Tom Tancredo

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss an issue that often I bring to the attention of this body, and that is of course immigration and immigration reform, an issue that I think we spend far too little time discussing here. I was compelled to come tonight to share an e-mail message I received just a couple of days ago. It is from a lady by the name of Rhonda Rose. And Ms. Rose speaks, I think, compellingly about a problem, a set of problems, that she perceives in her area. And I think she is not unique in this. I think she speaks for many Americans, in fact, millions of Americans. So I thought I would start tonight by sharing this particular e-mail message to me with my colleagues. It says, ``My story: I live in a world where I do not count. I'm not a minority. I'm poor. I don't have coalitions rallying for what I feel is important. I don't 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 illegals come and visit that shelter. It was supposed to keep these `poor people' from urinating and defecating on the streets. It didn't. My home and my vehicles have been broken into 22 times in 5 years. ``I stopped calling the police each time now that this happens because they do not come any more. Instead, we bought a gun. We scared off the last person trying to steal our truck. The only English he knew was enough to say `sorry' as we pointed at him. Three months later we still have a towel over the smashed driver's-side window. ``Last week, I was ordered to pay an $85 fine for a false alarm. Police showed up for that hearing. The police couldn't find any criminal at my home when my home alarm sounded. I'm curious how long police think bad guys `hang around' after an alarm has been triggered. ``I was involved in an accident in my car. The policeman said I would have to wait while he called for backup. My baby was screaming. The police had no film in the camera. The backup police had no fingerprinting ink or film. The person who ran into me was here illegally. He had a fake ID, but the police said there was nothing that they could do about it; the illegal alien would just get another fake ID and would never show up for court. He didn't have insurance. The illegal alien who hit me said sorry as he was walking 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 or lose everything I had. ``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 that I don't remember. His workman's comp just skyrocketed from $5,000 per year to $28,000 per year. Now, I ask you, where are we going to come up with the extra $23,000? We had no claims. Should I take it out of my food budget? We often go weeks without meat. Should it come from our clothing budget? We buy our clothes at thrift sales and savers. How about our entertainment account? Does seeing a movie every month qualify? ``My home insurance costs me $100 more yearly because I live in a border State. How long before Kansas becomes a border State? I have had no medical insurance for years and years. I can't afford it. At 33, I got cancer. My doctor told me to go to ACCHS. I don't remember how to spell the State's medical system, since they declined me. ``My husband's company had no profit in 6 months due to theft and lack of laws at the time to force general contractors to pay. Without studying my receipts, I was declined. Interesting that hundreds of illegal aliens in this country standing in line were being given food stamps and medical care. They did not have Social Security numbers; they did not speak English. If you don't believe me,'' she says, ``look at the application DES.'' I am sorry, Madam Speaker, but I do not know what that stands for. ``Spend 5 minutes at DES and remind yourself why you pay taxes. You won't be smiling. ``Taxes. Well, we fell behind one year. I contacted the IRS and told them we wanted to make arrangements to pay. We now show the IRS everything we buy, from the female items to chewing gum, they see the receipt. For the next year we will be scrutinized. For the next 5 years we will be audited. Maybe I should never have done the right thing and told them. ``My son cries nightly because his legs and arms hurt. He has cried for almost 7 years. My husband often walks on one leg because his back and leg pain is almost unbearable. Monthly I have many strokes. During those times I lose the ability to speak well, and I have had seizures until I lose consciousness. We really don't know what is wrong with any of us. We may never know. We can't afford a doctor. God forbid we need emergency services. Thirty percent of the time hospitals are on divert status because there is no room. Illegal aliens have taken their kids to the ER for colds and sore throats. I would only go if I lost a limb or if my heart gave out. ``Two years ago, I announced to my family there would be no turkey for Thanksgiving. We would eat pasta and be thankful we were a family. My Catholic friend made arrangements for me to get a food box from her church. I went, reluctantly. I drove up in my broken old van and saw a lot of full new, stickers attached, 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 at the number of illegals taking box lunches and boxes of food. When it was my turn, I had to show an ID. I was told to leave. There wasn't enough food for me to take a box. I looked around. There were boxes of food everywhere. For a minute I forgot that I was not in a minority and in their eyes not deserving. ``At church, our pastor reminds us to stay hopeful. I struggle to make sense 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. And what is worse, I do not know why. Rhonda Rose.'' Now, Madam Speaker, I think that Ms. Rose's situation is dire, but I think in many ways she says what many people feel. They feel, in a sense, disenfranchised. They feel that they are losing their own country. They feel that they cannot look to their own government for support or for help. Night after night I come on this floor and I bring to the attention of the body stories of people who live on the border in Arizona, Texas, and California. I talk about the fact that these people are in many ways homeland heroes because their stories were not all that dissimilar from Ms. Rose's. Their lives have been essentially destroyed. Their businesses, homes, ranches have been overtaken by illegal aliens coming through by the hundreds of thousands destroying property, vandalizing, threatening, attacking; and they do not know why. They are asking why this is happening now, when we have lived here for generations. Our family has been on this property for generations. We have always had people coming through here, sometimes illegally, or many times illegally, but only a few of them. And we would give them food and we would give them water and they would move on. But now it is by the thousands that they are coming through. And these people turn to the government for help and our government turns a blind eye to them. And so they get frustrated, as you would, Madam Speaker, and as I would. So they write to their Congressman, and they talk to their neighbors, and they see no change. And they wonder why they do it. They wonder what is happening when they read polls that show that 70 percent of Americans are essentially on their side. And, Madam Speaker, I have to say to Rhonda that 70 percent of this country looks at this, listens to your story and is empathetic and believes that some change should be made, but maybe 25 percent of this Congress feels the same way. And I do not know who in the administration feels this way. But not enough people here feel this way, I will tell you. And so we end up with a system that is unresponsive to the people; and anger grows, and resentment grows, and frustration grows. Because every day people see things like this. They pick up the paper and they read that another State has just decided to give illegal aliens driver's licenses. They see that foreign governments can distribute cards to those people living here illegally. These are referred to as the matricula consular card, and that States and cities are agreeing to accept these cards for a variety of services. Illegals can open bank accounts with these cards, they can obtain social services, they can even get driver's licenses. In California, the most recent State to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, you can use a matricula consular to obtain your driver's license. How do you get one of these? You get them from a consulate here. Usually, the Mexican consulate. They are the ones that hand out the most. And what do you have to give them? You have to give them some documentation that says you are a Mexican citizen. Not that you are here illegally; but, of course, everyone who needs one of these cards is here illegally. Madam Speaker, I want to repeat that. Every single person here in the United States who needs a matricula consular is here illegally because if you are here legally, you have a document that we have given you. You have a visa. You have a green card, you have a stamp on your passport at least. So an illegal alien in this country can obtain this particular card and with it can obtain all of the other documents they need to become essentially citizens, really, in a way. It is a stealth amnesty program. American citizens recognize that. When they read it in the newspaper, they know something is wrong. They know something is wrong when a body agrees to give illegal aliens in- State tuition for which they have to pay. They know something is wrong when they hear that their jails are being filled by people who are here illegally and that the costs attributable to that particular phenomenon are enormous. They know something is wrong. They know that when they hear reports about people coming across the border by the hundreds, by the thousands without our permission, we do not know who they are, we do not know why they are coming, surely most of them are coming for relatively benign reasons, to get a better job, seek a better life, that is the reason that compels most people to come to this country, the same reason my grandparents came and perhaps yours, but among them are people who are coming to do very bad things to the United States and we allow this to happen, and they ask me, Why? They ask me all the time. I get all kinds of e-mails and letters and calls into my office and they say, Why, Congressman? Why is this happening? Why is it my Government has so little respect for my citizenship and for the fact I try my best to do things the right way? This is another letter I received from a lady by the name of Linda Hendricks. She lives in my district. She says, Page 2 of this fax I am sending you is a copy of a Medicaid eligibility form. I want to draw your attention to question number 8. I turn to question number 8 on this form. Is anyone in your household a legal alien, yes or no? Is anyone in your household undocumented? Of course, what that means is are they here illegally, yes or no. Next question: If yes to either, we will need the following information: If you are undocumented, no paperwork is necessary, and we will not report you to the INS. If you are documented in any way, please provide copies only of the front and back of your card and other INS papers. Now, this is a form distributed by the Federal Government for a service that is supposed to be for American citizens: Medicaid. This is supposed to be the program that we have constructed to provide medical services to people who are financially unable to provide it for themselves. She goes on to say, ``Hello, something is really wrong here. Illegals are not being reported and yet receive free medical benefits. There have been many stories in the Denver Post lately about people with serious medical needs that are losing their benefits due to cutbacks. These people are U.S. citizens. As a citizen myself, I believe citizens should have the benefit of medical care before those who do not belong here. I have a revolutionary idea,'' she says, ``quit giving free medical service to people who are here illegally and keep it for U.S. citizens and those who are here legally. ``I recently heard about a man here to work from South Africa who paid $3,000 for his green card, and yet when he got here, he found out that Mexicans are paying $100 for a fake green card. And with those fake green cards come all the benefits. ``No wonder our country no longer has any sovereignty, we are willingly giving it away.'' Madam Speaker, I just cannot fathom, I cannot imagine how these things are not taking a toll on the way people look at their Government. Believe me, these are not unique in any way, these two letters. These are representative of the thousands of letters that I receive almost weekly, and calls and e-mails and that sort of thing. It is happening everywhere. Looking at this makes me think there is a form that you can go to the Web site and find out from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it is called a temporary visitor visa, and you can go onto the Web site and pull it up and fill it out yourself if you want to come into the United States. One question on that visa is are you a terrorist? Do you belong to any terrorist organizations? Have you committed any terrorist acts, yes or no. I do not know who answers yes, but evidently some people do because the next thing underneath it is a little asterisk, and it says do not worry, if you answer yes to this question, it does not mean that you will be denied entrance into the United States. How can that be true? Well, it happened because a Member of the other body, Mr. Kennedy, decided that because he had acquaintances that were members of the IRA, Irish Republican Army, and they might be on our terrorist list and they might want to come into the United States, that just being a member of a terrorist organization should not prevent you from coming to the United States, and so that is why we added that. Well, as they say, people know this, people see this, people understand this, and people are frustrated by it. They are frustrated by the fact that their own Government will look the other way when people come into this country illegally, obtain this matricula consular, open up a bank account, let us say, and when the Treasury Department of the Federal Government promulgates rules saying that banks should be allowed to accept the matricula consular for the purpose of identification, and people look at this and think this is odd, that when you look at the fact that these rules were promulgated under the PATRIOT Act and designed to be rules to tighten up on banking regulations, so that identity theft and money-laundering activities would be minimized. When you realize that was the reason that those regulations were