IMMIGRATION REFORM SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY FOR AMERICA
(House of Representatives — June 07, 2001)
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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. TANCREDO) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, once more, I rise to the podium to discuss an issue I think is of significant importance to the United States. I believe, as a matter of fact, it is perhaps the most significant public policy issue with which this body could or should be dealing. It is the issue of immigration reform.
Each evening at the end of business in this House, ladies and gentlemen from both sides of the aisle approach the mike to talk about particular issues of interest and concern to themselves. And each evening for the last several, Members, especially from the California delegation, have come to the microphone to talk about the problems that they face in that State as a result of a lack of sufficient energy resources. And each evening, they rail against the President's policies, the energy plan that he has put forward, the first such plan ever put forward by any administration, and suggest that the problems we face in this Nation with regard to energy are those that can be dealt with more by conservation than by production.
But all of the debate, Mr. Speaker, about energy problems, whether they concentrate on the issue of production as a solution or the possibility of conservation as a solution, miss the underlying problem.
The fact is, Mr. Speaker, the rolling blackouts we see in California and now some places beyond the borders of California, the skyrocketing costs of fuel oil, the fact that as we approach summer people are concerned about whether they are going to be able to keep their homes cool and in the wintertime whether they are going to be able to keep their homes warm because of the cost of energy. All of these things really are a result of a phenomenon I refer to as the numbers. It is numbers. It is the number of people in this country demanding the various resources that are available to them, but at varying costs.
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Every year, Mr. Speaker, we allow legally into this country 1 million people under an immigrant status. Each year, we allow in another quarter of a million people under what is called refugee status. And each year, we have about 2 million to 3 million, the estimates vary widely of course, naturally, 2 million to 3 million illegal people coming across the borders and staying. We have far more coming across the borders, something like 800,000 a day, coming across the border; but I am saying that just those that we net out every year amounts to 2 million or 3 million.
I have a chart, Mr. Speaker, actually two charts, if I could ask a page to set them up, that show the growth of the population of this Nation over the last 20 years or so. We just had the census and the headlines across the Nation scream out, population growth extraordinary, more than we have anticipated, more than could have been anticipated, more than was expected. And we sometimes wonder how this could have happened; how it could happen that the numbers of people could actually grow so rapidly.
This, Mr. Speaker, is a chart that describes what has happened from 1970 when the population was about 203 million and the growth in population identified here in green that could be attributable to what we would call the native-born population, or specifically, the baby boomers. As we can see, the population growth was increasing, has increased, just the natural population growth, since 1970; and there has been a lot of concern about that.
However, the population would, in fact, level off, the population growth that is identified by this Baby Boomer Echo, as is shown here in green, that would level off in about 2020, and we would actually begin a decrease in population growth. That does not mean a decrease in population, just that the trend line is going down, were it not for the fact that we have an immigrant population that has actually doubled the size of growth in the United States, the rate of growth. So we would be right now at 243 million people in the United States, had it not been for immigration over the past 30 years. We are at 281 million people in the United States as a result of it; we have actually doubled the growth rate.
Now, this is intriguing, the numbers are interesting, and we can discuss what the implications are; but the fact is, we will be in a relatively short time, at a point where our resources will be stretched to the limit. We are not able to actually accommodate the population growth of this Nation with the resource allocation and with the problem of environmental protections that we perhaps rightly, perhaps blindly place on the actual development of our natural resources. For whatever reason, we cannot produce enough to supply the demand of the population we have in the United States in terms of energy. So when people from California rail against whatever political party is in power, either at the State or at the national level, and suggest that that is the problem, that we would all have lots and lots of fuel oil, gasoline, energy supplies if it only were not for some particular problem with the political philosophy of one party or the other.
Mr. Speaker, it has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with the fact that both political parties refuse to deal with the real problems we face in America today brought on by this enormous growth in population, and that specifically, that growth in population, that part of it that is brought on by immigration.
[Time: 15:15]
For many years, Mr. Speaker, we have had, of course, immigration in the United States of America. It is a country of immigrants. We all came here as a result of someone's decision at some point in time to leave their country and to come to the United States.
I am quite sympathetic with all those people, who still today are hardworking, God-fearing, law-abiding in every other way except they will come across the border illegally.
