Tom Tancredo

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, we have had a robust debate on the issue of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and I do not intend to revisit that particular part of this debate. I am, however, going to suggest that we should reduce the budget for the National Endowment by $60 million and redirect the money to the budget for the U.S. Forest Service for law enforcement services. Thankfully, the committee rejected calls by the administration to increase financing for the National Endowment for the Arts by as much as $20 million this year, but spending $120 million and change for taxpayers' funded arts still makes no sense. Many people on both sides of the aisle have long recognized the need for additional law enforcement personnel on our public lands. The sprawling Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona, for example, which shares a border with Mexico, has fewer than a dozen law enforcement personnel, this despite the fact that it has become a hotbed for drug and immigrant smuggling and a welcome mat for would-be terrorists attempting to enter the United States from Mexico through sparsely patrolled wildlands. Similar problems are faced by other public land agencies, including the National Park Service. A young park ranger in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was murdered by Mexican drug smugglers in 2002. The public land agencies have less than 200 law enforcement officers combined to patrol almost 6,000 miles of public lands adjacent to the border. These challenges are not unique to the Coronado, or to public lands on the border. National forests across the country face a shortage of law enforcement personnel as well. This hampers the ability of the agencies to combat everything from irresponsible recreation to marijuana cultivation on public lands. It also inhibits the ability of the agencies to maintain a safe and enjoyable environment for visitors. Enhancing the ability of the Forest Service to help maintain a safe environment for visitors and to enhance homeland security on public lands would seem to be a far more important priority to fund than spending more than $100 million on federally subsidized art. There was a discussion, as I say, during the last amendment that we are in the process here of trying to establish priorities for the budget of the United States, and certainly it seems to me to be appropriate for us to make a decision as to whether or not we would rather have a more vigorous enforcement of law in our national parks, which, by every calculation, by every agency that has looked at this issue, says we are in dire shape because of massive influences, the massive number of people coming through the area, coming through illegally and for a variety of purposes, some, of course, just coming for jobs, others coming with the transportation of illegal narcotics. It is a very dangerous place, a place I have along the southern and northern border both visited many times. In each case I am confronted by folks down there, the Border Patrol, the Park Service, everybody who is involved with any sort of enforcement activity, law enforcement activity, who say they are in desperate need of help, that they are overwhelmed. As I say, 200 people are committed to trying to protect a border literally thousands of miles long. It does not make sense. It only makes sense that in this bill, in a bill that is for the Interior, a bill that is supposed to reflect our priorities for Interior and management of our public lands, it only makes sense that we would reorient the budget and reprioritize it to provide more for the protection of our public lands and less for nationally subsidized art.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The Chairman pro tempore. The Clerk will designate the amendment.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I also am impressed by the words of our colleague from California. His observations, his analysis, I think as always are incredibly insightful and important. I wish every single American could have heard this discussion of the history of our involvement, the political nature of the debate we are having about our involvement and exactly what is at stake. Because I do not think I have ever heard it put better and more succinctly. The gentleman suggests that the issues that we are attempting to pursue and are involved with in our efforts in Iraq are broad and honorable and they are. His description of what it is we are trying to accomplish, the kind of government we are trying to put in place in Iraq is accurate. Also, his analysis of how difficult this is going to be is important for us to focus on for a moment. And if we do not think for a moment, if we do not think that what we are doing is right and that, in fact, the seeds of democracy that we are attempting to implant in that area of the world, a place, of course, where these seeds have never been planted before, certainly never have sprouted before, if we do not think that that is a threat to the rest of the world, the Arab world especially, the fundamentalist Islamic world, then we should only look to what is happening tonight. As we speak here, reports are now coming through that the Iranians are massing troops, perhaps four divisions, on the border with Iraq. Their intentions we, of course, are not sure of but they are not good, we are sure of that. Whether or not they are intending to move quickly before some change of power occurs there or whether or not they intend to, in fact, take advantage of what may be a chaotic situation at the point that a change in power and authority occurs, we are not sure. But they are there for a reason. Much of the problem we are having in Iraq, much of the destruction, much of the terrorist activity is as a result of Iranian aggression in the area. They have, as you know, supported insurgencies in Iraq. They have themselves supported both financially and morally the development of the most extreme mosques and the most extreme Imams, pushing them into Iraq and the Shia areas. My own guess is that they are looking for an opportunity that as we approach the time that we are going to turn over the government of Iraq to the Iraqis this is a volatile and very precarious situation that exists and they are going to make it even more volatile and even more precarious. Why? What is their purpose? Again, we can only speculate right now, the three of us here, I am sure there is a great deal more information available to other people, certainly to the chairman, but we at this point in time can only assume that they are afraid that it will work, that Iran is afraid that what we are trying to do in Iraq will work and that we will, indeed, create a democratic government, the tentacles of which may spread throughout the area. This is something that, in fact, they cannot abide. It is a threat to their existence. It is true because it is a totalitarian dictatorship that as we know now even the IAEA agrees that they are in the process of developing a nuclear weapons program. Even the Europeans are now saying, golly, there is something happening in Iran we have to be aware of and concerned of. There is no doubt that the Iranians, that the mullahs in Iran, in Tehran, are frightened by the prospects of freedom in Iraq. Again, what should that tell us about our own efforts and about whether or not this policy is sound? There are, of course, Iranian dissidents in the United States. There are folks who have been driven out of Iran who are on the border now in Iraq. They are being protected by the United States. I know that the Iranian government has demanded many times that they be turned over to Iran, the dissidents that now form the MEK. And although now the MEK in many respects, historically speaking, we can be concerned about their actions, the fact is they are pressing for a secular government in Iran, a government that would allow freedom of religion, press, and speech. I worry of course about their safety, the safety of the people in Iraq. I worry about our willingness, what may be our willingness to surrender them. I hope that does not occur. Because I hope they can be valuable, and I hope that as they have been valuable allies over the last several years. They are the ones that, as a matter of fact, have given us the information, much of the information that we have, the reliable information we have about Iraq's program of nuclear weapons development. But it is important for us to realize that this fight is enormous in its scope. It is not just for the security of Iraq and the freedom of Iraq. It is for the security of the entire Middle East and for the freedom of the entire Middle East. And this is the greatest threat to fundamentalist Islam. Our existence, our way of life, what we believe to be the way in which people can exist on this planet, that is the threat that they face because they cannot coexist with that. A totalitarian dictatorship, a theocracy of that nature cannot exist in a modern world where people are allowed to make decisions about themselves and about their creator and choose religions based upon their consciences and not forced upon them by any authority. This is not a world in which they can live, nor will they, and they will fight and they will threaten and they will bluster. But it is an indication to me that we are in fact doing what is right in Iraq. We are creating an environment that is threatening to the rest of the fundamentalist regimes in the area. This is an honorable goal on our part, but it is worrisome to the extreme. We do not know what they will do, nor what they have to do it with. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman for his remarks.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, we have, I think, had an incredibly interesting hour preceding this and discussion of our efforts in Iraq and indeed around the world in the fight against terror. I want to talk a little tonight about our efforts to defend the homeland, essentially. Our efforts to deal with the fact that we recognize all the things that we have said up to this point in time, the last hour at least, have been rather ominous. They have been frightening in many ways because they lay out a situation for us that we cannot ignore, and that is this, that our enemies are willing; that they will go to any length to try and bring us down; that they are driven by a theocratic and ideological motivation that knows no bounds. They are fanatical. Unfortunately, every single day in the paper we see the fact that somebody has decided to commit another act of terrorism, blow themselves up or set off a bomb along the side of the road and kill Americans and kill Westerners and kill members of the coalition forces; and we recognize, as I say, that these people are fanatics. They are driven with a passion that knows no bounds. They will do anything necessary to advance their cause, anything. That includes, of course, bringing the war here to our shores. We have seen it happen. We also know that it is not just a possibility, that it will happen again. It is a probability. So we have been talking in more grandiose terms for the last hour about how to fight the war on terror. I must tell you that I sort of reject or am concerned about the use of the word ``terror'' to describe the enemy, because it is an amorphous term. It does not really and truly let people understand exactly what it is and who it is we are up against. I believe that this is a war against fundamentalist Islam. It has been going on for a long time. It has gotten hot and cold. It has been fought in various places around the world and never been really very much at the top of our list of concerns because the oceans have separated us. This war has gone on, East against West, if you will, certainly fundamentalist Islam against Judeo-Christianity for now centuries. This is the latest iteration but it is much more dangerous than any other stage of this conflict because, of course, today's technology provides those folks with an ability to strike us regardless of the fact that we have oceans separating us. They do so by coming into our country. They come across undefended borders, both northern and southern borders of the United States. They come into Canada where their policy of immigration is so liberal, especially their policy toward people who claim to be refugees, is so liberal that I have only slightly jokingly said that Osama bin Laden could land in Toronto after having cut off his beard, call himself Omar the tentmaker and claim to be a refugee and the Canadian government would immediately allow him entrance into Canada and, by the way, give him $150 for his trouble and tell him to come back in 6 months for a review of his case. We know that people have come into both Canada and into Mexico who are in fact terrorists. They are part of the fundamental Islamic terrorist organizations. They come into the United States among a flood of immigrants coming into this country, mostly illegally, across our northern and southern borders, most of them, of course, as we have said over and over, coming for relatively benign reasons, not coming necessarily to be Americans, not because they are hoping against hope to connect up with this thing called the American dream, to disavow their past allegiances, to ignore the country of origin, to break with the old and start with the new. No, no, that is not what is motivating most of the people who are coming into the country at this time illegally. They are coming simply for the economic advantage that the Nation offers. Of course, that is a very alluring reward and it is one that most of our grandparents had in mind when they came, also. But there was a great difference between the immigration of the 1900s, the early 1900s and late 1800s, not just in the type of people who were coming because many of them were coming also with the desire to cut with the old and attach to the new. That is something my grandparents talked about often. But they also were coming into a country that was quite different. As I have said on many occasions, the country into which they came was a country that required much of them. When they got here, they had two choices and only two choices. They could work or they could starve. There was nothing else. There was no social service benefit. There was no aid to families with dependent children. There were no food stamps. There was nothing that was provided to them but what their own labor could in fact develop and provide. As a result of that and the fact that you had people in the United States who expected people who came here to become Americans, you had a great deal of pressure on the immigrant community coming into the country, a great deal of pressure to integrate into the society. Sometimes that took an ugly tone and aspect but for the most part it happened in a relatively communal way. Immigrants came into our public school systems where they were taught in English. Their parents attempting to get better jobs recognized that one of the things they had to do in order to acquire that next step up the economic ladder was to learn English. In doing so, we saw that the pressure to integrate and to assimilate from our side and the pressure to integrate and assimilate from their side worked relatively well, so that out of all of the ghettos, the Italian ghetto, the Jewish ghetto, Hungarian, Polish, you name it, out of those ghettos that were scattered along our East Coast and some of our major cities in the Midwest even, out of them came a group of people that spread out over the country as Americans, losing, detaching their identity, detaching from their past identity and connecting with the new one. This was a different country, as I say, and to a certain extent people motivated by different reasons when they came. We have changed a great deal, of course, about who we are, and we have begun to become obsessed as a nation and a culture with the concept of multiculturalism and diversity. Recently I was told about a school in my district, a community college in Colorado, I believe it was Red Rocks Community College, where they had a diversity week that had been planned and booths would be set up to again explore and heap accolades upon the fact that we are such a diverse society. A group of students looking at the array of booths that had been set up realized that they did not find themselves represented at any of these different booths because they were simply Americans. They were not identifying with people who thought of themselves as something else before they thought of themselves as Americans. And so they went to the administration at the school and they asked if they could set up an American booth. After some consternation, they were allowed to do so. So you had among all of the other booths, and I do not know how they were named or how they were divided, but among all the booths talking about the different groups of people who are here, we had another one called the American booth. We have, of course, seen hundreds of examples of what happens in our schools and in our society in general when the media and the academic institutions are all devoted to focusing in on the issue of diversity, focusing in on all the things that separate us as a people and not by the things that hold us together. Diversity is a fine thing and we can enjoy it and we can explore it, but it cannot ever be the only thing that holds us together because, of course, it is oxymoronic to even think that that is a possibility, that diversity is our only commonly held value. Yet that is what is happening to us. That is what I see in the schools I go to. That is what I see continually being held up as the ultimate goal for all Americans, to be diverse and to worship multiculturalism. It is a cult that has developed around this whole thing. I call it the cult of multiculturalism because we have people that are driven and consumed by it to the point where anything that is said that suggests that American culture, that Western civilization has value, anything that even intimates that