promulgated, they are asking how can it be that you are saying that you can do this? You can use this card given to you by a foreign government for the purpose of opening a bank account? People look at that and think what is going on with my Government. They may know, I am not sure if many people know this, but they may even have heard that in the Committee on the Judiciary, the Subcommittee on Immigration in testimony there not too long ago, the Justice Department, the FBI, testified that using the matricula consular was absolutely a bad idea, and that people would, in fact, take advantage of it, that we cannot begin to guarantee the validity of the document. The FBI, Homeland Security, testified that we should not accept the matricula consular, that no agency of the Federal Government should accept it, and you have got the Department of the Treasury promulgating rules telling banks it is okay to accept it. People can get confused by that. I believe it is simply a matter of pure politics, and the mother's milk of politics, of course, campaign contributions from large corporation through their executive officers who package up their contributions, and through banks and other big contributors to both parties, we find it difficult to do the things necessary to protect our own country. We also, of course, fear the political ramifications of doing something to stop illegal immigration or even minimize illegal immigration. We find that this is a politically embarrassing thing. Even to bring this up on the floor of the House makes people uncomfortable. They would prefer if we did not address this issue because of the political implications. When we recognize on one side of the aisle here, the Democratic party sees massive immigration, both illegal and legal, as a source of political support, future voters; on our side of the aisle, we see the same thing as a source of cheap labor; the administration sees the same thing as a potential source of voters for them, a wedge issue that they can use in the next campaign, and Members can see why it is difficult to actually get anything done. That is what we have to tell people when constituents call and ask how can it be that this country has essentially decided to abandon its borders, surrender its sovereignty and attack the concept of citizenship because that is truly what is happening to us. All of the things that I have mentioned here, all of these things that are happening in States and cities and here at the Federal level, cities that are declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities, cities which pass regulations telling the police department not to provide information to the Bureau of Immigration Control and Enforcement or to accept information from them, cities that say they will accept the matricula consular for the provision of services, States that declare that they will give illegal aliens driver's licenses, States that declare that they will provide higher education benefits to people who are here illegally, all of these things combined are an attack on the concept of citizenship because if we have all of these benefits and are here illegally, and if you get a driver's license, you have the keys to the kingdom including the ability to vote under Motor Voter. So you have all of the benefits, including the ability to vote, but you are not a legal resident. What distinguishes you as an illegal resident of the country? What is it, absolutely nothing. Today Members of this body were confronted by people that came here on a Freedom Ride. I understand buses and this trek started in States all over the Nation. People gathered all over and descended upon the Nation's capital to declare their concern for the plight of illegal immigrants in this country, and they wanted to associate themselves with the freedom marches of the 1960s, the precivil rights days of the United States. They wanted to associate themselves with the plight of the African American who had suffered, who certainly his heritage was a heritage of slavery and who suffered degradations that certainly could never be countenanced; and so they called themselves the Freedom Ride. Remember, we are talking about slavery, an institution that brought people here against their will, and even after they were freed institutionally by law kept them from being able to achieve certain things and do certain things that citizens of this country were allowed to do, voting, for instance, and going to a restaurant and being served in the same place with a white person and going to the same school as a white person. All these things were being denied to these people who were here legally, whose parents had been here and whose family had been here for generations. This was a travesty. This is a blight on America. This is a dark part of our history. Yet the people who came here today suggest that they have a common problem. Today we have been visited, many offices in this body, in the House of Representatives, many Members have been visited by people who were here on what they call a Freedom Ride. They were here to put forward their concerns with regard to what they call the plight of those people who are here as immigrants, but what they really mean is here as illegal immigrants. Because if you are here as an immigrant, a legal immigrant into this country, you have all the protections available to you that any other citizen has. But if you are here illegally, you are oftentimes ill-treated and you are oftentimes taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers. Undeniably true. So their solution to this problem was to give everybody who is here legal status, to simply give amnesty to all those people who have come here, make them legal residents of the country and then, of course, they have all the protection. Yes, that is one way to handle it. But I suggest to you that it is the worst way to handle it. And I suggest that the idea, the public policy of giving anyone who has broken the law here a benefit for doing so is bad public policy, that no one should be rewarded for violating the law, and that no matter how compelling your story is about how long you have been here taking advantage of this country and this country's benefits, how long you have worked, that those are not reasons to simply ignore the law. If we do not like this law, then it is up to us in this body to change it, to repeal it. If we do not believe in borders, then erase them. If we do not believe that people should come into this country with our permission, then stop trying to give it. But as long as that is the law, then we cannot simply ignore the fact that it is the law and give amnesty to everybody who ignores the law. What sense does that make? The people of this country are asking the question. What sense does that make? And they are asking us, why is it that my family had to go through years of applications, sometimes thousands and thousands of dollars in expenses to make the trek to this country legally, to wait in a long line, to do everything that is expected of us to come into this country as legal citizens, while at the same time you are considering telling everybody who came here illegally that they have all of the same benefits and all will be forgiven? What message does that send to the millions of people who are waiting to come into this country legally? It tells them all they are suckers. That is what it says. And that they should, in fact, simply jump to the head of the line, come across the border, sneak into this country, get a visa, come in, overstay your visa, which actually accounts for about 45 or 50 percent of all those people living here illegally. They did not just come across the border from Mexico or from Canada. They actually flew into this country or came here somehow legally on a visa, then simply stayed. All of those people, it says, did the right thing. They were the smart people. They avoided all the hassle, all the expense and all the respect for the law that we expect from the people who do come here legally. What sense does this make, they ask, Americans ask? Can you answer this? Can anyone answer this? I cannot. It makes no sense. Yet there are Members here who are going to produce a bill, who have introduced a bill already, that is, quote, getting legs, as it says around here, the saying goes, it is getting steam up, to give at least 500,000 agricultural workers amnesty under the guise of creating a guest worker program. What they do create is essentially an indentured servitude status for 4 or 5 years before they give them amnesty. This is great. This is wonderful, according to the sponsors of the bill. And Americans ask, why? What can you be thinking of? How can you possibly be talking about giving amnesty to anybody who has come in? How can you talk about giving jobs to people who are essentially taking jobs from American workers? Madam Speaker, all we hear of is, well, these are people who are doing jobs Americans won't take. That is, of course, only part of the statement. It is doing jobs Americans will not take for the price we are willing to pay. That is true in many circumstances. But we are also, of course, exporting jobs and bringing in foreign workers under visa categories, H1B and L1. People ask me why? How come it is that when American high-tech workers are out of work by the millions, which they are, how come we are still bringing in hundreds of thousands of people in the H1B category to take those jobs? How come we are allowing other people, other companies, to bring them in under the L1 category visa and replace American workers with less expensive foreign workers? How come, they say? How come when these people come here many of them are actually trained by the person they are replacing? And in order to get severance pay the person they are replacing is told, you must train this person in your job or else we won't give you severance pay. How come, they ask, is this happening? Madam Speaker, I cannot explain it. I do not know. I have a guess. My guess is that the high-tech industry contributes an awful lot of money to both parties and to the President and, therefore, we choose a cheap labor policy. That is my guess. Maybe I am wrong, and somebody could certainly dispute it. I am hoping someone will. But in order to dispute my claim, we have to at least have a debate on this issue. But we will not have a debate, because debating this issue makes people uncomfortable. We are dividing this country up, Madam Speaker, into a lot of camps, victimized groups, groups that continue to hyphenate their own definition, groups that see themselves not as Americans, just as Americans but some subgroups, some alienated groups, some group with a cause, some group with a complaint. As I say, some group that feels victimized. We are encouraging that, that whole concept of balkanization of America. We are encouraging that because we operate under what we call a cult of multiculturalism. It is a philosophy that permeates American society, permeates our schools, and it tells people that there is no reason for them to actually become part of the American mainstream, that there is nothing really good or worth emulating in American society or western civilization, for that matter. And our schools drop all references to western civilization, except in the most negative way. They drop classes in it. We tell people that come here from other countries that they should not become part of the American mainstream, that they should keep their own language, that they should keep their own political affiliations with their country of origin and not integrate into the society. We do all kinds of things that separate us, instead of helping to join us together as Americans. In this body, we allow groups to organize on the basis of race. Amazing as that might sound to Americans, we allow caucuses to develop, to actually be created here on the basis of race. Just yesterday when I said that this was a bad idea and that I am going to introduce a rule in the next session, if I am here, that prohibits any caucus from being established here on the basis of race, I was vilified by many of my colleagues for being both a racist and insensitive and a lot of other things, because we have the Black Caucus and the Hispanic Caucus and the Asian Pacific Caucus. It is amazing to me that we can have a huge debate in this country over a very famous talk show host, Mr. Limbaugh, who makes an intemperate remark relating to the race of a football player and is chastised roundly and resigns his job, resigns from his position. In all of the media, everything I heard today is there is absolutely no place for this kind of thing, no reason we should ever be using or talking about race when we talk about these football players. There is nothing that connects these two, and we should not ever discuss it. I certainly agree. I see absolutely no connection myself. It was probably a very stupid thing to do and to say. But at the same day that that story breaks, I am roundly criticized for saying that we should not have a caucus in this House based on race and that all of the rhetoric that emanates out of this body about a colorblind society and all of the admonitions and all of the laws that we pass to ensure a colorblind society are essentially ignored because we allow for people to organize here on the basis of race. Nobody says a thing. I assure you they would say something if somebody tried to organize a, quote, White Caucus or Caucasian Caucus, and I would certainly be one of those people saying, absolutely not. But what is the difference? What is the difference? These are uncomfortable things, I understand that. People get very, very uptight and sort of anxious when you bring them up. But the point I tried to make here is that this is just another example of us dividing ourselves up. And when massive immigration combines with this philosophy of the sort of cult of multiculturalism that permeates our society, it can only be bad for America. There is nothing positive I can think of about this. We can extol the virtues of diversity. I am a full-blooded Italian American. I love my heritage that is that part of me that one would say is Italian, but if someone were to ask me what is my heritage? What is my heritage? What is my country? I would immediately answer, and I would have answered this when I was a little child, it is the United States of America. That is what I thought of as my country, my history, and my heritage. I have never connected politically nor have my parents ever considered allowing me to connect politically and culturally and philosophically with a country other than the United States. It was an alien notion, or idea, and yet we are doing this to ourselves.