For the most part, these people are people who have all of the intentions, all of the desires to become part of the American dream, to obtain a part of the American dream, that our grandparents had. I certainly do not blame them for coming. I do not blame them for trying to come across the border legally, or sometimes illegally. I would not doubt for a moment that if I were living in some of their circumstances, I would be trying to do exactly the same thing.
So it is not the immigrant, the individual immigrant, that I am concerned about here or that I am in any way trying to degrade. It is our own policy, it is the policy of this Nation with regard to immigration. It is the head-in-the-sand policy, we should call it, with regard to immigration that I am concerned about. It is a refusal on the part of the Nation to deal with the fact of the numbers.
It is the numbers. It is not where people are coming from, it is how many people are coming here that has an impact on the quality of life in the United States. We are witnessing it in California on sort of a major scale, but every one of us, I believe, throughout our districts can observe the effects of immigration, and I would suggest to the Members, the negative effects of it, depending on who we are in the process.
If one is an employer desirous of obtaining the cheapest labor possible, desirous of paying people even below minimum wage, desirous of having people who would never think about perhaps filing a claim or something like that, then they are on the other side of this issue. They are happy about massive immigration, public or private, because they can take advantage of it. They take advantage of those people coming in asking for help, needing a job, doing anything for a job and fearful of causing a problem in any way, because, of course, they may find the INS at their door.
However, the possibility of that is quite remote. We actually deport only 1 percent of the illegals that enter the country every year, 1 percent. So as I say, they should not really be too concerned. But if they make waves, then they might end up being identified by the INS. Maybe somebody would place a call. Why? Because they have had the audacity to ask for a minimum wage job, or that their benefits be increased, but they are here illegally. We take advantage of them. They are manipulated. They are exploited by greed.
So if they are on that side of the equation, I can understand full well, Mr. Speaker, that those people would not be too excited about the possibility of reducing the levels of immigrants into this country to something that we can handle, something that can allow immigrants to actually prosper themselves, and allow the United States to prosper itself. It could be mutually beneficial.
We need to reduce immigration dramatically, but as I say, it is just not a Californian who has a concern about this. Every single one of us sees something happening in his or her district that is a result of immigration.
In Colorado, I see it all the time. We see the demand for more and more highways, the demand for more and more schools. We keep wondering, where are these people coming from? How is it that this demand is growing so dramatically? It is a result, of course, of massive immigration, both legal and illegal. We will begin to see much more of its effects as time goes by if we do not do something about it.
Mr. Speaker, I showed the Members a chart a little bit ago that identified this part of the growth of this Nation from 1970 to 2000. We see again that 243 million would have been the population of the Nation had we in fact not had immigration in the last 30 years, but with immigration, we have more. Remember, we are just talking here about legal immigrants. We do not know how many illegal immigrants. We assume 10 to 15 million people here in the country are here illegally.
But our country at the end of 2000 was at 281 million people, so that part was the result of immigration, as I say, doubling the actual growth rate normally.
I ask Members to look what happens, look what happens if this growth rate is allowed to continue at the present level of 1 million legal immigrants in here. This does not reflect illegal immigration, which of course is about double, at least double legal immigration.
This just looks at what would happen, what is going to happen. This is not hypothetical, this is not a maybe
thing; this is a direct, an absolutely defensible explanation, a visible explanation, of what is going to happen in
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this country within the rest of this century, even in the next 30 years, if we continue to have immigration levels at the present level. We will be, at 2050, at 404 million, and we will be at 571 million people in the country at 2100.
Think about that when we are looking at where we are way down here. Think about the taxes that we have to pay in order to support the infrastructural demands of a population increase of this nature. Think about the number of schools that have to be built to support this. Think about the number of highways. Think about the number of hospitals. Think about the social service demands.
This population actually uses social services to a greater extent than the indigenous population. Think about this, just this. If nothing else will impress the Members, think about the quality of life at this level, at 571 million people in this country. Think about that little green belt that is not too far from our houses today.