there is something about us that is admirable as a nation is looked upon with horror, with a sort of revulsion, with a great deal of angst when you talk about it. Somehow the cult of multiculturalism has gotten a lot of people to believe that the only way that you can appreciate or express your appreciation for any other culture in the world is to denigrate your own, is to say there is something wrong with us. Not too long ago, I went to visit a school in my district. It was a brand new building. The first classes had been in only for a few months. It was a high school in Douglas County, a very upscale county in Colorado, one of the fastest growing counties in the United States. I was asked to go to speak. I went. The entire student body, about 250 because, as I say, the school had just opened, it was the first classes, about 250 students came into the auditorium to hear and their teachers lined up on the sides of the walls and we had an interesting discussion. After about 15 or 20 minutes, they started sending up questions. The first question they sent up, the first one I opened said, what do you think is the most serious problem facing the United States? I said, well, let me ask you a question and then perhaps I can answer that question for you. How many of you believe you live in the greatest nation in the world? A simple question, one that I think most people would assume would elicit an immediate and positive response. How many of you think you live in the best country in the world, the greatest nation in the world? Interestingly, after a moment or two of fairly uneasy silence, about two dozen kids raised their hand. The rest looked and even those that raised their hands looked at the teachers that were lined up on the wall and were leery about it. You could see this. Do not get me wrong. I am not suggesting that the other 200 kids in the auditorium were disagreeing with that necessarily. I did not get that feeling. But what I think I saw there was a group of students who had been completely and totally uneducated about who we are, what we are and whether or not there is any value here. Therefore, if they said yes to that question, who knows, somebody, a teacher, perhaps, seeing them do that, may have when they went back into their room asked them to explain why they said that and they had challenged them, almost certainly would have, and they could not defend it. That is the feeling I had. They were not intellectually armed with the ability to make that defense. I suggest to you that we could do this in any high school in the United States of America and we would get varying degrees of response but you would not, I think, for the most part be surprised to hear if we did this that a majority of students chose not to raise their hands in support of that concept. And some would be doing it because they do not believe it is, but in fact there are other cultures' ideas or cultures and nations as good if not better than the United States and so why should they be so chauvinistic to express a desire to explore the greatness of America. And so we talked a little bit about that. Actually the principal came up to me at the end and was concerned about it. Remember, he had only been there a couple of months himself. I certainly do not blame him. As a matter of fact, I was very encouraged by my discussion with him. He was concerned about what he saw. He had read a book that I had read and we talked about it at length. It was called ``Clash of Civilizations'' by Samuel Huntington. Mr. Huntington has a new book out now that I will be mentioning in a minute or two. We were talking about this phenomenon, of what is going on in the United States, about how difficult it is now for us as a nation to really think about who we are and where we are going and what it is we are trying to accomplish and whether or not it is worth it. It is easy for us to react viscerally when we are attacked. When we see planes crashing into buildings and thousands of Americans dying, we react viscerally. I will never forget reading about what was happening on a street in Boston where there had been several flags flying, none of which were American flags, up to September 11 and then right afterwards on this street in Boston, there appeared something like 50 American flags and a bunch of others. And every single week since September 11, there are fewer and fewer American flags flying there. In fact, now we are back to the original number of other flags being flown on this particular street, and we have sensed that there is a loss of, I do not want to say enthusiasm for this war, for our actions in it, but we can tell it is diminishing; and you really have to ask yourself whether or not that is the reason that it is happening, is that it is partly a result of our own unwillingness to, number one, understand who we are fighting. That is, it is not just a terrorist, that it is an ``ism,'' fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and that it is threatening our way of life. It is threatening us, that the people who hold the beliefs that we call Islamic fundamentalists are people who will come here, and who are here and who would kill every single one of us and our children, because we do not fit with their view of the world. If we do not see this and we do not think of it and it is just this, quote, war against terror, we can easily lose, I think, the willingness to continue in the pursuit of the goals which I said in the earlier hour I believe to be admirable. I worry about the issue, and I talk about immigration, and I talk about what is happening inside our country, this cult of multiculturalism; and people suggest that it is confusing to them to understand how we connect the two, but I think it is relatively easy. It is simple. The cult of multiculturalism is problematic. It is propped up by massive immigration and by just the political forces that are arrayed in the United States for open borders, for sort of a new world order. I will never forget having a discussion in Mexico with a gentleman by the name of Juan Hernendez, who was the head of something called the Ministry for Mexicans Living in the United States, which I thought at the time was a strange name for any sort of ministry. I asked him maybe 2 years ago what it was about, and he said, Well, it is to increase the flow. And I said, The flow? He said, Yes, the flow of people into the United States, of Mexican nationals into the United States. I said, Why would you want to do that? He said, Well, Congressman, it is pretty simple. Well, first of all, we have a population of people in Mexico between the ages of 18 and 25 that has doubled in 10 years. He said, The unemployment rate for that particular group of the population is about 40 percent. That is a very unstable situation. Moving them north where there are jobs, that is good for us, relieves the problems that we have here in terms of unemployment. He said, then of course a secondary benefit as a result of this movement of people, and he just kept calling it migration instead of immigration, he said, And the good thing that happens as a result of this migration is the fact that all those people who go send money home to Mexico. In those days, that was 2 years ago, it was about $13 billion a year. It is closer to 15 or $16 billion dollars a year now, and reports just came out a little bit ago. By the way, they are called remittances. That is what the term is to describe the dollars flowing from the United States to countries outside our borders, and the remittances now comprise about $30 billion flowing to Latin America alone, somewhere around 40 to $45 billion going out over the rest of the world, in total, I should say. This is an enormous, enormous amount of money; and it accounts actually for more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product of at least seven or eight countries out there. In Mexico it is more significant than any foreign investment whatsoever, than any corporations investing in Mexico. It is more significant than tourism dollars. It is second only, in terms of the dollars coming into the country, to Pemex, the country's oil company, governmentally owned oil company. So he said, This is an enormously important thing for us, moving our unemployment north, having them employed, and sending money back. But there was something else that he mentioned. He said, And besides that, having lots of Mexican nationals in the United States, and, by the way, he did not distinguish legal or illegal nationals in the United States and he did not care and he told us it did not matter to him, that that distinction was not important, just moving people north was the goal of the Government of Mexico. Again, when we talk about what is different today about immigration policy, what is different today about what is happening in the world, I guarantee my colleagues in early 1900s, late 1800s, few, if any, governments around the world were actually pushing their people into the United States, were actually encouraging the depopulation of their own country. But now Mexico is not alone in this. Now Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, all kinds of countries are pushing us constantly to open our borders. They are always talking about the need for us to relax our immigration policy. Remember, they relaxed their immigration policy not one iota. Mexico and all of these countries have a very strong immigration policy. If one sneaks into their country, they are in big trouble. They will go to jail if they are found there without the proper documents. I have visited the detention camps in Mexico. They are not nice places. They are not places where people are given nice uniforms, shoes, clothing, a bunk, chess tables, checker tables, basketball courts. And what I am describing of course are the detention centers that we provide in the United States. Free medical care. By the way, one comes into the detention center and the first thing they do in the United States is get a physical, a dental and medical exam. Anything that is wrong with them we will take care of. They have actually turned themselves in in order to take advantage of the medical. Again, it is not really much of a joke, but I am amazed at the irony of the fact that there are two groups of people in the country that can get all of the free medical attention they need, and those are people who are in prison and people who are here illegally. They have access to all of the medical facilities in the United States. Even when we arrest them for being here illegally, we provide them mental and dental treatment. If they have bad teeth, we will take care of it. If they have cancer, we will send them to an oncologist. One can get an MRI. There are huge machines that are not available to people in my own district, that cannot afford that kind of medical help. But we provide it to people who are coming here illegally, as opposed to what the other countries in the world do for people who sneak into their country. If I sneak into Mexico and I am found there and I cannot prove that I am a Mexican citizen or that I have a visa, if I am in Mexico or Guatemala or any other place almost on the Earth, if I say I am sorry, I do not have the documentation, can I send my children to the schools in Mexico or Guatemala or Honduras or France or anywhere else in the world, of course not. Can I expect to be treated if I am there with some disease and they know I am there illegally? No. Can I get a driver's license in any country in the world if I am there illegally? Of course not. Any country but one. Can I get social service benefits if I am in any other country in the world illegally? Of course not. Yet all of these countries demand from us a policy that says, Open your door, we want in, we will benefit. The government benefits as a result of the fact that you are so stupid that you do not secure your own borders, and, by golly, we do not want you doing it. And as I mentioned, Mr. Hernendez said that the other good thing about the movement of massive numbers of Mexican nationals into the United States was that, in fact, he said, They will influence your government's policy vis-a-vis Mexico, just their presence, he said. Just the numbers, he said. That is certainly true, absolutely true, and it was so candid. It was so refreshing to have somebody actually say what we all know to be true, but so many people want to skirt that issue. Why do Members not find it bizarre or peculiar at least that the President of Mexico or the President of other various other countries in Latin America are demanding that we simply open our borders? And they are doing many things to try to force us to do that. They are trying all kinds of diplomatic ways of doing it. They are, interestingly, even using the issue of treaty relationships, extradition treaties, in order to pressure us to open our borders. Mexico has decided that they will not return anybody to the United States who is wanted here for a crime for which they could be sentenced to death. Not too long ago they decided to expand that definition of cruel and unusual punishment to anybody who could possibly be sentenced to life in prison. That is cruel and unusual punishment. Let me tell the Members if they have ever been around, as I say, a Mexican prison, they would suggest it is a lot fewer years than life in prison that could be described as cruel and unusual in that system. But, nonetheless, that is their position. And now we have got hundreds, in fact, even thousands of people having committed murders in the United States, fleeing to Mexico to seek protection of the government. David March, a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff, was pulling over a gentleman in the streets of Los Angeles not too long ago, and when he walked up to the car, this person in the car shot him in the torso. He fell to the ground. The guy got out of the car, put two bullets into his head, waved some sort of gang sign, got in and drove off. He is now in Mexico. Everybody knows where he is. Everybody knows where this gentleman is. They will not extradite him. By the way, we found out that he had twice before come into the United States illegally, twice before was returned to Mexico, and of course, because the borders are porous, just turned around and walked in. And by the way, there were, as I understand it, outstanding warrants out on him at the time for violent crimes. Now Mexico knows exactly where he is, will not send him back. And when we ask why, they say it is because the court said that they cannot send people back for cruel and unusual punishment. Here is the truth of the matter: they will not send him back until we liberalize our immigration policy with them. There are now 600 warrants out in California alone, in the Los Angeles County area alone, 600 warrants, murder warrants, out for people who fled to Mexico; 300 more in the rest of the State, almost 1,000 people alone from Mexico spread cross the United States. Who knows how many thousands of other people have sought the protection of the Mexican Government after having committed heinous crimes here. And Mexico refuses to do anything about it, while simultaneously demanding that we open up our borders. It was impressive that Mr. Hernendez would say what he said. He went on, by the way, to say something at the very end of the conversation that startled all of us. There were three Members of the Congress there. And again his candid response to our questions was just really quite amazing. When we all suggested and I suggested that I thought the actions by his government could actually be called aggressive actions against another country, using their people, using their immigration and our immigration policy to actually try to change America, he said, Congressman, in a relatively condescending way, You know what? It is not two countries. It is just a region. Maybe so, in his mind anyway. And in the minds of many people here in the Congress, certainly in the administration I know there are people who believe that is the case that borders are no longer of any value, they are irrelevant, and they only serve to impede the flow of goods and services and people; and the sooner that we essentially get rid of them and move toward a European Union model, the better we are. The next iteration of that movement in the United States or on the North American continent will be the Free Trade of the Americas coming up here for a vote at some time, we are not sure when, they are still negotiating, but that is what in store. It is always couched in the language of ``free trade.'' Certainly I came here as a free trader. I am more and more concerned about the implications of free trade, and especially the immigration implications of free trade, certainly the job implications of free trade. But, that is where we are moving toward, this concept, this world of just a region and not nation-state. The idea of the nation-state is old, anachronistic, and harmful, in that we should not be teaching our children that there is something unique about America, because, after all, we are soon going to sort of expand our horizons and we will not be thinking of things like the nation-state any more. I worry about the degree to which that clash of civilizations that Samuel Huntington talked about can be won by the West if we become more and more confused about who we are, about what it is we are trying to accomplish in the world and why who we are matters. This is Mr. Huntington's latest tome, it is called Who Are We? Who Are We? It has only been out for a short time. I have gotten about three-quarters of the way through it on plane flights back and forth from my home in Denver to Washington. It is a fascinating read, and I certainly would recommend it to anyone out there who is interested in this kind of an issue, because he asks a very important question: Who are we? He talks about the implications of massive immigration into the country and how this exacerbates the problem of trying to figure out in fact who we are, when internally, as I say, we have changed ourselves. The cult of