Mr. TANCREDO. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. I absolutely respect every single person. I understand entirely why these people come. I would be doing exactly the same thing. My grandparents did exactly the same thing. It is not the individual that I complain about, it is our own government's policy, and I ask us to look seriously at changing it for all Americans.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about an issue that often compels me to come to this floor and express to my colleagues my concerns about, I think, one of the most pressing public policy issues that we face as this Nation, and certainly as the Congress of the United States, and that is the issue of massive immigration, legal and illegal, into the country and what that means for us as a Nation. And I say that, Mr. Speaker, because I believe with all my heart that there are massive, to use the word again, massive, implications of massive immigration, both legal and illegal. And some may be very good, some may have value, and some may be very, very bad. And it behooves us, it seems to me, as the body that is charged with the responsibility for being, perhaps, the foremost marketplace of ideas in the country, it behooves us to at least talk about these issues. And I suggest that we talk about it because I know, Mr. Speaker, that America is talking about it, America around the water cooler, America around the unemployment line, America across neighborhood fences, America is talking about this, and America is worried about this issue. They are worried about many things, and they are accepting of many things. They, I think for the most part, look at immigration as certainly I do, as being something that has been beneficial to the Nation, that has provided for us a diverse population and culture that certainly is the envy of the world in many respects and has been immensely rewarding to us as a Nation. It is a rich environment in which we all can exist and prosper. And so it is difficult, then, if you feel that way in your heart, which I, of course, do, that it is difficult to then lead us into the discussion of another aspect of it and that is a far more disconcerting aspect of immigration, massive immigration, I should say, not just immigration, but massive immigration on a scale we have never, ever experienced before at a time, I hasten to add, at a time when we also are going through a peculiar cultural phenomenon in the United States. I refer to this phenomenon as the culture of multiculturalism which has overtaken us. It is a philosophy peculiar in many, many ways, I think, and peculiar, I think, to many Americans, but it has nonetheless taken hold among the elite in the country, the academics, the media, certain groups within the United States political establishment, that see America, and in a broader sense Western civilization, as something that they have to be ashamed of. The values of Western civilization, many people who I would call cultists in the pursuit of this multiculturalism agenda, they see Western civilization as nothing of value and, as a matter of fact, for the most part something to be discounted. And they will actually talk about it in the most negative terms, and continually suggest to our children in school and to the public that pays the slightest bit of attention anymore to the national media, especially the media represented by or as exemplified, I should say, by commercial television, to those who still pay attention to those particular forums, these people look at this and think to themselves, maybe there is not anything really of value. And children will, unfortunately, grow up learning only the most negative things about the United States and about Western civilization and begin to lose any real connection to the goals and aspirations and ideals of America that were exemplified in the Constitution of the United States, that were articulated by the people who founded this country and for 200 years, the ideals to which and around which we all rallied. And I fear, in a way, that we are losing this kind of connection. I know this is somewhat esoteric, I know that this is not the typical kind of discussion that is held here on the floor of the House, but I ask that we do, in fact, engage in this discussion because I believe it is both meaningful and important to us as a Nation to discuss and to debate. The simple question is who are we? Who are we? Samuel Huntington, who is a well-respected historian and social scientist, has written several books, the most recent, at least that I read, was The Clash of Civilizations. And he is coming out with another one, I am told, relatively soon. And I am looking forward to it. It is called Who Are We? And it takes a very in-depth look at this particular issue and this question. He suggests that we are being sort of Balkanized in the United States, and in much of Western civilization for that matter. We are Balkanized into subgroups, subcategories, hyphenated categories as something American. And that this pressure to disconnect from a set of American ideals and ideas or those that we could call Judeo-Christian in nature, the precepts of Western civilization, that the disconnect from this is dangerous and that we should not be doing it. And I certainly agree that there, again, are implications to this kind of phenomenon that are worthy of our discussion. Beyond that, then, we have to think about what massive immigration means in this light and in this context, especially when it has changed so dramatically. Immigration and immigration policies have changed so dramatically over the last, let us say, 50 or 60 years but certainly in the last couple of decades. In the past, certainly when my grandparents, and perhaps yours, came to this country, they were encouraged in many ways. Certainly, there were all kinds of discrimination that my grandparents faced, I am sure every wave of new immigrants confronted a new set, or maybe an old set, of discriminatory tactics. But even in the face of those obstacles, they were able to overcome them, they were able to succeed, they were able to move on. And they did so for a variety of reasons. Certainly, there was some internal desire to do so. I remember, distinctly, my own grandparents talking about the fact that we should never ever think of ourselves as anything about Americans. We should never really connect to the old past. My grandparents all came from Italy. And although they were certainly proud of their heritage, they wanted to disconnect from the past and reconnect, or connect, I should say, to a new culture. And they wanted to be Americans in every sense of the word. So much so that, as I grew up, I never, ever, thought of myself as anything but an American. Mr. Speaker, if someone were to have said to me, what is your home country, I would have said, well, the United States. What is your home State? I would have said, Colorado, and thought, how silly to ask such a question. But that is how I grew up. That is what I thought of as my heritage. And my grandparents were forced to do other things. They were forced, whether they wanted to or not, of course, to work because there were no options. They would either work or they would starve. There was no welfare. There was no social service net to save them if they were to fail. They had to rely upon their own labor because they had few other skills but the labor they brought with them, the brawn, if you will. They had to rely upon family and friends, and they had to do something else that was incredibly important when you think back on it. It was important for many reasons, but some did not become, some of those reasons were not clear, as they are today, when you think back, and that is that they had to learn English. They were sort of forced into it. I do not know how willingly my grandfather learned the English language, how devoted he was to the study of it, but I do know this, that it consumed him in terms of the time he would try. Certainly my grandmother would tell him, you have to try harder and you have to speak English. Actually she would always say, speak American, and in that process what was happening is they were becoming part of a greater society, a greater culture, bigger culture, and they were integrated into that culture, again, overcoming the obstacles that they faced with discrimination, which they certainly did, and, as I say, every newly arriving group in this country faces, but they were forced to learn English. They were forced to work. They were forced to actually integrate into the American mainstream. Today, because of this cult of multiculturalism that permeates our society, we set up obstacles. We not only set up obstacles to people coming into this country and feeling at home. I mean, there are certainly a lot of discriminatory tactics employed, and I am not suggesting for a moment that discrimination has been eliminated from the culture. It has not, but we have done something else in a very peculiar way, maybe in a response to what we consider this, the discrimination, as we have set up this other sort of agenda or culture, if you will, or phenomenon. I guess that is the best way to describe it because what we tell people today is they should not, in fact, reconnect, or they should not connect with America and with our culture and with American and Western civilization; that they should remain separate and distinct, in separate enclaves and retain their own language and retain their political affiliation and cultural affiliation with the country of their origin. And we tell them not to come into American mainstream, that there is nothing of value, and, therefore, they should essentially stay separate, all in this quest to make people feel at home or certainly make people feel that Western civilization offers them nothing of any consequence, and therefore, this separate and distinct set of societies that we are developing in the U.S. has greater value. Not too long ago, in fact just a couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the Los Angeles Times that I remember reading here on the floor, at least excerpting parts of, and it talked about an event in Los Angeles. I believe it was not Cinco de Mayo because it was just a few weeks ago. It may have been the celebration of Mexican Independence Day, and it talked about the fact that there were thousands and thousands of people on the streets of Los Angeles, all with Mexican flags, and all, as they said, experiencing the joy of their homeland in talking about and cheering the flags that went by of their States. And I remember thinking to myself, their homeland? Their homeland. What is their homeland? Is it not the United States of America? What is their State? Is it not California? We all have pride, as I say, in our heritage, but there was something peculiar about this article, I thought, because it does, once again, sort of focus in on what I am trying to describe here as a problem, at least I believe is a problem in this country, and that is our desire to ignore everything that would pull us together as a Nation and to, in fact, accentuate all the things that split us apart. As I say, from my point of view, Mr. Speaker, it is disconcerting to say the least, and I worry about what this means for America, and I wonder. And although I certainly will be the first to tell you I do not have all the answers, I know, and I can certainly ask a lot of questions, but I am well aware of the fact that this is a cultural phenomenon that deserves a great deal of attention. A lot of very important scholars should study it and think about it, but is it not something that we should think about even superficially a little bit? Should we not give some thought to what this means to our Nation? Should we not then, therefore, think about what kind of immigration policy we should establish in this country? Even if you sweep all of this aside and say it is all too highbrow, it is all too, again, esoteric, who wants to think about all that stuff; it does not matter, and it is just grist for social study textbooks. Okay. Forget about it. Let us talk about other more mundane but certainly dramatic aspects of massive immigration into this country, both legal and illegal. Let us talk about money. Let us talk about costs. Let us talk about the fact that today in the United States we expend far more money as taxpayers in the infrastructural support necessary for those people who have come here both legally and illegally than we ever obtain from those same folks in terms of the taxes, quote, they pay. And I say ``quote'' because many, of course, pay no taxes whatsoever because of our peculiar system, the system we have developed over a series of years. It is a big difference, I explained, to what my grandparents faced. You come to the United States and really do not have to work. Not only that, but you work and earn a little amount of money, we will pay you in the form of something called the earned income tax credit, and many, many immigrants, both legal and illegal, thousands in fact, hundreds of thousands by the latest count, actually file income tax forms for one purpose, to obtain the earned income tax credit. It is not to pay taxes, because they do not pay taxes for the most part. They do not make enough money, but they will claim a certain number of people. Even when they work here illegally, they still file income tax forms. We found them in what are called pick-up sites. These are places throughout the desert in the Southeast where illegal immigrants gather. As they come across on foot, they gather at certain areas to be picked up by some sort of vehicle, trucks or cars, and taken into the interior, and these sites sometimes are places where literally thousands of people will have gathered over a period of time, and they are strewn with trash; unfortunately, I mean, it is an indelicate thing to talk about, but tons of human waste and very, very unpleasant from many respects. But we were going through one of these sites, and I happened to look down, and I saw all these IRS forms laying on the ground, and I picked them up. We still have them in my office, and I will