Think about the fact that maybe today we can get in the car and within an hour or so we can be out in the more pristine areas enjoying the beauty of nature. Think about the ability of going to the Yellowstone National Park or Rocky Mountain National Park in my State, but think about having to make reservations to do that 4 or 5 years in advance to get into a national park.
This is what is coming, I assure the Members, and it will not be in the next 100 years, that will be in the next few years. We are already planning on how to try to deal with the massive numbers of people coming into the park systems of the United States without destroying them, destroying the ecology. There is only one way to do it, of course, and that is to parcel it out.
So today when we can get in our car and in fact drive freely across the United States, we can go into areas where it is hard to see another person, and that is sometimes what we all would desire, that kind of great quiet and solitude, think about it, Mr. Speaker, when the country is at this level of population, it will not be a place where solitude will easily be found. It will not be a place where one could enjoy the beauty of nature by simply getting in our vehicles or taking a stroll for a while, getting out of town, away from it all. It will be much more difficult to get away from it all because it will all have come here. It will all be here because of massive immigration, both legal and illegal.
Again, I want to reestablish something here. When we look at this incredible chart and we look at what is going to happen to the population of the United States because of the red part here, please remember this, this is not talking about illegal immigrants who stay here, this is just from legal immigration at the present level. Can anybody understand the implication of this? Does anybody want to deal with it?
Do Members think we have rolling blackouts now in California, rolling brownouts? Well, we are going to have a much more significant problem then when the population reaches these levels, and it will be, of course, much higher because illegal immigration rates are far greater than the legal.
Yes, then we will come here to the floor of the House and we will talk about maybe having to do something about immigration. We cannot sustain it at these levels, we will say. Maybe we will say that. I do not know. But why not say it today, Mr. Speaker? Why are we so afraid of bringing this issue to the attention of our colleagues here and to the attention of the general public?
There are a couple of reasons, but primarily they deal with fear, fear of being called a racist, fear of being called xenophobic, and a variety of other terms that certainly I have thrown at me every time I do this speech on the floor of the House. The phones start ringing in our office. People from all over the country express their displeasure with what I say.
Mr. Speaker, I will suffer the slings and arrows of those folks who feel so outraged by what I am saying here just to get people to begin to pay attention to the issue.
I want to read a part of a letter that is dated March 19, 1924. The letter is addressed to the Congress of the United States, and it reads as follows:
"Every effort to enact immigration legislation must expect to meet a number of hostile forces, and in particular, two hostile forces of considerable strength."
It goes on: "One of these is composed of corporation employers who desire to employ physical strength, `broad backs,' at the lowest possible wage, and who prefer a rapidly revolving labor supply at low wages to a regular supply of American wage earners at fair wages.''
Remember, this is 1924. It goes on:
"The other hostile force is composed of racial groups in the United States who oppose all restrictive legislation because they want the doors left open for an influx of their countrymen, regardless of the menace to the people of their adopted country.''
This was Samuel Gompers, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor, the AFL, and himself, by the way, an immigrant.
He is right, Mr. Speaker, it has not changed. It has not changed, I assure the Members, in the last 76 years. It is still those hostile forces we meet when we bring an issue like this to the floor. It is still the employer who threatens me, threatens other Members of this body with a lack of support if we do not understand that they need to bring in illegal and legal immigrants so they can have these jobs that "no American will take.''
Yes, I am sure there are many jobs out there that no American will take for the wages that are paid at that level. Yes, I am sure that is true. As long as they can continue to get by with paying those low wages to those people, of course they are going to be coming here demanding that we do nothing about the massive immigration that is flooding the United States, that is coming across the borders; and I should say, by the way, also to the detriment of the immigrant.
The other thing, of course, is that there is a political side to this. There are a lot of people here who want to have massive immigration because they believe it accrues to their political advantage. We saw this, Mr. Speaker, we will recall, when President Clinton demanded that the INS go through a hurry-up procedure in order to make citizens out of hundreds of thousands of people who were here as immigrants, in order to get them registered to vote, in order for them to become good Democrats and vote for Mr. Clinton.
There was such a rush to do that that literally thousands, I read somewhere it was 69,000 that sticks in my mind, people who were given this citizenship in this rushed-up fashion who were in fact felons. They had committed felonies here and they had committed felonies in their country of origin. We gave them citizenship status because the Clinton administration wanted a massive number of people here because they believed that they would in turn become good, solid Democrat votes.