multi-culturalism tells our children, and certainly tells immigrants coming here, they should not connect to anything we think of as an American ideal; that we are just a culture, just a place on the planet, we are all just residents. That is what it is, we are just residents here, with no other significance; and that soon all boundaries, all borders will be gone, and we will all be joining hands and singing Kumbaya. Well, it will be out of tune, I will tell you that, and I do not believe for a moment that that is the world, that that kind of idealistic impression of where we could be, is where we indeed would go. I believe that the concept of the nation-state is important. I believe that the United States of America is unique in many ways. It is certainly unique in that it is the only country, when it was started in the 1770s, it was the first country ever started on the basis of ideas alone. That is enormously important for us to think about. It was not a group of people who were necessarily held together by ethnicity; it was not a group of people held together because a king or monarch had drawn a circle or lines around a particular chunk of land and said this is a country. Our country started because of a set of ideas. It is true, for the most part, the people here at the time were much more homogenous than today's society, but we were able to sustain the ideas and ideals of America because the people coming here and the people here in a way forced that assimilation and understanding and acceptance. They said if you are going to be here, you have to speak English and you have to think about yourself as an American first, and you cannot have a thing called dual citizenship. Today there are millions, I saw an estimate not long ago of 10 million Americans, who carry dual citizenship. It spiked right after Mexico allowed Mexican nationals to claim dual citizenship also. Our neighbors to the south are wonderful people, and it is important to understand that in order to debate this issue successfully and with any degree of hope that we can be successful in moving the public policy of this country in one way, it is important to know that you should never, ever, ever come to this issue with animus in your heart for any people or Nation or ethnic group. It is not a racial issue in the slightest. The people who argue this, or on the other side of this debate, will constantly try to change the discussion and change the debate to some sort of racial thing. They do that usually when they run out of all intellectual argument, and that is the last arrow in their quiver, racist, xenophobe, ethnocentricity, all of these things that are epithets that most people in this room would certainly shrink away from and would resent being called. No one wants to be called those things. The hope of our opponents in this issue is they will, by using those terms, they will eventually shift the debate away from the real issues, as to who we are, where we are going and how we are going to get there as a Nation, as one group of people held together by a common set of ideas. Instead of that, we will want to talk about personalities and cast aspersions and make people think less of you because of what names you are called. But it has nothing to do with that. At least it certainly does not have anything to do with that in my heart or mind. But it is a strong desire to see us think about these issues in a rational way, and begin to think about the importance of establishing and reestablishing borders, securing those borders, not just because we know people are coming across for the purpose of doing us great harm, but also because it will help us begin to once again think about who we are and determine whether or not in fact we are worthy to be here and be the light shining to the world that Ronald Reagan so eloquently described us as. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that guarantees our success as a civilization; nothing. Certainly older ones, certainly ones that were more expansive, had more of a far-flung empire and thought of themselves as impervious to any sort of aggression, are gone, they are below the sands of time, and the people living in those civilizations that are long since gone certainly thought to themselves for the most part that they were going to be there forever. There is nothing that says we will achieve that. There is nothing that says we will achieve another 50 years of preeminence in the world if in fact we lose sight of who we are, if we cannot answer this question that Samuel Huntington asks. So we have to attack this from many angles, and I try to talk about it, as well as I can anyway on evenings like this, try to encourage people to think about these issues. And simultaneously we have to address the more mundane aspects of it. Will we increase the number of Border Patrol? Will we actually use the military assets that we have to secure our borders? Will we go to other countries around the world and tell them that we need them to help us secure our own borders, just as they secure theirs, and encourage them to stop trying to change America in order to benefit their own situation, and to begin thinking about how they can internally change who and what they are to accomplish what we have. As long as we allow ourselves, as long as we allow America to be the pressure valve, the release valve, for the world, for the Third World, there is very little pressure there left to push back and say to countries, you have to figure out a way to do this yourself, and do it internally. We have to tell our local politicians, again, this is the mundane aspect of it, this is the coming down to the nitty-gritty aspect of our discussion about this rather heady topic sometimes, and that is what we have to tell our State and local officials that they have the responsibility, and that responsibility is to help maintain the integrity of the United States of America; and that when they pass idiotic laws, like sanctuary city laws, or when States like Maine declare themselves to be sanctuary States, that all of the misguided, gooey, sort of idealism that may have gone into the discussion and may have gone into the decision-making process in order to get them to that point is not going to help us in the long run, and it is going to in fact hurt us. It is very difficult. The Federal Government has a rather schizophrenic history of dealing with the issue of immigration. Sometimes we tell the old INS to go out there and do their job; to go into work sites and find people who are working illegally; to find the employers who are in fact employing people who are here illegally. So they do it. They did it in Georgia a few years ago, they did it in Nebraska, in the packinghouses of Nebraska and the onion growers in Georgia. And they were immediately, immediately, excoriated by Members of the Senate from those States, and certainly Members of the House in those States, and told to stop it, knock it off; you are bothering our producers and our business interests. So the INS said, I was just trying to enforce the law. They were told, well, the law is good to talk about. It is not good to enforce it, so forget about it. Then we get mad and we say, how can it be that we have got 13 to 15 million people in this country illegally, we have got 400,000 or 500,000 actually ordered deported who simply walked away, they are out there somewhere? Every time we pick someone up who is now arrested or alleged to have plotted some act of violence against the United States, in the last few days you have been reading about this, all of these people, of course, are here illegally. How did they get here? What is going on? How come Homeland Security did not protect us? They get a lot of mixed messages from this body and the other body. It is very difficult for them to figure out what exactly it is they are supposed to do. And we have to commend every single man and woman who works day and night trying to defend those borders. I have visited the northern border and the southern border many times. I have commended those people who work in those jobs, thankless jobs, frustrating jobs, because they know that for every one person that they stop from getting into this country illegally, two or three are getting by them. Sometimes they are getting by because of the stupid bureaucratic policies we have in place, and sometimes just because they are overwhelmed. When the President makes a speech, as he did in December, and holds out the possibility of amnesty, and although he does not like calling it amnesty, of course, that is exactly what it was. When he holds that carrot out there, what do you think is going to happen? We are going to be flooded by people trying to get into this country. Of course, the numbers have gone up dramatically in the last 6 months. Why? It is strange. How could this happen? I will tell you why. The Border Patrol was actually taking surveys, why are you coming? ``Amnesty.'' This is a word they learned. ``I am coming for amnesty.'' I said when the President gave the speech that even if that bill he has proposed, even if that concept does not become law, the fact is that it has already done great damage. You are not going to hear a debate about this issue during the campaign, because, for one thing, I will tell you what happened on our side. The reaction to the President's speech was overwhelmingly negative by most Americans, Democrats and Republicans. So you are not going to hear much about it anymore. On the Democratic side they also know that their position and the position of Mr. Kerry is that of open borders, of greater immigration. The only thing wrong with the President's plan they said is it did not go far enough. They also know that that is not really the message that is going to attract a lot of voters to their party. A certain segment they want to placate, pander to, both sides, so we will use it in selected venues, but we are not going to be talking about it during the debates, because this is just not something either side really wants to bring up, because it attracts very few people when you start talking about amnesty, when you start talking about the fact you are willing to open the borders and you are not willing to actually look at the issue of immigration in any detail and any depth. But we need to do that. That is exactly what we need to do, is to look at this issue in detail and in depth. It is more important than just the jobs issue, although that is enormously important, especially if you are one of the men and women who has lost their job as the result of the importation of massive numbers of cheap labor and then sometimes not so cheap labor, higher-priced labor in the field of technology, but lower priced than when you were doing the job. If you are some of the hundreds of thousands of people who have been thrown out of work by H1B visa recipients, people who have come here primarily from India; again, good, hard-working people, nothing against them or who they are, but they came here. Why? Because they will work for less. The President said he wants to make sure every willing worker meets up with every willing employer. And I keep thinking, now, you really do not mean that, Mr. President. Because really there are billions of willing workers out there, and they are willing to undercut whoever is here working; and the people who are the most affected by this, the most negatively affected immediately are, of course, low-income earners in this country whose wages have been held down because of the massive numbers of people coming here, low-skilled, low-wage workers. This does not accrue to our benefit ever at any place, at any time. It does not accrue to our benefit from the standpoint of the ``taxes'' these folks pay, because I assure my colleagues, they soak up a lot more in revenue in the provision of service and in the creation and maintenance of the infrastructure necessary to support millions of people who are here illegally. They soak up far more dollars there than they ever provide through the tax system which, of course, is a progressive tax which says if you make very little, we take very little away. Not only that, we will not only not take very much money away if you do not make much; we will give you some money. So now, the greatest scam going is coming here to the United States, filing income tax forms, getting false Social Security numbers, filing forms, listing a whole bunch of people on that form who are your children, and the IRS will give you an ITIN, an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, for each one of those children who are ostensibly, supposedly in some other country, but you claim them, you can have them, you claim them; and you of course pay no taxes because you have so many deductions, and you in turn get an earned income tax credit. So it is not a net benefit to the country in any way I can think of. We have plenty of diversity. We really and truly need to start thinking about what holds us together as a Nation and not what splits us apart. And we have to stop kowtowing to the other countries around who see us as the sugar daddy who will keep them in power, keep their corrupt governments in power by allowing dollars to flow back into those countries by the people they have essentially helped shove into the United States of America. And I mean that literally, sometimes with buses hired by the Government of Mexico to bring people to the United States, sometimes just to the border, let them off, walking into the border, into the desert. That is how much their government cares about them. Or how many of them perish. Then of course we are told it is our fault that people are dying in the desert. And I keep saying, now, wait a minute, wait a minute. Just tell me, what have I missed here? How many people, how many people have actually died coming into this country through a port of entry? How many have starved to death or died of dehydration or had some other kind of thing befall them coming through the right way. Nobody, of course. There is a way to come into this country. It is absolutely safe. It is called a port of entry, and it is called with our permission. If you choose to come some other way, some bad things could happen to you; but it really is not our fault, no matter how bad they want to make us feel that this is happening. We take a million and a half people a year legally. We take another half a million or so through a visa process. We are the most liberal country in the world when it comes to taking people in here legally. And yet, of course, many millions more come illegally. Why? Because of course we have people here who want to employ them. We have the cheap labor crowd. We have people on the other side of the aisle who see this as a source of votes. So we see this then that of massive immigration, a source of votes over there, a source of cheap labor over here. That is why we cannot get any sort of an agreement. I am going to have, Mr. Speaker, several amendments for the bills that are coming up this week, especially the Homeland Security bill, and I am going to try to amend the appropriations bills saying that any State or locality that actually provides sanctuary for people who are here illegally, refuses to help the INS, or now the Bureau of Immigration and Control and Enforcement, refuses to help us enforce the law; by the way, it is already right now on the books. In 1996 we passed a law saying that, in fact, it is illegal for States or localities to prevent the flow of information to the INS or from INS. Of course, unfortunately, there is no penalty, so people are doing it all over the place. Cities accepting the matricula consular, telling any national living here that they can have all of the benefits they want by simply showing a card that is given to them by a foreign government, not by the United States. Giving people drivers licenses, giving people who are here illegally all kinds of benefits that had been heretofore allowed to go only to people who are citizens. But remember, that concept of citizenship is under attack. It means nothing, it means nothing to many people in this country, and if it means anything at all, it is a negative connotation: citizenship. So we teach our children that they should not be citizens of the country; they should be citizens of the world, if anything. And we do this, again, as I say, we pursue this kind of bizarre social policy at our peril. And when I introduce these bills, we will see just how far this pressure has gotten us. We will see the fact that this cult of multiculturalism truly has infected even this body. Because I will suggest that no city or State that gives a driver's license should be able to get a grant from the homeland security. I am going to eventually try to do the same thing with the transportation bill and say that they cannot get Federal funds for highways if you give illegal aliens drivers licenses. It will go down. I did this last year. I think we got about 122 votes. We will see, maybe we will gain a little, maybe we will lose a little. Yet if we were to ask every single American how they would vote on this, without exception I know how it would come down. My amendment would win overwhelmingly. But in this body, again, held captive by the cult of multiculturalism, it will go down. I am going to offer an amendment later on to the appropriations bill for foreign operations, which is the bill that we use to provide money to foreign governments, the foreign aid bill. I am going to say that any country that is receiving remittances from the United States, that the amount of remittances coming to that country will reduce the appropriation we have for them in the foreign aid bill. Because after all, if foreign aid is simply the transfer of wealth from one country to another, it is happening through remittances and probably a lot more effectively than providing it by way of a check to a foreign government, oftentimes corrupt government that pockets the money themselves. Again, put that out to a vote, Mr. Speaker, and I suggest to my colleagues that without exception, it would be overwhelmingly passed by the people of this country. It will not go far here, at least not this time. Maybe the next time, maybe the time after that and the time after that. Because I guarantee my colleagues I will bring it up as long as I can, as often as I can, in every venue that I can. In every bill that I can try to attach something to, I will, because I want the debate to occur, and I want the American people to see just how far we have moved away from their idea of what America is all about, to the one of the elites, what we think America should be all about. Just a region, after all, not a separate country. They are wrong, and as long as I have breath and I am able to express an opinion on this floor, I will state that. They are wrong.