never forget. I mean, one guy had filed his income tax, used a fake Social Security number, but had received, we found out later because we checked this out, and he filed an income tax claim that he had made $7,800, something like that, in the course of the year. He listed four or five dependents, all of whom lived in Mexico, but were given taxpayer identification numbers by the IRS. All you have to do is request a number for a dependent, whether they exist or not, who knows, because they are in a different country, but he filed this claiming four or five dependents in another country, using their ITIN numbers and said that he paid something like $94 in taxes on those $7,000 that he earned, but he claimed $3,800 in earned income tax credit. We do this for people. This is part of who we are, but it changes the whole idea, the whole philosophy, the whole phenomenon of immigration into this country, changes it dramatically from what it used to be because we provide this. So, as I say, forget about all of the cultural implications, whether you think they exist or not, as I have described them. Think about the actual costs to the United States, to the taxpayer of the United States. We are encouraged to keep open borders and allow illegal immigration into this country because we know, on our side of the aisle anyway, and many people on the other side of the aisle, by the way, believe in the concept of cheap labor, that businesses should be able to hire the cheapest labor possible, and if you get that across the border illegally, so be it. The other side of the aisle is much more interested in the votes that may accrue to them by the increase in the number of people who are here in this country as immigrants, either legal or illegal, but together this causes a very big problem because it is hard to actually then do something about it. It is hard to stop it. It is hard to actually address it or reform it when you have got these two pressures and pressure groups, the political pressure group on that side of the aisle, the cheap labor group on our side. And I say all the time cheap labor is only cheap to the employer. It is not cheap to the American public. It costs us greatly. It costs us an enormous amount of money to provide the infrastructure for those people who are here working for very little and for very low wages. Not only do we find that there are tax implications for us in terms of just the money that we will pay somebody for being here and having a low income, but, of course, there are the costs for schools. There are the costs for highways. There are the costs for hospitals and health care in a broader sense. All of these things, of course, are charged to the American taxpayer. So I would suggest that if for no other reason we have a legitimate cause here, a legitimate concern based around the fiscal issues presented by massive immigration. And our opponents will say, well, these people come, they work, they provide value. Again, they do work, they provide value, mostly for employers who oftentimes exploit them, who oftentimes use that labor, pay them less than even minimum wage, refuse to give them benefits, and, in many ways, make their lives something close to those of indentured servants. So it seems to me, as I say, that we have a legitimate interest, a legitimate concern, but sweep that aside, forget it for a moment. Say, okay, there is no cultural issue I care about listening to, and there is no fiscal issue that concerns me. Think about national security. Does that matter to anyone in this body? Should it matter to anyone in this body? Should it matter that our borders are porous? Does it matter that we have absolutely no control over who comes into this country? We do not know who they are. We do not know for how long they are here. We do not know for what purpose. To the credit of people like Asa Hutchinson, whom I admire, he is trying his best, I think, to gain some degree of control over the immigration process, and we are working to devise better mechanisms to actually identify people who are coming across the border at our ports of entry. We are giving them cards, and unfortunately there is no hardware, there is no machinery there to actually scan these cards and to get the information. But a lot of people have cards now that carry some information we call biometric identifiers, and that is good, and I am happy. But, of course, those ports of entry are tiny, tiny pebbles that we have placed in the huge river of immigration. At those ports of entry we may have a better sense of who is coming across, and we may be doing a better job, but every place between those ports of entry, Mr. Speaker, unfortunately it is still ``olly olly oxen free.'' I flew over the port of entry in Nogales not too long ago, and it was a great metaphor for what I am saying. We looked down. Here was the port of entry with a line of cars maybe a mile deep into Mexico waiting to come into the United States, everybody being checked, but, of course, Nogales is in a desert area, very flat area, and we were flying in a helicopter, and so we looked at that, and it was ironic to say the least that not more than a mile on either side of that port of entry where everybody was being stopped, you could watch people walking across, sometimes simply driving off of a road in Mexico and into the United States through our national park down there, Organ Pipe Cactus National Park. It looks like a racetrack. It is not a national park any more; it is a combination of a dump and a racetrack, where everywhere you look tracks have come through. People have simply driven over into the deserts, driven into the United States. You can fly over and see all these tracks looking like spiderwebs every place. They have ruined the environment. They have destroyed much of the environment to the point that I cannot believe the Sierra Club does not go down there and really go ballistic. But of course they will not, because this is a politically incorrect thing for them to do, to complain about the degradation of the environment being done by illegal immigration. And so we watched as people came into the country, of course completely undetected, except for the fact we happened to be flying over and watching it. But certainly we do not know who they are and, for the most part, of course, they are coming for the benign reason of a job. Absolutely true. But how do I know all of them come for that purpose? And I guaranty you all of them do not come for that purpose, because of course we could also see the remnants of the drug trafficking, which is enormous. We picked up sacks all over the landscape where people had carried them in because they were coming in illegally and they were being used as what they call mules to bring the stuff in on their backs. And by the way, this is observable certainly on the southern border, but it is absolutely as rampant on the northern border, especially the drug traffic. So it is not just a southern border problem. It is a huge problem for America. We do not know who is coming. We know that there are cartels in South and Central America that have now specialized in the importation of people, not drugs any more. They have changed their marketing tactics, their sales or whatever, because they are now importing people because it is more lucrative. It is $1,500 to $2,000 for a poor Mexican peasant to come into the United States paying a coyote; it is up to $55,000 for someone coming from the Middle East or Asia. It is a very lucrative endeavor. And what do they have invested in it? Hardly anything. It is not like they need to pay the grower to take care of the plants and all that kind of investment there is in drugs. You do not have that in people. And if they lose a load, there is plenty more where they came from, so it is no big deal. So now there is a cartel in what is called the tri-border area. This is in southwestern Brazil, the corner of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina. The tri-border area is a very lawless area, and it is the site of an enormous amount of smuggling activities and that sort of thing, but it is also the site of this Mexican mafia cartel that no longer deals in drugs specifically, it deals now primarily in people, and it wants to concentrate on Middle Easterners coming in because they pay the most, $55,000. So Middle Easterners will come into South and Central America, coming into what is called the tri-border region, be acclimated there in Brazil for a little bit, and then they are moved into Mexico and then into the United States. Some of them may be for jobs. Maybe they are all coming to do jobs Americans just will not do. I hear that all the time, of course. That is the only reason why we have illegal immigration; it is because we have so many jobs Americans will not do. So therefore we have to bring in Saudis and Pakistanis and Iranians and Chinese? Well, no, Mr. Speaker, there are other reasons people are coming here, and some of them are nefarious. Some of the reasons are very, very scary. But our borders are porous, and they can come across at their will. And we are shirking the most basic responsibility we have in this body. It may be bizarre to say such a thing here, but our primary responsibility in this House is not to educate America's children, it is not to provide welfare benefits to America's disenfranchised and poor, it is not to provide highways, and it is not to provide recreational services. Those things are not any of the identified responsibilities of this body in the Constitution of this country, which is supposed to be our guiding light. Every Member takes an oath. We stand here at the beginning of the session, and we do not take an oath to the President. And we do not take an oath to our party. We take an oath to the Constitution. And when you look at the Constitution, what does it say about educating children or any of the other things? At least you are going to have to sort of interpret. But what does it say about our responsibility to defend America? What is the Federal Government's role here? Clear, unambiguous, it is our primary role. It is the one thing we are supposed to do: defend the Nation. And, therefore, I say to you, Mr. Speaker, we shirk our primary responsibility here when we refuse to defend our own borders because of the politics of cheap labor. And that is the reason we do not defend our borders. That is it. As ugly and as uncomfortable as that is to deal with, here, 2 years after the most devastating attack on our shores we have ever experienced, we still do not defend our own borders and enforce them because of that fear, the fear that we would stop cheap labor. It is politics. It is unacceptable. It is disgusting, in many ways. So, yes, I am here tonight, as I am on the floor many nights, and I am speaking on this, which I have spoken on hundreds of occasions. And I will continue to do so because I believe with all my heart that this issue warrants our attention, our concern, and at least, Mr. Speaker, a debate.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, soft-spoken, demure, barely five feet tall, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu changed the world with her selfless heart for the suffering. Known to all as Mother Teresa, this Roman Catholic nun of Albanian descent lived out her calling in the slums of Calcutta, India, offering decency and self-respect to the inhabitants of the streets and gutters. The depth of her compassion for the unwanted and uncared for left an indelible impression on this world. Her impact was most directly felt in Calcutta, where she established and directed her order, Missionaries of Charity. But the effect of her mercy reached far and wide, through a network of homes around the world for the poorest of the poor. Wielding the weapon of love, Mother Teresa combated hunger, disease, and death with a quiet spirituality that defied discouragement. She brought attention to the despair of those trampled underneath the weight of wealth and affluence, while underscoring their hope for dignity. The simplicity of her message, that there is nothing acceptable or noble about poverty, resonated well with the natives of her adopted country. At the height of the siege in Beirut in the early 1980s, Mother Teresa persuaded the Palestinian guerillas and the Israeli army to stop fighting long enough for her to rescue 37 children with mental retardation from a hospital on the front lines. She was then 72 years old. She pioneered one of the first homes for AIDS victims, established a leper colony called Shanti Nagar (Town of Peace), and created a home for the dying poor--the Nirmal Hriday, or ``Pure Heart,'' Home for Dying Destitutes, where homeless people who could not receive care from other institutions were washed and fed by the sisters, and allowed to die with dignity. Mother Teresa described her mission as caring for ``not just the poor, but the poorest of the poor: those who are so dirty and full of germs that no one goes near them; those who do not go to pray because they are naked; those who do not eat because they do not have the strength, those who collapse on the sidewalks knowing they are about to die while the living walk by without even looking back; those who do not cry because they have no more tears left.'' Upon her death, we were left with, in the words of French President Jacques Chirac, ``less love, less compassion, less light in the world.''

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order at any time on September 25, 2003, without intervention of any point of order, to consider in the House the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 69) making continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2004, and for other purposes; that the joint resolution be considered as read for amendment; that the joint resolution be debatable for 1 hour equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations; and that the previous question be considered as ordered on the joint resolution to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 506. I inadvertently voted ``yea.'' I would like the Record to reflect I meant to vote ``nay.''