Mr. Speaker, I do not care whether they come here and vote Democrat or Republican or do not vote at all. The fact is, the issue of numbers is what we have to deal with today, the numbers. Because of immigration, the United States is currently growing at a rate faster than China. Because of immigration, within the lifetime of an American child our population will double.
[Time: 15:30]
There is an organization called Project U.S.A., from which I am taking much of the following information, and I suggest that anyone who wants to get any kind of information that we have talked about here tonight go to our Website, www.house.gov/tancredo. From that, we have links to any of these other sites. That is www.house.gov/tancredo. Then one can go to the other sites here, Project U.S.A. and many others. Go to our site on immigration reform first.
A writer by the name of Brenda Walker talks about the social contract, talks about what happens again in terms of what the impacts are of massive immigration into the country.
She says experts increasingly agree that Third World poverty is largely the result of generations of citizens' passivity and the failure to build governments based on democratic values. Democracy cannot survive in cultures where women have no rights, where there is little respect for the rule of law, where there is tolerance for bigotry, petty thievery, bribery, corruption, nepotism, ethnic hostility and
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where citizens fail to build the political coalitions and the citizen movements to effect real change.
She says, when we reward those who run from the problems in their own native land in order to save their own skin, then we undermine the citizen activism and the loyalty to one another that is absolutely necessary if Third World people are going to unite and solve their own problems.
It is not kindness on our part when we allow our corporations to employ their most educated and their most talented citizens. Where would South Africa be if Nelson Mandela had decided to cut and run for America?
Encouraging massive migration to the United States will not solve the problems in poorer countries. We can be much more effective through foreign aid and by teaching people how to build democratic societies for themselves. Teaching people how to fish is the path to true compassion and human dignity.
Consider this, no one can fail to notice the connection between poverty and rapid population growth. No one can fail to see the connection between population growth and the degradation of the global environment.
For our sake and for the sake of the world, we must work for a U.S. immigration moratorium. Certainly appropriate words.
Today, Mr. Speaker, my wife brought me a copy of the most recent issue of Time Magazine. It is a Time Special Issue, it says, identified by the June 11 date. It says, "Welcome to Amexica,'' A-M-E-X-I-C-A. The subtitle is "The border is vanishing before our eyes, creating a new world for all of us.''
I could not agree more, Mr. Speaker, with that headline. The border is vanishing. A new world is being created. What does this world look like? Well, it will look very much like the border that presently exists between the United States and Mexico, the border region referred to in this particular Time Magazine article.
This is from Time Magazine: "To enforce immigration policies over which they have no control, border counties lay out $108 million a year in law enforcement and medical expenses associated with illegal crossings, money most of these poor counties cannot afford. Yes, there is a shortage of truck drivers, but there is also a shortage of judges to hear all the drug and smuggling cases. Arizona ambulance companies face bankruptcy because of all the unreimbursed costs of rescuing illegals from the desert. Schools everywhere here are poor, overcrowded and growing.
"Good health care has always been scarce here, but the border boom makes it worse. A third of all U.S. tuberculosis cases are concentrated in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In the El Paso hospitals, 50 percent of the patients are on some kind of public assistance, mainly Medicaid.''
" `Border towns have the double burden of disease,' says Russell Bennett, chief of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission,'' those diseases of emerging nations like diarrhea as well as first world diseases like stress and diabetes.
The cost of immigration, I mean, the world is definitely changing, Mr. Speaker. There are no two ways about it. But I would not suggest it is changing especially on these border communities for the better, and it is because of numbers. It is not because, again, of where people come from. It is because of the numbers of people that are coming here.
Again, I repeat, 31 percent of all tuberculosis cases are found in the four border States. Colorado, by the way, is not too far behind in those statistics.
We are told that other countries are doing something to try to stem the flow of migrants to the United States. Well, let me suggest to my colleagues that that is almost a hollow promise.
Although Vicente Fox and others often speak of attempting to do something to reduce the flow of immigrants to the United States, the reality is that they are encouraging it. The reason why they are encouraging this out-migration from their countries is because they cannot deal with it. They refuse to deal with it.