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it is my extreme pleasure and privilege to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Ralph R. Peterson, for being awarded the Leadership in Industry Award, and Daniel L. Ritchie, who received the Leadership in Education Award, at this year's Eleventh Annual Keystone Center Awards Dinner. Honorees are individuals selected for their leadership, commendable problem solving skills, and their efforts to seek consensus-based solutions to some of the most difficult challenges facing society. The honorees have also been recognized by their peers for outstanding achievement in their respective fields and have contributed to society in ways that demonstrate the Keystone Center philosophy. Ralph R. Peterson is currently the Chairman and CEO of CH2M Hill, a global engineering and consulting firm. Mr. Peterson oversees over 160 offices in six countries worldwide. CH2M Hill has consistently topped ``Best Places to Work'' articles from various media outlets and is constantly being praised for the contributions made to the surrounding communities. Daniel L. Ritchie contributions to the University of Denver have been both in the form of monetary donations, his knowledge and his time. Mr. Ritchie serves as the Chancellor, without pay, for the University of Denver. During his tenure with the University, Chancellor Ritchie has played a key role in raising the university over $350 million for renovation projects to improve the campus and provide more scholarships to students. I am honored to acknowledge these achievements by two worthy individuals from my home state; their contributions have an enormous impact on many in Colorado.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting discussion of the issues of the day for the last hour or so by the opposing party, and certainly I am sure that to a large extent the remarks are heartfelt and are as a result of a distinct difference in opinion as to exactly where this country should be and how the leadership should actually be constructed. It is intriguing to me in a way as I sat and listened to the discussion about when the Members of the other side talk about the need for admissions of wrongdoing or failure. It would be so much more, I think, credible for them to approach this issue by first saying that we on the left have to admit certain things that we now know to be inaccurate. Let us start with the fact that the entire world has disavowed our economic theories of greater government control of the economy, of cooperation with foreign governments, especially those governments that were totalitarian in nature and Communist by design, but all of these things have failed and we know it and the whole world recognizes it. The fall of the Communist empire, as a result of the variety of strategies employed by the United States and by others, including the Pope, as a matter of fact, we now see that it was a house of cards that had no real basis in reality; that could not sustain itself; that socialism was not ever, ever able to deliver its promise of a better life for the people under its control; that greater government control of the economy, that larger government enterprises, that opposition to Communism, that all of these things were failures. It would be so much more credible for our friends on the other side of the aisle to approach this discussion of the need for willingness to admit failure had they started with that. Had they started with saying, you know what, we have tried, we for 40 years, we had control of this body, Presidency, it was a Democratic- controlled Congress, certainly for the majority of the 40 years prior to 1994, and we pushed the idea of greater Federal involvement in the lives of Americans. We did so because we believed it was right. We did so because we believed the theories that were supposed to be there to substantiate the claim that greater control of our lives by the government, even control of the means of production by the government, the things we call socialism today, those claims have now been proven to be false. It would be so refreshing to have them stand in front of the House, Mr. Speaker, and say we were wrong and we are willing to admit it; we are willing to admit that people do better throughout the world, as a matter of fact, not just in the United States. But throughout the world, it is the governments under which they live that are governments that espouse a free enterprise, a democratic kind of government that allows for individual liberty and individual enterprise. We were wrong to suggest that we should not confront Communism as forcefully as possible and that we should not, in fact, increase all of our Defense appropriations so as to essentially force the Communist empire to collapse under its own weight which is, of course, what we did, what Ronald Reagan proposed and it worked. Most of the leaders of the Free World, and even some leaders of what was in the past a totalitarian country, came to the United States for the purposes of paying homage to Ronald Reagan and admitted that his strategy and his ability to see what was good for America and what was good for the world was, in fact, the right way to go. Yet, never did I hear in the discussion here for the preceding hour that our friends were willing to concede the point that they were wrong and that the whole world knows it, and that people, every time they have had the opportunity, they voted to cast off totalitarian dictatorships and socialist enterprises. So, as I say, it would have been better, it would have been certainly more convincing had they come here first with an apology for all of the things that they have been espousing for the last half a century and now they know to be incorrect and failures of policies, but they did not do that. They just suggested that what we are doing today is wrong. Well, what makes us think then that what their view is of today is any better, any more correct, any more insightful, any more intuitive than what their view of what was yesterday and the world in which we lived up till today? Why should we trust them with guiding this Nation's future? I did not hear them disavow the principles upon which their party and upon which, in fact, the left has been relying for years and today only, only exists and are espoused in institutions of higher education primarily in this country but perhaps even around the world; but everywhere where the rubber hits the road, everywhere where people have to actually go out and make a living for themselves and their families, everywhere where people are struggling to overcome the kinds of government tyranny under which they may live, everywhere where that exists, people yearn for something quite different than what the left offers them. So that realization, that empirical evidence that we have to say that all of those ideas were wrong, that evidence has not yet manifested itself, and that realization of the error of their ways, it has not manifested itself in any of the rhetoric I heard tonight while I was waiting to deliver my remarks on, I should say, a totally different subject. Nonetheless, I thought I should comment on what is apparent to me to be at least a discrepancy in the testimony that was provided here by our friends on the other side of the aisle for the last hour. Immigration Reform

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, let me go on to the discussion of an issue that I have many times in the past tried to bring forward on this floor and an issue that I believe to be of enormous importance to the country and certainly an issue that I believe needs the attention and debate of my friends and colleagues in the Congress of the United States and certainly a reflection of the debate that goes on throughout the country every single day around water coolers in offices and on work sites throughout America and around dinner tables throughout America. That debate and that discussion revolves around the issue of immigration and immigration reform, and it has many, many implications for who we are as a Nation, where we go from here, and how successful we may be in trying to achieve whatever goals we establish for ourselves. It is connected to an even more significant challenge to the United States, and that is the reestablishment of the idea of exactly who we are, of what we are, what principles we espouse as a Nation, of what principles we can adhere to as a people. This part of the debate is an extremely important one, hard to bring up, hard to articulate. Certainly it is impossible to do so in a bumper-sticker fashion. It does require some degree of analysis that goes beyond the 30-second or 60-second sound bite, but I believe it to be a very important debate and discussion to undertake. If we are to believe the polls that have been taken for the last decade or more on the issue of immigration, Americans generally believe that, number one, we should, in fact, enforce the law against people coming here illegally. That means enforcing our borders, making sure to the extent possible that people do not come into this country without our permission, people do not come here that we do not know about, and that we make people come into this country through a normalized and legal process. The United States of America is unique in many ways. One way is that we accept more people into this country every single year legally, through a legal process of immigration and also temporary visitor status, than any country in the world. We are and have been always a beacon of light to the world, a beacon to which many people are attracted. It is peculiar, to say the least, that even with this policy, this very liberal policy of immigration and legal access into our country through temporary worker status, we still have and allow for millions of people to enter this country illegally. We do not know who they are. We do not know why they are coming. We do not know how long they are staying, and we do not know where they are once they are here. Now, most Americans will say this is a bad policy to pursue, that it is not good for America, it is not good for our future, and that we should establish the concept of the nation-state and defend that concept with essentially defending our borders. Beyond that many people suggest, a majority of Americans even suggest we need to reduce legal immigration until such time we can get this problem under control. Every poll says that is what America wants. Now, a dilemma is then created by the fact that this is the will of the people, and it has been for a long, long time. It is not new; it did not just happen after President Reagan said he wanted a guest worker/ amnesty program and that created quite a furor. It has been the case for years that that is what the American people want. They want borders enforced, they want controls on immigration, and yet this body and more peculiarly, even cities and States throughout the Nation, which one would think would be more reflective of local citizen input than even the Congress of the United States, which we know has always been historically way behind the curve in terms of popular sentiment, but one would think that we would see reflected in city councils and State legislatures, one would think we would see far more of a reflection of the position that I have just described that is held by a majority of people in the country. The most difficult question we have to answer, why is that the case? Why do our elected officials seem to be paying little attention to what most Americans feel? There are a number of answers to that question. They are not necessarily pleasant to discuss, but they are true. That is for the most part we see legislatures and the Congress of the United States and even city councils that are very responsive to pressure and pressure groups and less responsive to the general will of the people if it is not reflected through these pressure group-type of organizations. For the most part, politicians in the United States have concluded that they can address this issue by essentially finessing it, by agreeing theoretically with people when they are in an atmosphere, an arena in which doing so would be to their political advantage. They can agree there is a problem with immigration and that we should do something about it and we should stop illegal immigration. Everybody will mouth the platitudes connected to that concept. But they believe also that they can finesse this issue by essentially using the rhetoric to mollify a certain part of their constituency while simultaneously doing things to attract another group; and these are very powerful groups in many ways, certainly very vocal groups which press for open borders, for relaxation of law enforcement, and have a totally different opinion about how this country should actually develop. For the most part, they are trying to serve two masters here. Most politicians are trying to serve two masters, and they have been successful in doing this in many ways because for the most part people in the United States when asked how do they feel about immigration come down on our side, but are not organized in political pressure groups designed to actually force politicians to acknowledging it. They are simply voters and citizens who go to work every single day and have other things on their minds. It is also true that the parties themselves, the Democrats and the Republicans, are both inclined to do exactly what I say that individual politicians do, and that is pander on the one side to immigration, pro- immigration groups, and on the other side placate those people who are concerned about it, placate them through rhetoric, but not through action. They are trying to play this dicey game, and sometimes it works. We have seen throughout the land the development of a very interesting phenomenon whereby foreign countries have used their consular offices in the United States to lobby States and city governments to get them to accept for purposes of identification something called the matricular consular ID card that is given to a person not by the United States of America but by a foreign government. And then that government comes to an American city, county, or State and says please accept the card we give out as proper identification. Now of course Members have to understand that the only reason that the card is necessary is because we have millions and millions of people who are living here illegally. Those are the only folks to whom such a card would be important. If a person is here in this country legally, of course, they have a document which we have given them, a visa, a passport stamp, something that the United States of America has said this allows you to enter our country. Even if you are not here as a citizen, you are a legal alien resident. That is the term. So the only people who need the matricular consular are illegally present in the United States, and everybody knows that. The governments that are pushing it, and the cities and States that are accepting these things know that they are only helpful to people who are here illegally, and they are only helpful if a city or State agrees to accept that card, thereby making it very difficult for people who actually enforce immigration law in this country. Making it very easy, on the other hand, to live here if you are here illegally. You will get all of the benefits of anyone who is here legally. You will be afforded a variety of privileges that have heretofore been allowed only to those people who were citizens of the United States or at least here with the permission of our government. That is happening throughout the country. We have seen it. We have seen cities capitulate. We have actually seen cities, it is bizarre as you can imagine, we have seen cities that actually allow people to vote if they are not legal residents of this country. The Mayor of this city, Washington, D.C., the District, proposed this several months ago for D.C. He said that anybody who is here as a resident should be able to vote regardless of whether or not they are citizens. Again, if we put this up for a vote, a vote of the people, the specific issue to allow people who are here illegally to vote, how many places in America can you imagine that would pass? Maybe in D.C., that is true, but not too many other places in this country would say that is okay; but cities and States are doing it. In the next few days we will be debating a number of appropriations bills, one which will fund the Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill. I will offer a series of amendments to that bill. I will tell Members right now those amendments will fail on the House floor. They have done so in the past. That certainly will not stop me from introducing them again. But I suggest, every one of the amendments that I propose, if I proposed them to the American people in the form of some initiative process or some way to let all America vote, I know and certainly all polls tell us they would pass. One, I will propose that no city that has established a sanctuary policy, that is a policy that allows people to come into that city who are here illegally and be protected from the Federal Government's attempts to actually enforce immigration law, where cities that will pass legislation, pass municipal ordinances saying if a person