OUR POROUS BORDERS
(House of Representatives - April 2, 2004)
[Page: H2144] --- 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.
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, 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.
So I know people did respond. And we know what that means, Mr. Speaker, because so many people called their Congressmen and Congresswomen in 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, 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 multiculturalism 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.
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 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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