IMMIGRATION POLICY
(House of Representatives - February 24, 2004)
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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: 22:15]
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 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 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: 22:30]
"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 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: 22:45]
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 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 underpinnings. 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, 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.
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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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