is here illegally, that will not effect the way people are treated by their own police department. In fact, if police pick someone up for violating a law, robbery, rape, murder or going through a red light, if they find that person is here illegally, they will not report that to the Department of Immigration Control and Enforcement. Those laws are on the books in various cities throughout the country, and even States are undertaking similar types of proposals. Maine has recently declared itself, or is in the process of declaring itself, to be a sanctuary State. I am going to suggest in the form of an amendment to an appropriations bill that no city or State that adopts these kinds of policies should be able to obtain any of the grants that are available through the bill through the Department of Homeland Security. I have in fact done that in the past, and I think we got about 110 or 120 votes, I cannot remember now; and it will probably not be much more than that when I introduce that amendment again. I have another amendment that says any city or State that gives illegal aliens driver's licenses will likewise be restricted from obtaining Federal funds under the act. It is amazing to think about the fact that we have States that are willing to do this and in fact have done this, provide people who are here illegally with the form of identification as close to a national ID as we have that will allow people to have access to every aspect of American life as a regular citizen would have, and make it therefore much easier for someone to be in this country illegally. That goes for the person who is here, quote, to only do the job that no other American will do, as if there in fact was such a job, and it also goes for the person who is here to kill every single one of us and our children. They can use that passport into American society that we call a driver's license just as well as the person who is only here to do a job no one else will do; and yet these things are happening, and I will go ahead and suggest that, in fact, my amendments will fail. I am going to do another amendment as soon as the bill for foreign appropriations comes to the floor, and that is just another way of saying foreign aid. When our foreign aid bill comes to the floor, I am going to introduce an amendment saying that the foreign aid to any country will be reduced by the amount of money that is flowing from this country, from the nationals of the foreign country who are working here, anybody who is working here and sending money back to the country of origin, and that is called remittances, that is how we refer to the dollars sent back from people working here for the most part illegally, and taking money out of our communities and not allowing that money to go to work to create jobs and improve the economy of the communities in which the folks here are living, most of them communities in desperate need of economic stimulus; but those dollars are flowing to people in countries outside of the United States. We had a report not too long ago that that number, the number of dollars that flow just to Latin America, not to the rest of the world, just to Latin America is about $30 billion a year. There are several countries in the world that have more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product made up from remittances from the United States of America. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that if foreign aid is the simple transfer of wealth from one country, in this case America, to another country, that we can do it better through remittances than through writing a check to a corrupt government that will skim off almost all of the dollars before they ever get to anybody who actually may need them. So as a result, I think we should punish those countries for the economic policies they have adopted that have caused the populations in their country to despair and to be subjected to impoverishment. We should not reward the thugs that run these countries. We should stop giving them money and we should say, okay, we know you are getting billions of dollars a year from the United States going straight to people who are certainly in need in your country, so we will not be giving you that money in foreign aid anymore, we will just allow the flow of remittances to make up for that. Most of the countries in the Western hemisphere that have been lobbying so hard to get the United States to maintain an open door policy toward immigration, in fact, the elimination of borders, it is interesting, many people have asked me why it is in fact that Mexico and Guatemala and El Salvador and a number of these countries have been so adamant about getting us to open our borders to their nationals. There is a reason, Mr. Speaker, and it is not just simply because they want to see the people in their country prosper. It is because they want to see the people in their country become the source of revenue for the folks in their own country. They recognize that they can maintain their power more easily if the masses are being provided the sustenance they need through the remittances that are coming from the United States, then they can rely on the foreign aid that we send them to go into their pockets and to prop up their regime. I think we should reduce that. I think we should stop that. I will propose an amendment to the foreign ops bill to do exactly that. If we put that amendment to the country, Mr. Speaker, is there anyone in this room, is there anyone on either side of the aisle that really and truly believes that would fail in the eyes of the American people? No, of course not. We all know it would pass overwhelmingly if the American people were allowed to vote on it individually. It will fail here in this body. But I will continue to do that. I will continue to offer amendments of this nature. I will continue to talk about the need to do something about immigration and immigration control because I believe it is perhaps the most important domestic policy issue we face as a nation. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, Mr. Speaker, the issue of immigration and that sort of thing does not just revolve around the issue of jobs although it is enormously important to America. It is a fact that we are importing massive numbers of low-skilled, low-wage people who in fact hold down the wage rates of low-skilled, low-wage American workers, making it even more difficult for them to ever work their way out of the cycle of poverty. It is absolutely true that that occurs. No one suggests that massive importation of cheap labor has helped the low-income wage earner in America. Nobody suggests that. Even the most devoted pro-immigration lobby never suggests that it helps the poor in America. It increases the number of the poor. In fact, when we do our surveys every year about people living in poverty, it is amazing, but a huge percentage, somewhere near 90 percent of those people whom we now identify as in poverty in the United States are people who are in fact noncitizens of the United States. It is also true that those people who have dropped out of the job market, who have had a harder and harder time to actually get a better job and crawl their way up out of their particular situation have been negatively affected and that job is made much more difficult by the massive number of people who are here illegally or by immigrants here legally or not. So it is an important issue. The fact that we export all of our high tech jobs to India and other places while simultaneously importing very high tech, very capable people to take the place of American workers because they will work for less and that in turn holds down the wage rates of middle-income workers in this country, all of those things are true. We will certainly see and do see as we look around the country the economic effects of open borders. It does benefit multinational corporations, that is true. It does not benefit the people who in fact work for them or the nations in which those multinational corporations exist or call home. Few corporations today can even be thought of as being American corporations. In fact, I think it was Ralph Nader sent a request to all of the huge corporations in America asking them to begin their board meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. Few even responded but those that did were irate that he would suggest such a thing, suggesting that there is no allegiance to a nation state, that their allegiance is to a corporate bottom line. And if that bottom line can be enhanced by ignoring the needs of the country in which they are housed, that is okay, they are going to do it because that is exactly what they are constructed for. So it is true that this issue is a jobs issue. It is certainly true that this issue is a national security issue. As I said, there are people who are coming into this country hidden among those who are coming here for relatively benign purposes but there are people coming in to do us great, great harm, undeniably true. We have found some here already. We have arrested them. Some of them we have been able to actually take out of circulation not necessarily because we can immediately bring them to trial on the basis of espionage or some sort of allegation that deals directly with their support of terrorism but because they have violated immigration laws. That is the first thing we go to. They are here illegally. It is nice we have something to use and it is nice that we would actually use it, but the fact is that even these things are not as important in totality as the issue I discussed earlier, and that is the very difficult problem we are going through in America with identifying who we are. There is a great book that has just come out. It is in fact called ``Who Are We?'' It is by Samuel Huntington. I consider him to be an enormously talented observer of the American political and social scene. He has written other books, one called ``The Clash of Civilizations'' that I have read several times over. I am about halfway through ``Who Are We?'' I find it to be a fascinating read. I believe that that is the ultimate question with which we are dealing, who are we? Where are we going? What is it we are going to try and accomplish as Americans? What does it mean to be an American? Our students in our classrooms throughout the country are being fed a steady diet of anti-Americanism, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. This diet includes a revision of history that creates a picture I think totally and completely incorrect and certainly skewed that would show American history and Western civilization itself as being inherently evil, something out of which nothing good could come. A textbook I remember picking up in a junior high I was in in my district, this was a couple of years ago now, started out, the chapter on American history, as Columbus came here and destroyed paradise. That was not in italics. It was not just a quote they were going to then analyze. That was the way the textbook portrayed Columbus's trip and his landing here on our shores, on the shores of North America. That kind of thing where we have made it very confusing for Americans to even understand or identify who, in fact, or what we are, combined with massive immigration where that same message is given to people who are not necessarily coming here, by the way, to become Americans but to simply achieve a greater economic level of existence and prosperity, which certainly is an admirable and laudable and understandable goal. But it behooves us, I think, to change the way in which we teach our children, the way in which we discuss this issue of multiculturalism, which has gotten to the point where it becomes almost a cult and that anything that is said to suggest that American culture, that American history, and that Western Civilization is, in fact, worthy of analysis, worthy of allegiance, anything that suggests that is determined to be sort of against the grain; and it is certainly not going to be accepted by academia as a legitimate subject matter. I recently had the opportunity of going to a high school in my district where 250 students were asked to assemble. And we talked for a while, and one of them asked me a question. They sent these questions up. And it was written out, and it said what do I think is the most serious problem facing America today? And I said, Before I answer that question, let me ask you something: How many in this room, 250, approximately, students, how many in this auditorium would agree with the statement that you live in the greatest country in the world? And about maybe two dozen raised their hands, and they did so sheepishly, the ones that did. It was none of that immediately hands go up, sure, of course, naturally, we live in the greatest country in the world. That did not happen. And they looked along the walls where their teachers were lined up in this auditorium, and I could see in their faces that they were concerned. I am not saying that the ones that did not answer were suggesting that they did not like America, hated America. I am just saying that they did not have the slightest idea, they had absolutely no intellectual ammunition to defend themselves if they were to postulate that, in fact, America is the greatest country in the world. They were not taught anything that would lead them to that. In fact, they were taught things that would make them feel very sheepish and sensitive about making that kind of statement. That is what I consider to be the real issue with which we are involved and which we should be debating: changing the way in which we look at ourselves, changing the way in which we teach our children about who we are, and certainly changing the way in which we try to bring immigrants into American mainstream, which today does not exist. Today we tell them they should stay separate, keep a separate language, even keep political affiliations with countries other than the United States. This is all done to our great and long-lasting disadvantage. It is a very serious issue, one that, as I say, requires more time and attention and analysis than can be given during a 30-second or even 1- minute ad during a political campaign. But it is the reason why I do come to the floor as often as I do to try to raise the issue. I could be, of course, 180 percent off course here. I could be totally wrong. But I believe with all my heart that at least this deserves the debate, that this body should afford it, and that this arena would be the perfect place for that to occur.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, June 2, I was unavoidably detained and unable to vote on rollcall votes 213, 214, and 215. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall 213, ``aye'' on rollcall 214, and ``aye'' on rollcall 215.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to recognize the importance of our community parks, and their caretakers. Often parks and cityscapes go overlooked during our busy days. However, keeping open spaces green, clean and well-kept is not an easy task. For this reason, I rise to pay tribute to David Lorenz for being awarded the 2003 Manager of the Year Award by the Special District Association of Colorado. Mr. Lorenz has been the executive director of the South Suburban Park and Recreation District for the last 17 years. His accomplishments include overseeing the Goodson Recreation Center and the Sheridan Recreation Center. He has worked to preserve 3,000 acres of land for parks and open space, as well as a comprehensive 120 mile trail system used by walkers, joggers, and bicyclists. David Lorenz has shown devotion to the community by maintaining and designing a variety of outdoor activities for the residents of South Suburban. He also received Honorable Mention in the Special Projects category for the ``Living Well'' initiative which helps to fight obesity in children and adults. Mr. Lorenz' dedication, and the dedication of other caretakers, to the provision of recreation activities and the upkeep of our parks serve as a great benefit to all Americans.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to an individual who has worked tirelessly to bring awareness of our U.S. Constitution to both school children and adults alike, Andy McKean. Mr. McKean was awarded the 2004 Daughters of the American Revolution Medal of Honor for his efforts to educate children about our common heritage and founding documents. Mr. McKean established a large summertime ``Earning by Learning'' program in Denver-area libraries to encourage young children to read more often. While visiting one of those libraries, Mr. McKean was shocked to learn that none of the children knew the true meaning of the Fourth of July. Mr. McKean decided that the children of America ought to learn about the founding of our nation and system of government before the fifth grade, when most kids are first taught a course in American history. Mr. McKean became president and eloquent spokesman for Liberty Day, the nationwide educational organization. Mr. Speaker, Andy McKean is a person who possesses dedication, commitment, and passion for his life long pursuit of educating young people and contributing to the betterment of America's youth. It is my distinct pleasure to honor Andy here today, and wish his all the best in him future endeavors.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I rise today to highlight the accomplishments of a special group of students from Hinkley High School in Aurora, Colorado. After learning about the devastating effects of land mines from African History teacher Chris Sundberg, students in the International Baccalaureate program worked to raise $6,000 for Colorado Adopt-A- Minefield. The Adopt-A-Minefield program is part of the United Nations Association. It works to save lives by raising funds for mine clearance and survivor assistance, and to raise awareness about the landmine problems. This donation was the single largest donation ever received by the Colorado branch of the organization. The money will be used to help clear landmines from a field in Mozambique. Minefields are often left abandoned or improperly cleared after a regional conflict. These land mines devastate thousands of lives every year by leaving civilians, particularly children, maimed for life. The students of Hinkley High School decided to reach out across the divide of culture and distance to children from another continent and help make our world a safer place. Mr. Speaker, these students worked tirelessly to both raise money for landmine removal efforts and to increase awareness of the devastating effects of abandoned landmines. Their commitment to helping others in this way should serve as an example to us all.