach anymore.''
  I thought, okay, I am going to help this student out. I did not know 
how to explain it, so I just typed back an e-mail response that said, 
go see your teacher about Western civilization. Your teacher will 
explain to you what Western civilization is.
  The answer I got back was, ``I am the teacher.''
  There is the problem, at least one of the problems.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, we will be wrapping this up. I want to 
thank my colleague very much for joining me for this special order.
  About 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago now, I introduced a resolution; and it 
is a very, very simple resolution. It is a Sense of Congress that all 
children graduating from any school in this country should be able to 
articulate an appreciation for Western civilization, and I was 
astounded by the reaction I got.
  I mean, first of all, the NEA, the National Education Association, of 
course, they came unglued. How dare I suggest such a thing? How dare I?
  We get e-mails from people who have seen it, and it is the same 
thing. In fact, an article that was in a newspaper, a Houston Chronicle 
article written by two individuals co-authored it, they were vilifying 
me and also an author by the name of Samuel Huntington for writing a 
book in which he brings this issue out.
  They said, ``What is so good about assimilation any way?'' That was 
their way of addressing it. ``Why should we assimilate into your 
society?''
  These are supposedly Americans. These are people writing in a 
newspaper that they were regular columnists and they were suggesting 
that there was some separation there between their America and mine.
  Well, I suggest and I would really and truly like for people to go to 
the Web site. I always get a lot of calls when I do this, people asking 
how can we get more information about this. I tell them all the time, 
Mr. Speaker, they should go to the web site www.house.gov/Tancredo. On 
there you will see a page to go to called ``Our Heritage, Our Hope.''
  There is a resolution that we have in front of this Congress. I have 
another resolution that we have given to State legislators; and I 
believe in Iowa, if I am not mistaken, we were able to get a State 
legislator there to introduce it into Iowa. Same exact resolution, that 
is all we are asking for, is to have children be able to articulate an 
appreciation for Western civilization.
  That does not mean they should demean any other. It does not mean 
they cannot be critical of our own. It just means they have to have the 
ability to understand where we came from, who we are, and where we are 
going.
  It does not matter if you come here from Azerbaijan or Albania. It 
does not matter. It does not matter because, once you get here, there 
has got to be a canon, a set of standards or ideas that we all will buy 
into no matter whether we came from and no matter all the other 
cultural distinctions we have; and we can all appreciate the fact that 
there are these differences, but something has to hold us together.
  It is a set of ideas, because this Nation is the only nation on earth 
that was actually started on ideas. It is the only thing. We have 
enormous pride in that, and we should be able to take pride in it. We 
should be able to take pride in the fact that there are these tenets of 
the Western civilization like the rule of law and the value of the 
individual and the freedom of religion. These things are Western. We 
should be proud of it, no matter where one comes from, because they are 
coming to take advantage of it and should be willing to say, look, even 
in my culture we did not have that, and that is why I am coming here. I 
want to be part of it.
  We need to have things that hold us together. We have to stop doing 
things that keep tearing us apart and keep telling our own and we have 
to begin teaching it in schools and we have to tell immigrants that 
that is exactly what is expected of them.
  We have to secure our borders. Because no State can call itself a 
State if it does not control its own borders. The kind of thing we hear 
all the time, I know my colleague hears it and I do, racist, racist, 
racist. That is the word they want to throw at you and other epithets. 
But, in fact, of course, this has nothing to do with race. Nothing. And 
a significant number of the e-mails and letters I get are from Hispanic 
Americans who say, ``Right on. You are absolutely right.''
  I say, God bless those people and God bless them for being here and 
God bless them that they are Americans, Americans first, before 
anything else. Some of them in my State have been here for generations, 
far longer in the United States of America and in Colorado than me or 
my family; and they see exactly the problem that exists.
  So it has got nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with 
ethnicity. It has nothing to do with country of origin. It has 
everything to do with this country and whether or not we will still be 
a country.

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