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, earlier this evening while we were voting on the House floor on a number of issues and as conversations develop among colleagues here, I had an interesting conversation that I would like to recount. A colleague of mine as we were walking across the street from our office building over here, the Longworth Office Building, said to me, you know, I know that you have had a lot of involvement with immigration-related issues and therefore I just wanted to talk to you a minute or two about some of the concerns I have. This particular individual happens to be a chairman of a committee that has oversight in a particularly important area of concern for us all and has some responsibilities that I would say overlap into the immigration area. He asked me what I thought we needed to do because he recognized the particular problem we were in, the peculiar problem we were in, I guess, in that we have a huge number of Americans who are concerned about this issue, about immigration, immigration reform, and we have a great deal of pressure developing, political pressure, I guess we could say, to do something about our porous borders and do something about the problems that exist as a result of the fact that today unfortunately even 2 years after 9/11, the event that transformed America in many ways and changed the world in many ways, we have still not been able to come to grips with one aspect of this problem and the fact is that we all know this, people in this body know this, and yet we seem paralyzed to do anything about it. I said, well, okay, I have some ideas about this. Of course we went on to talk in-depth about what we thought should be done. Underline the word ``should'' be done. There was general agreement between the two of us, I guess, that much stronger action needed to be taken, that our borders are porous and that something had to be done in order to control the number of people coming across our borders, north and south, into the United States without our permission, for reasons sometimes benign, sometimes not so benign. We talked about the things that should be in place. Once again I emphasize the word ``should'' be in place. Some of the protections that any country would take, some of the undertakings that we as Americans should simply say we should look at as being the most basic kinds of precautions, that any government would undertake in order to protect their own citizens. We talked about the need for internal security. We talked about the need for Americans to devote more resources to trying to identify those people who are in this country, illegally for the most part, and who are here for purposes of doing us great harm. And we went through the number of problems that we have because, of course, there are many interests that are involved here, many political interests that develop that complicate the issue of simply securing our own borders. It became apparent after a short time, after we talked about the amount of drugs that are being brought into this country, illegal drugs that are being brought into the country as a result of the fact that cartels, especially in Mexico, have realized that their ability to transport illegal drugs into this country is great and the profits are enormous and that the harm that is being done as a result of that kind of activity is well documented. And we talked about the fact that there are national security problems involved with porous borders and that terrorists, potential terrorists, are able to come into the United States, able to work within the United States because, of course, there are so many millions of people who are living here illegally, that they can blend into the society, they blend into that community, it makes it incredibly difficult for us, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, to identify, to monitor and to interdict these people. And then we talked about, of course, just the abuse of our own laws, the fact that we recognize that our immigration policies are being constructed by States and by localities, by cities and counties throughout the United States that are developing policies and laws that actually aid and abet the criminal activity we call illegal immigration. And all of this devolved into one common theme. Our borders are porous and we need to do something about that. As amazing as that sounds, it is still a difficult concept for many people in this body and in the administration, apparently, to get. But our borders are porous and there are consequences as a result of this situation. I tell you about this and I relate this conversation because of the way it ended. There was, as I say, agreement between the two of us as to what the problem actually is. There was also an agreement between the two of us as to why we cannot solve that problem and that is what is amazing to me and I guess why I want to start off my discussion this evening with telling you about this conversation, because at one point this gentleman said to me, you know, we do not have the political will to secure our own borders. That is, of course, something I have said many times on this floor. It is something I have said in speeches I have given all over this Nation. But hearing this from another Member, a Member who is, I might say, not identified as being part of our Immigration Reform Caucus or someone who is very high profile but nonetheless a very respected Member of this body. As I say, a committee chairman. He said, and I want to say it again, we do not have the political will to secure the border. What a statement. And in an absolutely truthful statement, a statement we all know in our heart of hearts is accurate but a statement that we do not want exploited, a statement that we do not want to be made public. But it is public knowledge, Mr. Speaker. We may think we are the only ones here that know this dirty little secret, but I assure you that Americans know and understand that there is this problem. Many millions of Americans understand that there is a problem but perhaps they do not know why and they ask me all of the time. I get I do not know how many letters and e-mails and calls to my office. Over and over again the question is, why can't we do something about this? Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year we talk about the problem. There are countless news reports about the fact that we cannot control our own borders, about the fact that people are coming across and that we choose to do little if anything about it. People say to me, why is this happening, Congressman? I can only tell them what my colleague said to me. We do not have the political will to secure our borders. I assure you, Mr. Speaker, we have the technical ability to do so. We have the resources. We have the technological attributes necessary, combined with human resources to secure our borders. We can do it. It is a fallacy, it is a canard to stand up in front of any group and say it is impossible, we must figure out a different way to defend America rather than defending our borders. When people say that, Mr. Speaker, what they are saying is this: I choose not to defend and secure our border, because there are political ramifications that I fear. This is what we should read into any statement given by any politician, whether they be Members of this body or the other body or running for any position, elected position in the State, in any State of the Nation, because this issue has reached that point where it is now a State and local issue, because we have States in the Nation that are trying to develop their own immigration policy, sometimes because they are attempting to fill the vacuum created by the lack of involvement by the Federal Government and sometimes because they are trying to pander to political constituencies that they believe will help them retain or obtain power, political power. Recently we have seen something happen that points this up in a way I guess I could never have thought of. The old issue about truth being stranger than fiction, it really works here, because what if I had come to this floor, say, 3 or 4 years ago and said, Mr. Speaker and Members, I can envision a time when States will actually be doing things like giving driver's licenses which in many respects, and many times referred to as the keys to the kingdom in America, a driver's license, what if I had said, I think there are going to be States in this Nation that actually are going to give illegal aliens driver's licenses? Of course there would have been derision, there would have been a response we all can identify with, those of us who are concerned about this issue, because we have faced that kind of reaction by the press and by even our colleagues in the past. They would have said, you are such a radical on this issue, you are so off base, you are anti- immigrant, you are racist, all of those epithets that they throw out every time we talk about immigration and immigration policy. Never could this happen that any State in the Nation would give illegal immigrants the keys to the kingdom. Yet, of course, that is exactly what is happening. Several States in this Nation have, and now the most recent, the State of California. A Governor so desperate to try to retain power that he signs a bill that he had twice vetoed and vetoed with a message that said something like this: It is crazy to give people who are here illegally a driver's license because we do not know anything about them. We cannot determine their background. We do not know who they are. We do not know anything about them, and when we give a driver's license like to somebody like that, they can use it for nefarious purposes. But he forgot all of those veto messages because he is in the process of being recalled by the people of the State of California. And he says, oh, this is a great idea. Why did I not think of it before? It is absolutely necessary for us to give illegal immigrants into this country the ``keys to the kingdom.'' There is only one reason he did that, of course, and that was to gain the votes he hopes he will obtain in order to be retained in office. This is amazing to all of us. I mean, most Americans look at this and understand it for exactly what it is: political pandering in its worst form, and yet it has happened. And I hope that we can look at this little visual example of the problem: A California driver's license for a gentleman named Osama bin Laden, 525 Main Street, Los Angeles, California; date of issuance: 9-11. This is a dramatic, perhaps some would say overly dramatic, statement we are trying to make here, but this is what it takes perhaps to bring some people to their senses. Can we keep this from happening? Illegal immigration poses a threat to the United States in many, many ways, certainly in a national security sense. In a recent article by Steve Brown and Chris Coon, they say, ``Governor Gray Davis has opened a significant breach in the Nation's homeland security by signing a bill allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses that bear the official seal and full governmental authority of the State of California.'' These driver's licenses allow people to open bank accounts, make certain purchases, and obtain jobs. ``Driver's licenses also serve as the sole ID needed to travel abroad to Mexico, Canada, and some Caribbean countries. They allow easy access to air travel and car rentals. It is a requirement for obtaining a firearm. Through the convenience of the Motor/Voter Act, obtaining a driver's license even grants the right to vote, a fundamental right for which generations of American blood has been shed and the one sacrosanct facet of citizenship. But increasingly, even in the post-9/11 atmosphere of heightened security, States are giving away the keys to our country to those who aren't even citizens and are, in fact, here illegally. ``A recent Federation for American Immigration Reform report highlights how States are undermining immigration enforcement and throwing the door open wide to terrorist infiltration. Along with Sanctuary policies mandating noncooperation between local and Federal enforcement, Federation for American Immigration Reform cites the issuance of driver's licenses to illegals as one of the key breakdowns in homeland security, a conclusion shared by both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. ``All 19 of the 9/11 terrorists possessed one or more of State driver's licenses, which they used to blend in, rent apartments, open bank accounts, and, ultimately, to board the airplanes they intended to crash,' the report notes. `The decision by 13 State legislatures and Governors to give driver's licenses to people in this country''' who are here `` `illegally, people about whom we know nothing, directly hinders Federal efforts to address the homeland security threat.' ``Gun Owners of America Communications Director Erich Pratt told'' this magazine ``that obtaining a driver's license would `absolutely' make it easier for illegal aliens to purchase firearms throughout the country. `The background check only bounces names against real bad guys . . . so yes, if they have what would seem to be proof that they are a legal resident,' '' the driver's license, `` `obviously, there would be nothing on the driver's license to indicate that''' they were here illegally. `` `Then this really greases the skids of being able to purchase firearms from gun stores,' Pratt explained.'' I am a Representative of the State of Colorado, specifically the 6th Congressional District. An incident occurred in my district that is often referred to as just the ``Columbine incident.'' Columbine High School is in my district, not more than a mile or so from my own home, and we all know the tragic consequences of those children who took guns into a school and killed 13 students and died at their own hands, the two perpetrators. And there was an outcry throughout this Nation, and there was a concern raised about the availability of guns to these two individuals who committed this heinous act. We had to work through that in this body, and we had to work through it as a Nation, and time and again I have heard people come to this floor to protest against the availability of firearms. Here we have a situation now in several States where we have made it enormously easy for someone who is here illegally to obtain a firearm. What does that mean? It means that we have nothing against which to bounce off this information, as the statement here I read a minute ago indicates. Someone presents a driver's license. They may have a criminal record in other countries. They may have obtained that driver's license illegally. They may have used a false identification to obtain the driver's license. They may have gone to the Mexican Consulate, let us say, and obtained a matricula consular. This is a document that is handed out by the Mexican Government to those Mexican nationals living in the United States illegally. In California, as a result of the bill that was signed by Governor Gray Davis, a person who has obtained one of these matricula consular, that is the name of the card, can then go and get a driver's license. So even if one is, in fact, a citizen of the United States but a felon who has a long, long history of transgressions, they can obtain this matricula consular in a different name and become a different person just like that. And then they take their card to the motor vehicle division in California, and they get their driver's license, and then they go buy a gun, and there is nothing, there is no record, of course, of who they are, who they really are, and therefore, they can obtain this weapon. Why have we not heard from the antigun lobby? Why have we not heard from all those people who raised such hell when we talk about the possession of firearms in America, and they even try to restrict the possession of firearms to law-abiding citizens? But they do not say a word about the fact that we have just opened the door to millions of people who are here illegally and to potentially millions of people who would do harm to the Nation and to others if they were able to obtain a firearm because they are now able to get a driver's license in one of several States, the most important of which, of course, is California. Not too long ago, last week, as a matter of fact, I held a press conference here, and I had with me several family members of people who were killed in the terrorist attacks on our country on 9/11. ``Families for a Secure America'' convened on Washington, D.C., to air their grievances over the continued lax immigration policies supported by lawmakers concerned only about their careers and lobbyists with specious ulterior motives. ``It is clear,'' they say, ``that the lawyers, lobbyists, ethnic power brokers, ideologues, business profiteers, and misguided do- gooders who don't care about the security of their fellow Americans will never stop working to keep America's borders open. Beyond any doubt, since the murder of . . . 