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I would like to relate an incident that I think is very helpful in understanding this situation and also the effectiveness of an amendment of this nature. A little over a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to observe an exercise on the northern border, our northern border with Canada. It was in a place about 10 miles north of a place called Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. This exercise was 2 weeks in duration, and it was trying to determine to what extent we could use the military, in this case 100 Marines, for the purpose of trying to defend about 100 miles of border. They were not just 100 Marines. There were three UAVs, three unmanned aerial vehicles they used, and also two radar stations. While I was there, I observed the UAVs picking up four people coming across on all-terrain vehicles carrying 400 pounds of drugs. A little bit later they caught a plane trying to come in under the radar; but it could not, and we interdicted it. Let me explain what this meant. The Marines themselves did no interdictions. They had nothing to do with stopping the actual people who were coming across. But they were working in concert with the Forest Service and the Border Patrol. So when they identified the problem, they simply radioed for help from the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol got in a helicopter, came down where they were supposed to, and interdicted the people. That is the way it worked. At the end of the 2 weeks, I have the distinct feeling, and I guess you have to believe what I observed there, that nothing came across that 100 miles of border without us knowing about it. At the end of the 2 weeks, as we were leaving, the commandant of that Marine detachment of 100 Marines said to me, this is the best exercise we have ever, ever had. This is the best training we have ever done, because, he said, number one, it is real-time; number two, we are trying to stop real bad guys from coming into our country; and, he said, number three, it is in the most difficult terrain in the world. If you have been close to Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, it is beautiful; but it is absolutely the most difficult terrain you can imagine. No roads. So we can do it. The question is whether or not we have the will to do it. That is what a vote on this amendment will establish.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to applaud the accomplishments of a group of Aurora, Colorado students. The National Science Bowl team from Smoky Hill High School--Nathan Artz, Chris Krueger, Anthony Eskridge, Andrew Scacco, Jessa Forthofer and their coach, Mary Bartholomew--won their regional tournament, and will be here in Washington, DC to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl Competition. The National Science Bowl is a 4-day event, in which students attend science seminars and workshops and participate in the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Model Car Challenge. The last two days of the event, teams from across the nation are pitted against each other in a verbal competition covering every branch of science and mathematics from algebra to zoology. The Smoky Hill team has worked diligently throughout the year to prepare for this competition and have demonstrated their academic domination in their regional successes. It is my pleasure to honor their commitment to scholastic excellence, and to wish them all the best at the competition and in their future endeavors.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it is not an easy undertaking to answer the call to public service and run for local City Councils. Often the job of City Councilmember is thankless; it is with the highest regard for the services our elected officials do for our communities that I wish to pay tribute to the newly elected Castle Rock, Colorado City Council. In April, returning Councilmembers Ray Waterman and Jay Richards and new City Councilmembers Ed Rusch (District 4) and Randy Reed (District 2) were sworn in by Judge Louis Gresh. The new council's first order of business was the unanimous election of City Councilmember Ray Waterman as Mayor. Mr. Speaker, the newly elected council should be dedicated to improving their community. It is not only their devotion, but also their passion for contributing to the betterment of the Colorado community that I wish to recognize before this body. It is my distinct pleasure to honor the new and returning councilmembers here today, and wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I just want to add my support to this endeavor and this resolution. Certainly, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), the author of the resolution, and the committee itself and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) have been extremely articulate in laying out the points that we should pursue and in encouraging us to bring this resolution and have stated, again articulately, why we should support it. I want to add to those issues that we have laid out some other things that are not specifically identified in the resolution, but I think are important for us to consider. We must recognize that much of what we know today about Iran and certainly what we know about its nuclear production capabilities, and not just capabilities, but what they have already done, comes to us not as a result of information identified by the international inspection regime. It comes to us as a result of the fact that Iranian dissidents have, at great risk, made this information available to the West. On more than one occasion, these Iranian dissidents have provided us with information that we now know to be accurate. It has become invaluable in many ways, and they should be credited for what they have done. It is also important to note that many of these people who have taken refuge in Iraq are under the control and the protection right now of American forces over there. It is also I think important to understand that Iran, the mullahs in Iran are today demanding that these people be returned, forcibly returned to Iran to face certain death. It is inconceivable I think that we would agree to such a situation, especially in light of the information that they have provided and the valuable asset that they in fact are in that part of the world. We also recognize that much of the difficulty we now face in Iraq is a result of Iran's interference, sending people across that border, inflaming the passions that we now witness in the form of acts of violence against Americans and American troops over there. So all of these things, as I say, I am glad they have been said, but I just did not want to let this resolution go by without a reference to the people who have worked so hard to bring the information forward and who have struggled for a long time for a free Iran. They are dedicated to that proposition. They are dedicated to a free secular country, a democratic country over there, and I think it would be certainly heartless, it would be a tragedy if we were to abandon them, if we were to actually allow them to be returned to, as I say, certain death in that country. So I just wanted to add that dimension to this debate. Again, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), and the committee for bringing this resolution forward.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, the news media is quick to provide gratuitous coverage of anti-war protests in Europe and elsewhere. They are quick to provide a forum for critics of U.S. policy in Iraq and even quicker to highlight the problems, misfortunes, and missteps of our coalition forces in Iraq. What they rarely do, however, is to highlight the contributions and valor of our coalition soldiers. Take, for example, the case of Salvadoran Corporal Samuel Toloza. According to a recent Associated Press story, ``One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his . . . knife and charged the Iraqi gunmen.'' The story goes on, ``In one of the only known instances of hand-to- hand combat in the Iraq conflict, Toloza stabbed several attackers who were swarming around a comrade. The stunned assailants backed away momentarily, just as a relief column came to their rescue.'' According to the reports, Toloza and 16 other members were trapped by members of Muqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi militia. They initially did not fire their weapons for several hours, for fear of inflicting civilian casualties, despite the fact that insurgents were peppering the group with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Finally, after fighting back, the group, comprised of Salvadoran and American soldiers, ran out of ammunition. Faced with mounting casualties, they placed wounded soldiers on transports and tried to make their way back to the base. Unfortunately, they ran into a contingent of about 10 insurgents on the way. That is when Toloza, out of ammunition, rushed the insurgents with nothing but his knife, buying enough time for reinforcements to arrive. ``We never considered surrender,'' Toloza reportedly said, ``I was trained to fight until the end.'' Phil Kosnett, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority in Najaf, also has nothing but praise for the nearly 400 Salvadoran troops fighting shoulder to shoulder with American troops in Iraq. In fact, he is so impressed with their valor and dedication to duty, he has nominated six of them for the Bronze Star, and for good reason. The AP story goes on to explain that Kosnett himself believes he owes his life to them. Salvadoran troops, the story continues, ``repelled a well- executed insurgent attack on Kosnett's three-car convoy in March.'' Mr. Speaker, let us pay tribute to the sacrifices and heroism of our soldiers, as well as those of our allies, like Corporal Toloza, for their efforts and contributions to protecting freedom and on their efforts in the war on terror.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it is my extreme pleasure and privilege to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Cynthia Mason-Corlett for being awarded the 2003 Milken National Education Award. Ms. Corlett began her teaching career in 1988, teaching science and math to middle school students. Currently, she teaches eighth grade at Sierra Middle School in Parker, Colorado. She has excelled at energizing students by using hands-on teaching methods. Students investigate everything from air pressure to space travel, and share their knowledge by conducting science demonstrations for second graders from neighborhood elementary schools. The Milken National Educator Award is today one of the largest teacher recognition programs in the United States; one hundred new educators from across the country will receive their awards for excellence in their profession. Ms. Corlett will join 72 previous winners from the state of Colorado to work on strengthening teacher quality, and serving as expert resources for policy makers. Mr. Speaker, it is quite clear that Cynthia Mason-Corlett is a person who possesses dedication and commitment to her life long pursuit of educating young people. It is not only her devotion, but also her passion for contributing to the betterment of the Colorado community that I wish to recognize before this body. It is my distinct pleasure to honor Cynthia here today, and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

Mr. TANCREDO

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. 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. 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. 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.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I address the House this evening for the purpose of continuing the discussion that has been ongoing here about jobs; about what it is in this economy, in this new world economy, this new world order that is creating the dilemma for many people and creating concern on the part of many folks out there, creating fear about their own jobs, if they still have them, and certainly encouraging the depression of those folks who have lost their jobs and have not been able to find others. This is a perplexing and challenging issue. Undeniably so. And the tendency, the desire, I think, for a lot of people is to immediately, especially in our position, any elected position in America, when we recognize there is this kind of a problem and that people are hurting, the natural response is to say, what can I do about this? How can I change the situation? What can the government do to create a better situation for those folks who are hurting? And this is enormously perplexing when we are talking about this brave new world of a global economy that we do not entirely understand. For well over 100 years, we thought we really had this thing pegged. We thought we knew what it took to create a prosperous society and a vibrant economy, and it boiled down to two words: Free trade. And we listened to and read the works of economists that all adhered to an economist in the 18th century by the name of David Ricardo. He coined the phrase ``comparative advantage.'' He said, look, when two countries are competing to produce a particular product, one may have an advantage over the other and we should concentrate on producing whatever it is in that country that they have the advantage to produce because of their climate, the geography, and the natural resources in that country. He used two examples: He said, let us look at Portugal and England. Portugal could produce wine and textiles, but in fact would have to put a lot more effort into producing textiles. England could produce textiles and wine, but would have to put a lot more effort into producing wine. So, therefore, Portugal should produce wine, England should produce textiles, and, therefore, the comparative advantage would accrue to each one of those countries. Each one of them would be doing what they do best and, therefore, each one of them would prosper and they would not be wasting their resources doing things they cannot do very well. That is the theory we have been operating under for now well over 100 years. And I believe that it had great merit and that it can work well. But we have added a new dimension to this whole discussion, and it is the dimension of labor. That was not an issue in Ricardo's day. Labor was not all that mobile. You could not move work to worker anywhere in the world. So labor was a constant in Ricardo's day and, therefore, you just dealt with what natural resources and the climate and the geography dealt you. Today, of course, we know that because of technology we are no longer able to rely on just what nature has given us in terms of resources. We also have to deal with the fact that labor is another one of those commodities that can be traded and for which there is a competitive advantage for some countries. But today that advantage will accrue to one country over another. It is not a win-win situation any more. It is not that one country can produce X, the other Y. Each of them will do that. Today, the economy is such that if you can provide cheaper labor, you win. The country that cannot deal with that loses. It is not a win-win game. That is the situation we face. American labor has become ever more productive, ever more efficient, and has been able to stay relatively competitive with the rest of the world, enough so that we have been able to maintain the standard of living that is far above the rest of the world for quite some time. How long this will be, we do not know. The answer to the question is that we do not know exactly what we can do to make sure that American jobs and American workers are saved. We can erect barriers, that is true. A law can be passed tomorrow in this body and passed in the other body, signed by the President, that will erect trade barriers. Will that protect American jobs? Well, it really cannot do that any more because there is no way to actually control the flow. Technology allows us to export work to worker anywhere in the world, and there are really very few ways that you can actually, in fact we may not have any way in which we can actually stop that phenomenon. I am certainly willing to look at any proposal that is designed to slow that down, that is designed to protect American workers and American jobs. I would like to do it. There is this, as I say, natural desire on the part of most of us here to get up and say, here is what we have to do and it will solve all of our problems. I believe the last speaker said we should stop trying to bust the unions. Well, let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that will not solve all of our problems. If in fact we are also talking about the creation of some sort of tariff to stop the exportation of certain commodities or to in fact increase the cost of certain commodities being brought into the United States, I do not think that will solve the problem. We are at a comparative disadvantage because our workers make more money than workers in most other countries of the world. And I am willing to admit that this is a dilemma for which I do not have a solution, but I am also willing to state that there is something we can do that neither my friends on the other side of the aisle or even my friends and colleagues on my side of the aisle are very willing to deal with, and yet it seems to me to be the most