Remember the petty larceny, the incredible amount of problems they have in trying to actually run their own government, the massive amount of corruption in the government itself and in the policing? All of this, of course, does not bode well for us, for those of us who hope that Mexico will be able to turn this around, to provide an economic arena in which their own people can thrive, in which they can achieve their own economic dreams. This is what we hope for all citizens all over the world.
But I suggest that it is counterproductive for the United States to accept so many legal and illegal people into our country based upon some bizarre rationale that we are actually helping them and we are helping the countries from which they come. We are doing neither. We are doing ourselves an injustice and we are doing an injustice to the nations from which these people come because we are allowing these countries to avoid dealing with the harsh reality of life; and that is, one better change one's system, one better become a more free enterprise, capitalistic system, understanding the benefits of a democratic republic based upon capitalism. That is the first thing one has to do.
One has to work to root out corruption in one's own government. One has to make sure that the police are honest, that the civil service at every level are not on the take.
But the fact is, Mr. Speaker, that in most of these Third World countries, that is just exactly what the case is. Most of these is incredibly corrupt and, as a result, of course they cannot provide governmental services as a result of socialistic economies. They cannot provide their own people with the quality of life that they deserve.
So what happens? They look for someplace to go, and that place to go is the United States of America. We can handle it. We can handle maybe 100,000 a year. We can handle maybe 150,000 a year. We can handle maybe 200,000 a year. But we cannot handle millions and millions of people a year. It does not help us, and it does not help them.
Vicente Fox "dreams of a day when the border will open and his countrymen will no longer flee to survive. As Fox told Ernesto Ruffo, his top aide on the region, 'Put holes in the border.' " That is his attempt to stop illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Put holes in the border. What does Mr. Fox mean by that? Believe me, it would be difficult to find where one could put the hole, because there is essentially an open border.
There is hardly anything that prevents the flow of illegals into this country from his country. Not only is Mr. Fox not attempting to stop it, but he and his government are abetting it. They are actually, as hard as this is to believe, Mr. Speaker, even in light of what Mr. Fox is telling the rest of the world, they are, in turn, handing out kits to illegals preparing to cross the border into the United States, kits that are designed to help them make their trip easier, kits that include water and condoms and Band-aids and maps and food supplies for a day or so. They are being handed out by agencies of the Mexican Government.
At the same time, they tell us that they are trying to help reduce the flow of immigrants into the United States. This is simply untrue, Mr. Speaker.
There is the corruption. This article in Time Magazine goes on to talk about the corruption and how it affects the immigration policies. It says, "Police and Customs people pay for their government jobs so they can get in on the mordida, the payoff system. Midwives in Brownsville have sold thousands of birth certificates to be used as proof of U.S. citizenship. The Arellano Felix brothers, Tijuana drug kingpins known for torturing, carving up and roasting their rivals, are paying $4 million a month in bribes in Baja, California alone, just as the cost of doing business.''
Remember, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about corrupt officials both in Mexico and in the United States. $4 million a month in bribes in Baja, California alone.
"The $4 million reward for their capture is one of the highest the U.S. has ever offered, and is something of a bad joke under the circumstances. There hasn't been a single nibble in four years. What good is the money if you're dead?'' The article goes on.
"The border patrol has a mission impossible. No matter how many surveillance cameras and motion detectors it installs, still the immigrants come." It goes on to describe the plight of those who cross the border and do so in the
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heat of the day without proper care, without proper nutrition, without the ability to escape the burning rays of the sun. Many, many die in the process.
Those who do not come that way often employ the services of what are called coyotes. A coyote is a person who is employed to get one from Mexico to the United States doing so illegally. One has to pay them. It averages between 500 to sometimes several thousand dollars, depending upon the circumstances, to get one across the border.
What happens, these people get shoved into vans, into the backs of trucks, get compacted, if you will, into any vehicle that is coming across the border. Many of them die. This has happened several times in the last few months in my own State of Colorado. I think we are up to now 9 or 11 people who have died in this process being transported here by coyotes.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I do not blame them for trying. I understand their desire. It was the same as the desire of my grandparents and perhaps my colleagues to come to the United States and seek a better life. One of the things that we accomplished with that generation was, to a large extent, the ability to separate oneself from the culture and from the country from which one came. This is important. This is one reason why we do have the problem with massive migration, both legal and illegal from Mexico, because the border is of course adjacent to the United States, and it is harder.