3,000 innocent people on 9/11, these people have shown by their actions that they will never sacrifice their power, profits, and ideology for the safety of the American people as a whole.'' This was a quote by Tom Meehan at this press conference that we held. And he went on to say: ``And we 9/11 families have learned since the murder of our loved ones that this President and most Members of Congress will not do the right thing unless they are forced to do so by the 70 to 90 percent of Americans that polls show want drastic and immediate immigration reform.'' Lynn Faulkner, who lost his wife in the World Trade Center, pointed to politicians ``both liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat'' that continue to push for open borders and loose immigration standards. ``Though the specifics of the 9/11 attacks may have been unknown to the politicians listed above,'' and prior to this he listed the Members that he was concerned about, ``and Bill Clinton and President Bush, they had to know that additional attacks would follow and that the only way to keep terrorists . . . out of our country was to screen the people who seek to enter,'' Faulkner said. ``Therefore, we say without any reservation that the Members of Congress, the current President, and his two predecessors contributed to the murder of our family members and the thousands of other victims of September 11.'' In a callous attempt to save his political career from recall, Democrat, California Governor Gray Davis, recently signed legislation allowing approximately two million illegals to obtain driver's licenses, legislation he has twice vetoed, as I said earlier. With the stroke of his pen, while blatantly pandering to the Latino vote, Davis quashed his State's border with Mexico. Far from a single- handed act, he was aided and abetted by the Democrat-dominated California legislature, particularly by bill author, Senator Gil Cedillo. Cedillo has been pushing this legislation for years under the thin premise that new licenses will have increased incentive to obtain auto insurance coverage, in turn improving highway safety. An ardent member of the taxpayer funded MEChA, which is a ``racist Latino student movement demanding annexation of all southwestern States,'' and MEChA, by the way, is as close to a Hispanic KKK as I can possibly imagine and something, by the way, that the aspiring Governor in California Mr. Bustamante belongs to. Cedillo once said, illegals have a right to stay because ``they were here first.'' Illegal aliens, he says, have a right to stay because they were here first. Given the illegal constituency's interests, there is little doubt who they will pull the lever for in the upcoming elections at both the State and national level. ``I'd like to thank Governor Davis because up until last week, how many people in this country knew that illegal immigrants were getting driver's licenses?'' the Families of Survivors member Grace Gottschalk, whose son was murdered in the World Trade Center, asked. ``Here and there you would see something in the press occasionally, but when Governor Davis used this as a political tool, passing a bill that he had turned down many times because he is now in jeopardy, it shows you how political this is and how immigrants are being used.'' This move has not gone unnoticed by those tasked with securing our Nation from the threat of terrorism at home. Asa Hutchinson, Under Secretary of Border and Transportation Security, recently said, ``Certainly we have to review our policy among inspectors on the border and their reliance upon driver's licenses. If you do not have integrity in the driver's licenses that are issued, the integrity of those documents, the securities of those documents, then it really undermines the whole premise of allowing U.S. citizens to travel abroad and come back with limited proof of U.S. citizenship without a passport. More than 160,000 people cross the border in San Diego daily here simply flashing a State license allows them to be waved through. It promises to be a focal issue in the upcoming California gubernatorial recall election.'' Republican State Senator Tom McClintock, a recall candidate, said the only reason for issuing state-approved identification to illegals is ``to undermine our immigration laws.'' ``What Gray Davis has done by signing this bill is put politics before the people of the State of California,'' Assemblyman Tony Strickland said. ``The California legislature failed the people of California. Governor Gray Davis has failed the people of California when he signed the bill into law. He said he didn't care about California, but he cares about his job in Sacramento. It is about a last-ditch effort to save his career,'' said Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy. The California Republican Assembly has issued a call for the referendum to stop the new driver's license ordinance. They hope to obtain 373,816 signatures of registered voters within the next 90 days to make the March 2004 ballot. California Republican Assembly President Mike Spence commented, ``To lower the standard for getting a driver's license in this era of al Qaeda and the era of identity theft is an attack on every citizen of California.'' The California Republican Assembly has started a Web site to support the petition drive. Mr. Speaker, it is, again, incredible for us today to think that this is happening in California and it is happening in other States. It is incredible to think about the fact that many States now give all kinds of opportunities and benefits to people who are living here illegally, those benefits that have heretofore been given only to people who we call citizens, or at least legal residents, of the United States, the benefit of citizenship, like having the State taxpayers pay to subsidize your child's education, both in K-12 and higher education. Now many States say let us do that for illegal immigrants, the benefits of social services, the benefits of health care, and, yes, even the benefits of voting. What is left? What is left to define the idea or the concept of citizenship? What does it mean? Has it any value whatsoever? If everyone in this country, regardless of their legal status, can obtain all of the benefits afforded to those people who are here legally, then what does it mean to be a citizen of this country? The distinction is erased, and that is the hope and desire of many of the people who actually push these kinds of issues. It is to eventually come to a place where borders are eliminated, where people who are here can obtain all of the benefits of citizenship by simply being a resident. There are cities in this Nation that provide people who are here illegally with the benefit of voting. College Park, Maryland, comes to mind immediately, not too far from here. They call themselves sanctuary cities, and you can vote if you can prove you are a resident of the city. The Mayor of the District of Columbia not too long ago proposed such a thing for residents of the District of Columbia; and of course Gray Davis has done exactly the same thing by giving residents of the State of California a driver's license, because under motor-voter, they now can vote. So, what does it matter then when we use the word ``citizenship''? There is a recent flap that has developed over the fact that the Bureau of Immigration Enforcement has come up with a new oath of citizenship. I think they recalled it because there was such a response on the part of many people. They were re-writing the oath of citizenship. But let me suggest to you that the concern about the actual words that are used in that oath, that concern is misplaced, I think, because, of course, the oath will eventually mean nothing, because citizenship, the concept of it, the reality of it, will mean nothing. When we talk about immigration and immigration reform, many people think that we are just talking in terms of jobs, the loss of jobs, which, of course, is a real concern. Many people are just talking about the fear that we have as a result of our Nation being balkanized, being divided up into all kinds of sub-groups, of victimized groups, that refuse to become part of the American mainstream, that do not even wish to integrate into our society. But this debate about illegal immigration is even broader than that. I believe with all of my heart, Mr. Speaker, that massive immigration into the country, both legal and illegal, combined with this cult of multi-culturalism that permeates our society and tells people that they should not immigrate into the American mainstream and they should keep their own language and their own political relationship and political affiliation to country of origin, this is a dagger pointed at the heart of America. It is as dangerous as al Qaeda; it is as dangerous as any terrorist out there who is plotting to do something terrible to this country. Because, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you now that if we do not know who we are as a Nation, if we are divided up into all these camps, into these groups, victimized sub-groups in America, then we will have no strong desire to save our civilization and our way of life, because we do not know what it is, we do not know who we are, we do not know what holds us together, we do not know what binds us together as a Nation. We can all revel in and enjoy the differences that we have in this country, the cultural distinctions that give us such a rich texture as a Nation. We can enjoy it. I certainly do. But that is a far cry from disassociating oneself from this country and actually seeking only the economic benefits that it can provide, while simultaneously trying to connect oneself, or, I should say, retain one's connections to countries of origin, which, if they were so great, if those countries of origin are so wonderful, one wonders why millions of people have sought to leave them. In a recent Los Angeles Times article, September 15, 2 days ago, by Claire Luna, she states that ``painted on the cheeks of children waiving grandly from a balcony and planted in women's hairdos, Mexican flags were on display everywhere Sunday in Santa Ana as tens of thousands of people showed pride for their home country.'' Showed pride for their home country. What does that mean? What is their home country? Do they not live here? Do they not obtain the benefits of living in this land? Do they not call themselves Americans? Do they not think of themselves as Americans? Mr. Speaker, if I asked you what is your home country, if I asked anybody in this body what is their home country, if I asked any American citizen out there, what is their home country, how many would answer to me some country other than the United States of America? Now, I am only a third-generation American. My grandparents came here from Italy. But never, ever, ever, have I thought of myself as anything but an American. Never have I thought of my home country as anything but America. ``The Fiesta de las Americas parade commemorating Mexican Independence Day drew the largest crowd in its 15-year history,'' police said. For 2 hours, spectators cheered for their home states,'' home states, ``in Mexico, as girls in traditional dress pranced among marching bands, government dignitaries and mariachi floats. It is so important that all Mexican remember how their liberty was won.'' Their liberty, if they are living here, was won by people who sacrificed their lives in the fight against Great Britain. That is how their liberty was won. ``The parade helps reaffirm our pride in our love of Mexico.'' Well, Mexico is a wonderful country. I do not dispute that, and I do not suggest for a moment that anyone should, if they are from Mexico, should forget about it or not understand that they have that heritage. But there is something happening here, Mr. Speaker, that deserves our attention, because this is what I am talking about, about a country being divided into all of these sub-groups, being balkanized. This article goes on to say that, ``Corona, the vending machine stocker, was watching the parade with his brother-in-law Roberto Mundo, 38, and Mundo's two children. To shield his eyes from the sun, Corona shoved a piece of cardboard over his head and was reduced to wordless glee when passing Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona gave his headgear a thumbs-up. His power of speech returned when a dozen folks and women passed by on a Budweiser beer float. `You are beautiful,' he screamed happily in Spanish, and when they threw him a poster. `People used to be too scared of being deported to come to something as public as this,' Mundo said, `but times have changed. Now people aren't scared to show their pride.' '' So what he is saying here is, of course, that many, many of the people who were on the street were here illegally, but they do not care anymore about the fact that they are here illegally. They are not afraid, they are not concerned, because they know that this government does not have the will to enforce our own immigration policy. There is a book, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that I would certainly suggest should be mandatory reading for every American citizen. It is called ``Mexifornia: A State of Becoming,'' by Victor Davis Hanson. I will just read something from the cover: ``Cutting through the lies of race-hacks, multi-cult commissars and their guilty white enablers, fifth generation Californian Victor Davis Hanson tells the brutal truth about Mexican immigration to California. Combining social-science fact with the personal experience of living in the San Joaquin Valley, immigration's ground zero, Hanson shows that discarding the old paradigm of immigrant assimilation in favor of the fantasies of identity politics victimhood has seriously compromised the process of turning into Americans the millions of hard-working Mexicans who desperately want the freedom and prosperity underwritten by the very values that the multi-cult industry disparages. No one concerned with immigration and its impact on America can afford to miss this tough and brilliant book.'' And I certainly agree. ``Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.'' California is a State I guess that represents what we are all, every State in the Nation, in some stage of becoming, somewhat transformed. To some, even in this body, that is a good idea. That is something to which they look forward, a Nation that no longer understands its roots, a Nation that is divided, a Nation that is balkanized, a Nation that is just a place of residents and not of citizens. Mr. Speaker, that is where we are going. That is where we are headed. And most Americans know it. And they ask their representatives in this government to do something about it. And yet I have to tell them when they ask me why we cannot and why we ignore this, I have to tell them that there is no political will to secure our own borders. It is a shameful fact, Mr. Speaker. It is one I wish I did not have to express and did not have to state. But it is the truth. I hope it will soon change.