logical way of addressing this situation of the exportation of American jobs and stagnant wages that result from the fact that we can no longer compete in that particular environment. What I suggest, Mr. Speaker, is that we begin to enforce the law, the law that actually determines how many people can come into this country. And that if someone comes into this country without our permission, they are eligible for deportation. And if someone hires someone who has come into this country illegally, they in turn can in fact be fined. And if they do it often enough, they can go to jail. There are estimates that range from between 9 million and 18 million people in this country who are here illegally. Most of them appear to be working, and we are told they are working in jobs no American will take. Well, I would like to test that theory, that they are coming to take jobs that no American will take. And here is one way we can test that theory, Mr. Speaker. We can look at what is happening on the border today. Now, we all know that the job increases in this most recent recovery have been minimal. Some people refer to it as a jobless recovery. Whatever, the number of jobs we have created in the United States in the last couple of years is relatively low, relatively few. And we have an unemployment rate now of about 5.6 percent. We have a chronic unemployment that may go even higher. That is to say, that includes people who have long since ceased looking for jobs. So there are, again, estimates ranging from 8 million to 18 million people in this country unemployed. We know, right now, that there are not many jobs available out there. I mean that is pretty much a given. Well, let me tell you what happened on our borders since October 1 of last year in only one sector, the Tucson sector. According to Rob Daniels, the border patrol public information officer of the Tucson sector of the border patrol, there have been more than 200,000 illegal aliens apprehended in that sector alone this year. This is an increase of almost 50 percent since last year, and much of it as a result of the fact the President made a speech in which he put out the hope of an amnesty. Although he would not call it that, of course that is exactly what it is, and most of the world saw it for what it is, including the people that are coming across the border illegally. More than 60,000 people have been detained this month alone in the Tucson sector, representing a stunning increase of over 85 percent over March of 2003. Those numbers are expected to rise, as April and May are typically the peak months for intending border crossers seeking to make the trip through the desert before forbidding summer conditions set in. Now, I present these figures because I think they are important for us to understand if we really and truly are talking about trying to do something important for the American worker. In the last 6 months, 200,000 people in one sector were detained. And let me say this, Mr. Speaker. Everyone who is involved with this issue will tell you that for every single person we detain, at least three get through. That is a very conservative figure. So in the Tucson sector, if you use that figure of three coming through for every one we are able to catch, 600,000 people made it into the country from one sector in 6 months. Now, think about what this means for the entire border, both north and south, and our ports of entry, both land, sea and air, and it certainly could be as many as a million people came across our borders without our permission in the last 6 months. But let us say for a moment that those are just simply exaggerated figures, somehow, some way, we have been able to actually stop more people from coming into the country than is the general rule and that maybe only one or two get by for every one that gets interdicted. That still means about 500,000 people came across the border illegally along with about another 500,000 who came into this country legally from our very liberal immigration policy. So in the last 6 months, the most conservative estimate possible for the number of people who came into this country both legally and illegally has got to approach a million people. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if a million people came in here in 6 months, what are they doing here? What jobs are they doing? Are they taking only those jobs that Americans will not take? Do you mean to tell me that in the last 6 months we have created a million jobs that have gone begging? And that employers are out there saying, oh, my goodness, I have all of these jobs and I just can't get an American citizen to take them, so I'm going to employ the million people both legal and illegal aliens who have come across the border in the last 6 months? No, Mr. Speaker. No, they are not taking jobs that are simply out there that American citizens will not take, they are taking jobs somebody else has and they are taking them because they will work for less. It is a simple proposition. These numbers are incredible. Most people cannot believe it when I tell them that these are the numbers that are actually provided by the border patrol themselves. This is not my wild guesstimation of how many people are coming into this country illegally. So if, in fact, there are already these folks in this body that are so intent on doing something to increase the number of jobs available to Americans, I suggest that they look carefully at immigration. This is something that, of course, my friends on the other side of the aisle will never, ever, ever bring up. In one hour of all of the problems that were identified by my colleague on the other side of the aisle here, you never once heard anybody talk about the fact, in particular talk about the fact that immigration may be one of the problems we face when trying to create jobs for Americans. Never said it. Why? Because, of course, the issue is incredibly political. My friends on that side of the aisle know that massive immigration into this country both legal and illegal accrues to their political benefit. It will mean voters for the Democratic Party. They know it. It is the historical truth. On my side of the aisle, you will not hear a discussion of this issue, either, because we look at it as being a source of cheap labor. So between the two of us here, between the two parties, it is very difficult to get an honest discussion of this issue and what it means for America. The President said in that speech that he gave a month and a half ago or two months ago, I want to match every willing worker with every willing employer. It is a high sounding goal. But let us think about what that really means, if it is true, if he really wants to do that. Every willing worker with every willing employer. Mr. Speaker, there are billions, with a B, there are billions of willing workers in the world anxious, desiring a job that pays them more than they are getting wherever they are but far less than is being paid to the person in this country who is doing that job. So do we really mean that we are willing to abandon the border? If so, let us say it if that is the truth of the matter. If in fact that is our purpose and our policy, to eliminate the whole complex process of immigration, erase the border and allow people to simply come here to take the jobs that some employer is willing to provide, and I assure you that every employer is looking for, and there is nothing wrong with it. This is not some nefarious purpose on the part of employers. They are looking for a way to cut their costs. That is a part of the process we call free enterprise capitalism and a process to which I adhere and a philosophy to which I adhere. So they are looking to cut their costs. Believe me when I tell you that if somebody presents themselves to you who has got all the skills necessary to do the job but they will do it for less than the person you have got working there, you are probably going to hire them. They may only be there for a short time, until the next person comes in the door and said, you know what, I'll do it for even less. This is something that has happened, of course. We know this has happened in our manufacturing economy. This is one of the things that has really and truly been problematic in the United States. It has happened to our low-skill, low-wage jobs. There is so much competition for those jobs, so many people seeking them, that it has had the effect of depressing the wage rates for all the folks who are making very little money. They have not seen an increase in their salary because there are so many people here who are willing to take those jobs, those low-skill, low- wage jobs. Something new is happening, a new dimension here, because now we are figuring out a way to export or import, either way, export the jobs to a place that will have workers who will do the job, will work for less or import the worker to come here and do the job for less. We are doing it for high tech industries. H1B is the visa category for people who have special skills and who come to the United States with a higher degree than the person who is coming here to do menial labor. These are mostly people in the high tech industry and they are skilled and they are capable and they will work for less. So we hire them or we outsource the jobs that are here. Employers have manipulated the visa category to bring these folks in even though they do not fit the requirements of H1B or even L1 visas. They are bringing them in by the hundreds of thousands. We now have probably 2 million people in this country with those two visa categories, H1B and L1, high tech workers who have displaced American workers. Why? Because, of course, we have succumbed to the siren song of cheap labor and we have agreed to essentially abandon our borders. It is amazing to me to see what I see and hear what I hear and read what I read about what goes on every day on our borders, to read statistics like those I just gave you, with over a quarter of a million people having been interdicted at the border in one single sector, the Tucson sector, in 6 months and far more than that having made it past our border patrol and are here in the country illegally. We have, I believe it is approaching 20 million people here illegally. They are all working or at least most of them are in jobs, of course, that Americans will not take. I do not know, Mr. Speaker, how it is in your district, but I will tell you how it is in mine. I have people who are unemployed, high tech workers who are driving cabs at night. I have people who will take jobs of any kind in order to keep a roof over their heads and who are right now unable to find those jobs. Or if they find a job, it is, of course, working for much less money than the job they had. So their standard of living is decreased. That is, of course, what we face. That is, perhaps, an inevitability. Maybe there is absolutely nothing we can do about it because of this new world economy. How harsh that sounds. But it may be the case that we cannot stop it, we cannot stop the exportation of jobs. But should we not attempt to control our own borders? Because we only have two choices: Either we do that or we eliminate the border, we can erase the border, pretend they do not exist, allow people to come in and however they get here, they are now residents of the nation. That is an option. It is one I think that many people in their heart of hearts around here accept and in fact desire. There are folks in this body who believe that borders are simply anachronisms, they really should not be there, they do not matter anymore, they are not important and they only serve to obstruct the flow of goods and services and people. And that really the whole idea of the nation state, some concept of sovereignty, is all offered up on the altar of free trade. I do not know, Mr. Speaker. I cannot tell you that I have a magic bullet here, but I can tell you that there is no way I am going to accept this situation without railing against it and without suggesting something that we can do, and that something is to actually control our own borders. Mr. Speaker, it is fascinating. The Wall Street Journal used to write an editorial every Fourth of July that said that borders were no longer meaningful and that we should erase them. They stopped writing that editorial after 9/11 but it is not because they have changed their mind, it is just because they are afraid to say such a thing subsequent to such a national tragedy perpetrated by people, of course, all of whom were here as aliens and most of whom, by the way, in some way or another had violated our laws and could have and should have been deported. So they do not talk about it anymore but they still believe it and so do Members of our own body, believe that that is in fact the way of the world, that national boundaries will not matter, that pretty soon the United States, Mexico and Canada will all together join in some sort of grand alliance similar to the EU, kind of hold hands and sing ``Cumbayah'' and that the only thing that will matter at that time, the only thing that will determine how profitable it is to live where you live and how good a job you may have, the only thing that will determine that are markets. Let me suggest that there is another reason why we should try to control the border even if you do not believe that we should get involved with trying to protect the American jobs that are sacrificed to open borders, even if for some reason that just goes against your grain and that you are willing to allow American jobs to be sacrificed to those people who are willing to come and do them for less. And, remember, I say that there are billions willing to do that. There is no job here that we can create that someone out there cannot compete for. If we import the labor on one hand to do the jobs that are necessary here from the service economy, those kinds of jobs that only can be done here, a waiter or a waitress, building homes, whatever, if those jobs we bring in people who will work for less and the other jobs that do not require you to be physically here in the United States to do, we export, then of course there has to be some sort of ramification to that. There is something that is going to happen to the United States of America as a result of this phenomenon. I suggest that at the minimum it will be stagnant wage rates but almost assuredly it will be declining wage rates. Or maybe we can live with that. Maybe it is going to have to happen. No one wants to get up in front of their constituents and say, get ready, your wage rates are going to go down, your standard of living is going to be reduced because we are committed to the concept of free trade and that includes the free trade of labor. In fact, we have asked the Congressional Research Service to actually try to identify to us those countries that are actually dealing with us on a free trade basis. That is to say that we will import the products that they produce and they will import the products that we produce without any trade restrictions. I have yet to find a country like that. We are the ultimate free traders in the world. That is for sure. We offer far more in terms of an allure to come here and bring their products than we are able to do and that any other country is willing to offer us. China is a great example. Since we opened trade with China, our balance of trade, or the imbalance of trade, I should say, has skyrocketed. The same thing happened with Mexico. Mr. Speaker, before NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, we had an actual surplus, a trade surplus with Mexico, about $9 billion. Since NAFTA, we have gone to about $60 billion in the red, a trade deficit with Mexico. We have relatively few countries right now in the world with whom we have a positive trade balance, and most countries with which we trade do not trade on an even basis, on a level playing field. But we are committed to free trade, regardless of what it does to the American wage earner. And as I say, maybe, just maybe, we cannot do anything about that. But I think there is something. I would like to at least try because even if it is not something that the free trade adherence will go for, maybe if they are somehow concerned about the trade implications of actually controlling our own borders, think about the other implications. Think about the costs to American taxpayers of massive immigration, both legal and illegal. Mr. Speaker, we hear all the time about the importation of cheap labor and how important it is, but I assure the Members that cheap labor is only cheap to the employer. It is not cheap to the citizen taxpayer who has to pay for the housing, the health care, the educational services, the incarceration rates. All of these things become very expensive to the taxpayers of the country, but they are passed on to them. They are not paid for by the corporation that brings them in or the business that hires that person; so what do they care, essentially? But this concept of cheap labor has all kinds of other implications. The concept of open borders, borders that really do not matter, borders through which half a million people, minimally half a million people, could come through without our permission in one sector, called the Tucson sector, in 6 months. That kind of a border provides us with all kinds of more severe problems, even more severe than the economic catastrophe that is inherent with this concept of open borders. As I say, it is a cost to the American taxpayer, but it is also something else, Mr. Speaker. And this gets a little more, I guess the word I am looking for is esoteric perhaps, but nonetheless I think it is a very important discussion we have to have because even if the Members disagree with everything I have said about the economy and the impact of cheap labor, the impact of open borders on the economy, even if they think it is just great to allow people to come into this country and undercut someone who is presently working here, underbid them for the job, even if they think that is okay, let me suggest to them