When my grandparents came here from Italy in the late part of the 1800s, they came essentially to escape an old world, came to seek the benefits of the new world, to enter into what they believe was a place of streets of gold. They wanted to become upwardly mobile, and they did that. One of the ways they did it was by abandoning their native language.
I know a lot of people suggest that should not happen. I, for one, wish I could still speak Italian. I wish my grandparents had taught my parents and they had taught me, but they did not. One reason they did not was because they understood the need to learn English if they wanted to be upwardly mobile in this country.
Massive immigration from countries that do not speak English puts pressure on the school systems. It puts pressure on jobs. The ability of someone to be upwardly mobile is severely hampered by their either unwillingness or inability to learn the English language.
Bilingual education now being taught in so many schools with the exception of California, which by proposition threw it out, and soon it will happen in Arizona if it has not already occurred. I may be mistaken there. I think Arizona has already passed their initiative to do the same thing, and I hope Colorado is next in line to eliminate bilingual education. But this is an example of the problem of massive immigration and this dual-language nation we are beginning to develop.
Not only is there a problem with people being able to actually become upwardly mobile if they do not speak English, can they really get to the next level in their job, can they afford to leave that particular field, maybe low skilled, low pay job, and move into something better if they cannot speak English? The answer is no.
[Time: 15:45]
So why do we keep so many people in another language? Because it has become a political issue. I go back to what I said earlier about the reasons why we have massive immigration, one of them being political. And bilingual education has become a very political issue. It is used here in the House of this Congress to encourage either certain ethnic groups to support one party or another, or as an issue of attack on another party, those of us who believe that bilingual education is not the best thing for the children in that system.
If we really and truly care about the child, Mr. Speaker, and I have been a teacher, my wife just completed 27 years as a teacher in the Jefferson County Public Schools, we sent our children to public schools, but if we really and truly care about children, then we will do several things for them: one, we will allow them to have the choice of any school they want to go to by giving them tax credits; and, secondly, we will make sure that they are not forced to participate in bilingual classes that are taught in a language other than English. If we really care about children, that is where we should be.
We should be providing immersion classes for these kids so they can learn English quickly and move on and get in line for part of the American Dream. But massive immigration retards that pressure to achieve English proficiency. But the fact remains that these are all problems that develop as a result of this massive immigration and problems that we must begin to deal with.
I say over and over again that it is an issue whose time has come. We must talk about it. Do we want this to be the future? Is this what we expect our children and grandchildren will have to deal with in terms of the quality of their lives? We can achieve a better future, Mr. Speaker, by controlling our own borders. It is uniquely in the power of the people of this House and in this other body to do that. States cannot do it. States have absolutely no control over the borders. They look to us. And we look away all too often, and we have done so time and time again on this issue of immigration because we fear either the political or social ramifications to us.
It is hard to go into that cocktail party where somebody may say, oh, gee, that is that guy or that lady that wants to reduce immigration. People might shy away from you, thinking that you are a racist, that you have some evil motive, that there is something bad in your heart, and they want to get away from you. Mr. Speaker, I assure you, at least from my own perspective and from the bottom of my heart, it is not the type of people that come here, it is not the color of people that are coming here, it is not their ethnicity, it is, in fact, the numbers that makes it difficult to deal with.
The numbers make it harder for us all to accomplish our goals, whether it is to reduce the problems faced by California, and which will be faced by States throughout the Nation soon in terms of energy and lack thereof, to the various other kinds of cultural issues and political issues that we face as a result of massive immigration of these kinds of numbers.
So once again I ask the Speaker to be aware of the need for change, to encourage others, others of my colleagues, to begin to study this issue and become acquainted with it. It is an important one for every one of us no matter what district we represent. It will become more important as the time goes on, and there will be a point in time when we will be confronted by this issue in a way that perhaps we have no way of avoiding it.
We have to deal with it, Mr. Speaker. Now is better than later. Now is better than later.
END