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, although there are some signs that the Federal government is beginning to show some attention to, and there are some signs of progress actually in our efforts to reform the immigration system and to, in fact, increase the degree of security that we have on our borders after 9-11 and, I should say that these are very small steps, but they are steps that have been taken, and we should recognize them. The fact is that we are in the process of improving the technology that we can use to make sure that the people coming into the country as visitors are who they say they are. There is both software and hardware that have to be in place now, but at least we are moving in that direction. Recently I found that we are building some barriers on the southern border, especially in and around the Douglas, Arizona area. Hopefully, these barriers will be there to protect the national parks from being inundated as they have been for some time now by hundreds of thousands of people crossing that border, and coming into the United States illegally. There was a terrorism conference not too long ago in, I believe it was in El Paso, Texas, and several members of the administration actually recognized, actually stated, that there were problems with our immigration policy, especially as they reflected upon the security implications of this country after 9-11. That in and of itself is a very good sign, a very good sign. Somebody is at least willing to talk about the security of our borders. I think, in fact, the phrase used at the security conference down in Texas and the phrase used by a representative of the administration was that the borders are ``our first lines of defense.'' Now, of course, we have stated that on many, many occasions. Those of us who are concerned about this issue have used those same words now for several years. But it is indeed heartening that we are hearing them being repeated now by members of the administration. Recently I had an opportunity to visit the southern border. I went down during our August recess, I went down to Brownsville, Texas and spent some time down there looking at our border operation, actually going out on patrol with members of the Border Patrol. We went down the Rio Grande River in the evening and watched as we implemented Operation Gatekeeper and other similar types of endeavors that are designed to tighten up border security on the southern border. And I must tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, I was encouraged by what I saw. I saw a lot of dedicated people working very, very hard to make sure that the borders of this country are maintained, defended, and enforced. I had the great opportunity to speak to maybe 100 or so Border Patrol agents who were about ready to go out on muster, ride after muster, I should say, and wished them well and encouraged them in their efforts and, to a person, they encouraged me to continue the efforts here in the House of Representatives to encourage my colleagues to pay attention to this issue, to become involved regardless of how unpleasant we may find it to be when we get involved in this issue. There are a lot of people, of course, who shy away from it because of the political ramifications that they fear. But there are ramifications to the country that are far more severe and far more serious than the political ramifications to someone's career here in this House. So I was encouraged, and I have been encouraged by a few things I have seen. Now, we are a long, long way from saying that things are good and that the momentum has shifted away from open borders, away from a position that essentially is everybody who can get here can get in. I should say that we are a long way from touchdown. There are a lot of things that need to happen at the Federal level. But what is now becoming even more disconcerting, what is now becoming a focal point and should be a focal point for a lot of our attention here in this House, is the situation that is developing throughout the States and in some localities throughout the country. There is a publication that has been put out recently by the Federation for American Immigration Reform called the State of Insecurity, how State and local immigration policies are undermining homeland security, and I will be quoting from it liberally this evening, because I think it needs to be brought to the attention of our colleagues and to the Nation. What we are seeing is that even though the Federal Government is inching forward toward trying to reform the immigration process in this country, and toward trying to gain a certain slight degree of security on our borders, we are watching States and localities go in just the opposite direction. And there are, of course, certain well-known and well-documented stories and situations that we have heard about recently that I will be talking about in just a minute or two. But I will reflect upon these things and what is happening at the State level, and first we should talk about these things called sanctuary policies. Sanctuary is a term that has been now applied to cities throughout the country that have adopted certain regulations and passed certain ordinances, all of which were designed to essentially protect the immigrant, the illegal immigrant population of their city or surrounding areas. This is happening, and there were cities that have done this in the past, College Park, Maryland and a couple of others on the eastern coast who call themselves sanctuary cities and actually passed legislation prohibiting their local police and law enforcement agencies from helping INS enforce the law. They have gone farther than that. Some cities have actually gone to the point of saying that if you are simply a resident of the city, you can vote in municipal elections. Now, being a resident of the city, that is all that is required in some of these sanctuary cities. All you have to do is show that you have a utility bill, for instance, proving your residence and you will be able to vote. That is part of the problem, certainly, these cities that are doing things like this. New York City had something like this on the books for some time. They passed it back in 1989. Actually, it was a mayoral decree and it was specifically designed to obstruct Federal immigration law enforcement. Now, it is amazing that even after 9-11 and New York City being Ground Zero essentially for the terrorists, there was still a reluctance on the part of the city to repeal that particular order. It got to the point where eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn an appeals court ruling against the city's noncooperation policy that Mayor Bloomberg reluctantly rescinded the policy. However, a bill was submitted to the city council in New York in July of 2003 which seeks to resurrect the sanctuary policy by providing a provision banning city employees from reporting illegal aliens to local police and Federal authorities. This comes at a time when we even know that several of the hijackers, several of the terrorists, the 9-11 terrorists were, at one time, in fact, stopped for, it turned out to be, motor vehicle violations, traffic violations, and because there was no database against which they could be checked, because some of these people were actually on terrorist watch lists; but because there was no cooperation, we were unable to detain these people, even though some of them actually, as I say, were on a terrorist watch list, but nobody knew about it when they stopped them. The police in the local area stopped them for running a red light or whatever it was for, but did not know that they were also on a terrorist watch list. When you recognize that this kind of problem exists, when there is no communication among law enforcement agencies, when you also understand that there are national security implications to these sanctuary laws, there are implications certainly to laws which say that local police will not help enforce immigration policies, will not cooperate with the Federal Government. Here in Washington, D.C., another ground zero, Police Chief Ramsey took pains to reassure the Latino Lawyers Association that the police were not backing away from a 1984 executive order that prohibits D.C. government employees from getting involved in immigration matters. Washington, D.C. is another sanctuary city. We actually have passed laws, Federal laws. In 1996 a provision was added to an appropriations bill which specifically dealt with this and said that no city or State would be allowed to impede the flow of information to the INS or restrict the flow of information from the INS. That is a law on the books today. Of course, there is no enforcement mechanism and, as a result, cities ignore it. Cities all over this country simply thumb their nose at the law because they know that there is nothing that the Federal Government can, under the present statutes, do about it. You may recall, Mr. Speaker, that I introduced an amendment to an appropriations bill, to the appropriations bill that we were passing for Homeland Security and another one later for the Department of Justice. Both of my amendments were designed to put some teeth into the law that is already on the books and say that if you violate the law that we already have on the books, if a city does that, if it stops the flow of information to the INS or restricts the flow of information from the INS to their local police officers, that they could not apply for Homeland Security grants or grants from the Department of Justice. We got about 120 votes for that for those two amendments. And there was a lot of hand-wringing and consternation expressed by Members of the body over the fact that we were talking about this, and we should probably not be because it is like many immigration issues, and who wants to talk about an immigration issue when we know that there is all this great amount of emotion tied up in the discussion itself. So the amendment went down. But it is amazing to me that we do have, in fact, laws on the books which we choose in this body not to enforce. I am sure that many people went home and said, well, I voted for the law that says they cannot do that. I voted for the law that says you cannot stop that kind of information, but they did not want to do anything that would actually make that law be able to be enforced. Next we come to the issue of driver's licenses or as they are referred to, ``the keys to the kingdom.'' Two years after 19 people used State-issued driver's licenses to board four airplanes and turn them into weapons of mass destruction, it is still possible in many States for anyone to acquire these documents, regardless of immigration status. Even though Virginia, New Jersey, and Florida have tightened up on it a little bit since 9-11, many other States still have very lax laws regarding who can obtain a driver's license from their State. In the absence of a uniform Federal document, State-issued driver's licenses serve the function of providing identity. In addition to granting permission to operate a motor vehicle, the licenses are used for banking, for check cashing, for boarding airplanes, for demonstrating proof of employment eligibility, and many other purposes. They are also accepted by immigration inspectors for letting U.S. travelers return to this country after traveling to Canada, Mexico or a Caribbean destination that does not require a U.S. passport for entry. Thus, it is crucial that States recognize the vital national security role that these documents have come to play. Hence we call them, as I say, ``the keys to the kingdom.'' If there was any question about this, the 9-11 attacks should have put it to rest. All 19 of the 9-11 terrorists possessed one or more of State driver's licenses which they used to blend in, rent apartments, open bank accounts, and ultimately to board airplanes that they intended to crash. Yet, not only are driver's licenses still available to illegal aliens in some States, several States are loosening restrictions on obtaining driver's licenses, and even explicitly spelling out that they will permit illegal aliens to receive them. Of course, on Friday last, at 6 o'clock Pacific Standard Time, the Governor of the State of California signed a bill allowing illegal residents of California, illegal aliens who reside in California, and there are three to four million right now, allowing them to have driver's licenses. He did so on Friday late in the day, and the original notice of the fact that he was going to do this, a press advisory went out only to the Spanish-speaking media. Apparently, he wanted to avoid having to confront this from the standpoint of what the rest of the States would have to say about it in the hopes that he would be able to encourage and obtain votes to essentially stop the recall in California and to support him in his effort to stay in office. Now, these are things, these are actions that are being taken by States that I believe should not go uncontested. Mr. Speaker, I am essentially a States' rights person. I believe the States have great sovereignty. I have fought for it for all of my career in politics. I believe the Federal Government often usurps a lot of States' rights, and I would not in any way support that kind of arbitrary activity on the part of the Federal Government. But the actions taken by these States, and some of these cities, in allowing illegal immigrants the access to documents that then allow them into our society and allow them to do things that, if they have the intent to do harm to the United States, can certainly make it easy. And, therefore, this is not just a States' issue. This is a Federal issue. We should be concerned about this at our level here. We should take some action to try to assure that in the absence of any sort of Federal identification process, that the next best thing, which is the driver's license, a State driver's license is, number one, a valid document and, number two, is not a document that can be given to people who are residing here illegally. Now, there are not a lot of ways that the Federal Government can force States to do this. Because if we could pass a law saying States should not do it, as we have seen with the 1996 bill, States and localities will do it if there is no penalty. So we have to look at the penalty side of things. The penalty side of things almost always comes down to money. So I have introduced today a bill that will begin restricting the availability of funds, of Federal highway funds to States that, in fact, allow illegal aliens in their State to obtain drivers' licenses. I will also be looking at other ways of dealing with this, maybe trying to restrict grants under the Homeland Security Act. There are a couple of other things we can do, but, again, it usually turns to the use of funds to get States to do the right thing. This all, this whole issue of the drivers' licenses is coming on the heels of another sort of peculiar document that is being accepted by a lot of States in the Nation and local governments and some private corporations and private banking institutions. It is something called the matricula consular. It is a foreign government's ID that they give to their nationals who reside outside of countries of their own. The matricula consular is the card that the Mexican Government distributes to its nationals living in the United States and other countries. Of course, they have the absolute right to do that. No one is suggesting that a country does not have the right to hand out whatever kind of identification they want to their nationals. But what they have done, beyond that, is to begin a process of lobbying State and local governments in the United States to get them to accept the card. And they have gone, as I say, to the banking industry and other private entities to get them to do the same thing, and many banks have done it. Many banks have agreed to accept the matricula ID as a form of identification when somebody opens up a bank account. Now, we have an enormous amount of problems with identity theft. We have an enormous amount of problems with people who use the banks to launder money, to launder drug money, to do