that there are other problems that I would like them to deal with. And one of these things is the problem that I believe is enormously important for us to talk about, although uncomfortable, certainly, to discuss, and this is the problem with the effect of massive immigration, both legal and illegal, when it sort of meshes with what I call the cult of multiculturalism that permeates our society. Radical multiculturalism. Not just the philosophy or the attitude that we should appreciate our differences and the acknowledgment that those differences have made us richer in many ways as a Nation. That is not radical multiculturalism. Radical multiculturalism is the philosophy that says that in order to appreciate anybody else, one must degrade one's own culture and that one could never ever suggest that what we have here, that the product of western civilization we call the United States of America, is superior to anyplace else in the world because of course all cultures are relative to the multiculturalist radical. There is no difference. It is the ultimate ``I am okay, you're okay'' view of the world. And we have spent an enormous amount of time and money telling our children in our schools that this is the case, that they cannot be attached to anything that we had in our day, when I was in school, called the American experience because, of course, the multiculturalist radicals would say it is just a reflection of a society and a civilization that was nothing but greedy and degraded and corrupt, and that when Columbus came here to the New World, he began what was eventually to become the destruction of paradise. This is what we tell children. This is in our textbooks, and this is what is rotting the core of American culture. And we are doing it to ourselves, and it is not the fact that immigrants are coming here and perpetrating it. They are simply coming into this new environment. This is dangerous, I think, to our society. When we tell our children there is nothing of value, there is nothing worth their sacrifice, there is no set of ideas or ideals around which we can all gather, that all cultures are the same, that all is relative, when we do that, we are at great risk. We have example after example. If the people go to our website, www.house.gov, that is g-o-v, /Tancredo, T-a-n-c-r-e-d-o, and go to a site that we call ``Our Heritage, Our Hope,'' or our immigration site, either one, they will get a great deal of information, Mr. Speaker. And I hope that everyone would do that because there are literally hundreds of examples of this cult of multiculturalism that I am talking about. Let me give the Members just a few. ``At Los Angeles Roosevelt High School, an 11th grade teacher told a nationally syndicated radio program that she `hates' the textbooks she's been told to use and the State-mandated history curriculum because they `ignore students of Mexican ancestry.' Because the students don't see themselves in the curriculum,' the teacher has chosen to `modify' the curriculum by replacing it with activities like `mural walks,' intended to `open the students' eyes,' '' she says, `` `to their `indigenous culture.' A friend the teacher invited to help with the `mural walk' went on to tell the students that `Your education has been one big lie after another.' '' And that essentially there is nothing they should as a student attach themselves to in terms of this American experience. It is white. It is Anglo-Saxon. It is not theirs and that they should never ever attach themselves to it. ``In the textbook called Across the Centuries that is used for seventh grade history, the book defines the word `jihad' as `to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil.' '' Because, of course, we would not want to say that another interpretation of ``jihad'' is a holy war against Christendom because, oh, my heavens, what that sets up in the mind of the reader, even though that is exactly what the term implies: a holy war. We try to euphemise it. We try to change the definition so as not to possibly create the impression on the part of a student that someone might hold a view like the people who hold this view actually have, and that is this: that their purpose, their reason to be, is to exterminate us. That is the truth of the matter, that for millions and millions of Muslims around the world, their one purpose is to exterminate any semblance of western civilization. It is a threat to them. I had a book given to me not too long ago. It was an actual diary of an Imam who went on, I believe, to become a suicide bomber. In his diary he explains that is what all good faithful Muslims have to do, because, he said, We cannot live in the same world with the west. Western democracies have created a world in which people live the good life here on earth, and that is a world in which we cannot exist because in our world, the only thing to which we look forward is the afterlife. This is just a temporary status, and we are moving on to something greater, and if we allow western democracies, western civilization, to survive, it will essentially turn the heads of all of our people, turn their heads away from the joys of the afterlife to the joys of this life. So, therefore, we have to set ourselves on a path of destroying western civilization. This is what they are committed to, many millions of Muslims are. Many millions of Muslims would not take up that particular sword, at least not physically. They may do so mentally. One wonders how many people of that faith, even though they would not themselves commit an act of violence, how many in their heart of hearts, when one of those acts of violence is committed, think it is okay, that it is good, they deserve it. Nonetheless, in our classrooms we refuse to even tell our students about this. We refuse to actually define the word ``jihad'' for its real meaning. ``In a Prentice Hall textbook used by students in Palm Beach County high schools titled `A World Conflict,' the first 5 pages of the World War II chapter cover such topics as women in the Armed Forces, racial segregation in the war, black Americans in the home front, Japanese Americans being interned, and women in the war effort.'' Although 292,000 Americans died in that conflict, most white male soldiers are represented far less in photos and words than all others. ``A Washington State teacher substituted the word `Christmas' with the word `winter' in a carol to be sung at a school program so as not to appear to be favoring one faith over another.'' Let us see. Oh, a school in New Mexico, this is just fascinating, a school district in New Mexico introduced a textbook called ``500 years of Chicano History and Pictures,'' and this book states that it was written ``in response to the Bicentennial celebration of the 1776 American Revolution and its lies.'' It stated its purpose is to ``celebrate a 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, they said was a cannibal, and the 1847 ``War on Mexico'' was an invasion. The chapter headings include ``Death to the Invader,'' ``U.S. Conquest and Betrayal,'' ``We Are Now a U.S. Colony,'' ``Occupied America,'' and ``They Stole the Land.'' Nicholas DeGenova, an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University, told students he wanted to see ``a million Mogadishus,'' which is a reference to an operation in Somalia in 1993 in which U.S. Army personnel were pinned down in a fierce firefight. Eighteen Americans were killed, 84 wounded. DeGenova added, ``The only true heroes are those who find ways to help defeat the U.S. military.'' He is an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University. Administrators at Columbia University have expressed regret, saying they were appalled by his statements, but took no action to dismiss DeGenova, who was still teaching. Royal Oak Intermediate School in Covina, California, students in Len Cesene's 7th grade history class, fasted last week to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. His letter to parents explained that ``in an attempt to promote a greater understanding and empathy toward the Muslim religion and toward other cultures, I am encouraging students to participate in an extra credit assignment. Students may choose to fast for 1, 2 or 3 days. During those days, students may only drink water during daylight hours.'' Imagine what would happen if he tried to suggest that students do something to adhere to Lent, let us say, a Christian religious holiday, not a holiday, but a time that Christians recognize for fasting. What if he tried to say that is what he wanted his children to do? What kind of an outcry would there be? Nobody said a word about the fact that he was trying to make the kids more sort of sensitive. That is okay. A Federal judge in Brooklyn interpreted a New York City policy on holiday displays in public schools allow for the display of the Jewish Menorah and the Muslim Crescent, but not the display of the Christian Nativity Scene. The judge based his decision on the notion that the Muslim Crescent and Jewish Menorah are secular symbols, while the questioned Nativity Scene is not. Really, we have just tons and tons of examples, and, again, I just suggest that perhaps the best thing to do, Mr. Speaker, is to have folks go to the web site, House.Gov/Tancredo. Look at ``Our Heritage, Our Hope.'' We will have these for you. One more I do want to bring to your attention, because this one really was intriguing to me. Remember now, I bring this up, I am talking about this particular part of our culture, this multi-culturist phenomena, this multi-culturist cult that has control of a large part of our school system, certainly, and the textbook developers and the media and on and on and on. I bring this up in the context of a discussion of immigration, because I believe that these two issues are interwoven and you cannot really discuss one without the other, and as we increase the number of people here, both legally and illegally, and as we encourage those folks who come here to be anything but part of the American experience, whatever that may be anymore in anybody's mind, as we encourage them to stay separate, as we tell them they should not learn English, that we will teach them in their language in the public schools, that they should keep that language, that they should keep their culture, and they should even keep their political affiliations and connections to the country of origin, that this cult of multi-culturalism then is enhanced by this policy on the part of our government. And here is the kind of thing that does happen. In California, Victorville, California, there was a Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum on Highway 15 in the High Mojave desert. I saw this clip, somebody had put it on my desk and I was thinking, why is this significant? Why did somebody give me this clip from the Los Angeles Times about the fact that the Roy Rogers Museum had been moved from Victorville, California, to Branson, Missouri. It picked up and moved because of a transformation in the cultural nature of the region, as new immigrants who settled in California are not absorbing the cultural history of the region or the country. The guy who was writing a newspaper story about this went into a bar and met a lady by the name of Rosalina Sondoval-Marin. She was having a beer at the El Chubasco Bar on historic Route 66, and the newspaper reporter said, ``I am doing a story about the fact that the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum is moving after having been here for, I don't know, decades and decades and decades. What do you think about that?'' And Ms. Sondoval-Marin said, ``There is a revolution going on here, and it don't include no Roy Rogers or Bob Hope.'' I thought that was a fascinating observation really, and an indication of in fact something that is going on here. It is a revolution. It is true. It is a cultural revolution, and we aid and abet those people who are desirous of separating themselves from the rest of American society, creating a balkanized America, by encouraging bilingual education in schools and encouraging the cult of multi- culturalism that permeates our society. So it is that combination. It is the combination of massive immigration with this multi-culturalist cult that is the most dangerous thing we face. Now, Mr. Speaker, this has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, it has not got anything to do with country of origin. This is something that would happen to any country, no matter where it was on the globe, if it practiced this kind of divisive sort of philosophic approach toward immigration. I was recently in a school in my district, and it is a brand new school, it has only been there a short time, and it is in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, by way, a county in which I do not live, I hasten to say, but it is part of my district. And a beautiful school, and very bright kids coming from parents that are well-to-do, who have given them all kinds of advantages, and they certainly have all the economic and educational advantages they could ask for. They came into an auditorium where I was to address them for a while, and we talked for, I don't know, half an hour, maybe an hour. And then they were sending up their questions. One of them sent a question up to me and it said, ``What do you think is the most serious problem that we face as the Nation here?'' I said, ``Well, I am going to ask you a question, and perhaps then I will be able to answer yours.'' I said, ``How many people in this room,'' by the way, there were about 200 kids, and I said, ``How many people in this auditorium right now will agree with the following statement: I live in the greatest country on the face of the Earth?'' It was so interesting to see this. There was all kinds of shifting about and discomfort. You could see it. And finally maybe two dozen kids out of 200 raised their hand. Two dozen kids out of 200 said, yes, I think this is the best country on the face of the Earth. I hasten to add, I think there were many more in that room that wanted to say that. I do not mean to suggest that people, all of these kids, disliked or hated America. I will say that it is apparent to me as a teacher, I taught for many years, I have seen that look on faces before in my classroom when you ask a question and the kid has this sort of look like, well, if I put my hand up, he might call on me. I better not do it, because I am not sure I could defend the proposition. That is what was happening. Even though they may have felt that they were living in the best country in the world, they also knew they could not defend it if I asked them to, if I had challenged them. They were looking at the sides of the walls where their teachers were standing along the wall in this auditorium, and looking at them, and it was a very peculiar situation. It was uncomfortable for them. I do not know how uncomfortable it was for most of the teachers, and I did not even notice whether they raised their hands. I do not think any of them did. But maybe they did not think the question was addressed to them. I am not sure. But it was nonetheless fascinating to me. And what I believe has happened, and what I would love to test, I mean, I would love every Member, Mr. Speaker, next time they go and speak to a high school in their district, at the appropriate time, ask that question and see what happens. It is illuminating. It is illustrative. It is a fascinating thing to watch. Because what you see are people who are intellectually unarmed to defend the proposition that they live in the best country in the world, because they have been taught over and over and over again by all kinds of textbooks and all kinds of teachers that they cannot ever say a thing like that, because it would indicate some actual existence of, you know, good and evil; better and best; good and bad. We do not have that, and we cannot have it, and we cannot think of it. We cannot think of ourselves as being special, and no matter what other cultures might do and what they might think about the human condition, we cannot condemn them, we cannot say anything bad about them, for fear of offending the multi-culturist police that haunt our schools and our lives in many ways. I fear this is the most dangerous thing. The answer to the question those kids asked me then is this is what I believe is the most severe problem we face in America, this abandonment of the ideas and ideals of western civilization that actually came together to create this incredible country. There are things about which we can be so proud. There are things that are uniquely western and that we have every reason to be proud of. We are the instigator. We brought the concept of the rule of law to the world. Western civilization provided that. It was an outgrowth of the Greeks, the Romans and eventually through the English, the Magna Carta and our own Constitution. It is a wonderful, wonderful tour of history to see how that string is drawn through the pages of history and how we come to this position and how we were started as a Nation, unique among all nations of the Earth. We were started on the basis of ideas. Ideas. Not because a potentate, a king or anybody else drew some lines and called it a country. We started because of ideas, ideas of great value and ideas that we must transmit to our children and to immigrants coming to this country. There must be something, some set of ideas around which we can all gather, something that means we are different and special and holds us together, because there is nothing really other than that. We are people from all kinds of different backgrounds and cultures and countries and histories and languages and all of that sort of thing. So the one thing that we should try to have to bring all of these disparate factions together is a set of ideas. And yes, they are ideas promulgated out of western civilization, and we should never, ever, ever be ashamed of it. We should extol those ideas to ourselves, to our children, and to immigrants, because it will determine the fate of the Nation.