a whole bunch of things, and trying to keep track of them is difficult. When you now allow people to obtain a card, which is by the way easily obtained, there are actually, Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting little aspect of this, but there are machines in Los Angeles and Chicago, machines similar to ATM's, I think most of them are by Mexican Consulates, but you can go up to this machine, you punch in some information and it will produce for you your Mexican birth certificate, which you then bring to the consulate and they will give you your matricula consular which you then take and, once again, start the process of entering into American society. It is all too easy for people to do this. And for people to do this, especially people who have ill intent, people who have designs, people who have the desire to do very bad things to the United States. People who have the desire to change their own identity. Felons who are here, even American citizens who are felons can use this process and have, in fact, used this process to change their own identity and make them, when they get stopped by the police and the police are told by their city council that they have to accept the matricula consular as a legitimate form of ID, this person is, of course, allowed to go free. We have arrested people coming into the country illegally. We have arrested them and on their person found many matricula consular cards. Recently we found an Iranian coming in with a Mexican matricula consular card. These are easily obtained. People are actually going around door-to-door and selling them in Los Angeles. The Mexican Consulates are distributing them through vans that they send out in the streets of Chicago and other places. They are in no way, these cards are in no way valid forms of ID and should never be thought of as such, and the Government of the United States and certain departments, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, have said the same thing. They have said you cannot and should not use these things. They have told the Federal Government that we should not do it. We are still wrestling with the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury who are not so sure about this thing. But the departments who have been charged with the security of this Nation are sure that these are not valid documents and should not be used by any government agencies, by any State or local agency and certainly should not be used by banks for the purposes of identifying people who are opening up accounts. In California, the bill that was just signed by the Governor says that one of the things that you can use to get your driver's license in California, because up to this point in time California required that you have a Social Security number to get a driver's license. Well, although not perfect, it was a fairly good way to make sure that the people you are talking to are the people that they say they are and that they are here legally. Not always, but for the most part that is one form of identification that helps us make that determination. Twice before, bills of the same nature were passed by the legislature in California; and twice they were vetoed by the same Governor, with this reasoning. He said there were not enough security measures in the bill so as to make sure that they could avoid the problem of misidentifying people who are then obtaining drivers' licenses and getting them fraudulently. The bill that he recently signed had that in there for a little bit, had some security provisions in there; but they were all stripped out because of the pressure from the immigration lobby, and so the bill he got simply says this, that in order to get a driver's license in California, you can use your Social Security number, or a variety of other things including the matricula consular. You can now obtain a driver's license in California by getting a card from the Mexican consulate that says you are who you say you are. By the way, Mexico is not the only government that does this. It has become very successful. This is a way of getting around the fact that we have not given amnesty to illegal aliens in the United States, and so the other countries are now naturally following suit. We have got several countries, mostly Latin American, South and Central American countries that are also handing out matricula consular and using them for exactly the same purpose. Not too long ago, we got, I believe it was the embassy in Managua if I am not mistaken, sent a memo to the Secretary of State and said, by the way, the government here is looking at how to implement a matricula consular, and we want to sort of help them out; and they were looking for a guidance from the Secretary of State here as to how they should help them because in that particular country, country that they were in and was going to give this matricula, the way that someone proves their identity is to have two other people swear that is who he says he is. I am Joe Blow and you get people to say, yeah, that is right, that is proof of identity; and, therefore, you can get a matricula consular. In California, you can then use that card to get your driver's license, and from a driver's license we know what happens. From a driver's license, I mean, this is the passport into American society. So in all of our efforts to try and actually do something about the porous borders that we have, do something about the fact that there are enormous national security issues revolving around the fact that we have people coming across our borders without our permission and we do not know who they are, even though we are trying to do something about that, these little steps I mentioned earlier on, we are seeing States like California and others do just the opposite, making it 10 times more difficult for the Department of Justice, for the Department of Homeland Security to do their job; and what they are really doing, Mr. Speaker, is running their own immigration systems. What we have got here is a situation where it is not just the Federal Government determining the policy of who comes in and for how long and for what purpose and exactly who they are, but now every State in the Nation is developing their own immigration policy or certainly could follow the lead of the States that are doing it, and cities throughout the Nation are doing the same thing. They are adopting immigration policies. How many are we going to have? How many are going to be enforced? It makes a sham of the entire immigration system, or perhaps I should say lack thereof. There are, I think, Mr. Speaker, obvious implications to lax border enforcement and confused immigration policy. After 9/11, we should be enormously concerned about it. Even those people who have been reluctant to support immigration reform in the past should be willing to support the national security agenda that includes a tightening up of immigration policy. So I really hope and believe that it is the responsibility of this Congress to take some action, to help really pull back, if you will, the immigration policy decisions into this body and into where they belong and restrict States and local governments from setting their own immigration policies and their own course. That is probably next if this kind of thing goes on. Tomorrow and the next day, of course, there will be many things here around the Nation's capital to mark the second anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy; and along those lines, we will be having a press conference at 11 o'clock here on the Capitol grounds, and it will be primarily to look at the fact that 9/11 and the tragedy of 9/11 did have some immigration-related issues that we should look at; and there is a gentleman by the name of Peter Gadiel who is head of a group of survivors of 9/11, people who lost family members in the tragedy in New York City, who will be speaking and who will be talking about the danger our porous borders creates, especially in terms of our ability to try and maintain some level of national security. So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that there will be a good attendance there and also that we will get some national attention drawn to this issue because I think it certainly does merit that kind of attention.

Mr. TANCREDO

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

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would transfer $320 million from Amtrak to the Federal Aid Highway Program, reducing Amtrak's total appropriation to $580 million for this year. This amount, by the way, is the original amount that the Transportation Appropriations bill called for prior to the adoption of an amendment in full committee. Mr. Chairman, Amtrak has posted staggering losses in recent years, despite their continued promises to become self-sufficient. Time and time again, however, those promises have been broken as Amtrak continues to hemorrhage money and continues to come back to this body with out-stretched hands. Ironically, Mr. Chairman, Amtrak was originally established in 1971 as a, believe it or not, for-profit corporation by Congress. Over the last 30 years though, Amtrak has never once turned a profit. It has, however, racked up nearly $30 billion in operating losses and even managed to receive a $2 billion tax credit in 1997. That is despite the fact that the rail provider has never paid a penny in income tax. Now, some of my friends who oppose this amendment will tell you that the service provided by this inefficient monopoly is invaluable to the traveling public, but the statistics do not bear that out. According to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, for example, the percentage of Americans who walk to work every day is roughly equal to the number that ride the train, about 5 percent. In light of these statistics, one wonders as one political commentator noted, if it makes as much sense for Congress to subsidize Nike sneakers as it does for them to subsidize rail service. Subsidies on some of the longest routes are so high, reaching about $250 per passenger in some cases, that many times it would actually be cheaper for the Federal Government to purchase plane tickets for passengers than to subsidize the purchase of their train ticket. Not surprisingly, Amtrak is back again asking Congress to bail them out with yet one more $1 billion appropriation. And this is after the beleaguered rail carrier promised Congress financial solvency just a short time ago. Mr. Chairman, the unhealthy relationship between Amtrak and the Congress has become a seemingly endless cycle of empty promises and bottomless government subsidies. This has to come to an end sometime. We must shut off the spigot of Federal funds and require the States, communities and organizations that purport to need Amtrak services, to foot a larger share of the bill. Remember also that during the chairman's opening remarks and then subsequently through several responses, he has had two amendments that have been offered, he has reiterated the need for more funding for our highways. In fact, I think the figure he last used was a $400 billion deficit. We are $400 billion shy of what we need to maintain our highway systems and our bridges, $400 billion dollars. Now, I suggest that this is a relatively easy decision for Members to make. What is more important to their constituents? Now, I recognize fully well that many Members here have worked for a long time to bring home a chunk of money to their constituents to keep this rail service subsidized, and I can say to them they have done a wonderful job, $30 billion over 20 years. They have brought home plenty of pork. It is not a matter that we should be worried about whether or not more is necessary. I think they can be proud of the fact that they have been able to do as well as they have done over the last 20 years, but really this has to come to a stop. And when we have such pressing needs as the chairman has laid out for us in the area of highways and road construction and bridge repair, it seems to me to be a fairly easy decision for us to make, to transfer the amount of money, the $320 million from Amtrak to Federal aid for highways. Again, I want to reiterate the fact that what we are doing here is simply taking the appropriation down to the same level that the Committee on Appropriations, that the Transportation Appropriations bill called for originally, and then it got plussed up when it got to the full committee. But I think that the original amount was being very generous to this entity, to Amtrak, a private corporation, after all, that has simply had never had the ability to live up to the promises that have been made. We are in tight financial times. There are not dollars flowing into the coffers of the government that can be distributed so liberally. So I ask when that time occurs to make a decision about what is more needy, vote for your highways and bridges and not for the Amtrak subsidy. I ask for an ``aye'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, especially for his very gracious allowing me to speak in opposition to this bill. Mr. Speaker, the fact is people keep getting up and saying that we are concerned about immigration provisions in the bill. We have talked to the Trade Representative. They have responded to our issues; and, in fact, the Committee on the Judiciary will act to change one part of this bill that pertained to immigration provisions, but there are still several parts in this bill that are completely unacceptable, and that should never be in there because they are immigration provisions. It allows for L-1's, an unlimited number of L-1's. Okay. What happens when we actually begin to deal with the violation of the L-1 category that is now rampant? We will be unable to deal with it in terms of Chile and Singapore because it is in the trade agreement that it will not be changed. It cannot be modified. So that is an immigration proposal that is still in this bill. H1-B category visas, what we are saying is that they can be annually renewed as opposed to the present system that requires some degree of attention being paid to renewal. But, as a matter of fact, that is even being ignored significantly. So if we tried to ever reform these categories, if we try to remove them, they will be there forever for these two countries because they are in the trade agreement. And that is the problem with integrating trade agreements and immigration proposals. I am against the two proposals for that reason.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentleman, he has been here in the Congress for several years. Does the gentleman recall if he voted for the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996?

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

Mr. TANCREDO. Then you have a right, of course, to argue with the concept. But many of the people who already argued against the bill voted for the original bill.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, there is a lot of discussion as to whether or not this is an appropriate time or the appropriate place to debate this issue. Certainly there will be more debate to come. But this is as good a time as any, and as good a place as any, because it is a good amendment that definitely needs to be heard. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Idaho.

Mr. TANCREDO. I know that many of the gentlemen who have spoken here did, in fact, vote for it. I do not know if the gentleman did.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, in 1996, this body passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act. Other provisions of that act, it is noted in the amendment, state that ``Notwithstanding any of the provisions of Federal, State or local law, a Federal, State or local government entity or official may not prohibit or in any way restrict any government entity or official from sending to or receiving from the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.'' Now, this was a good provision of law. I am glad it was passed and that President Clinton signed it. The only problem with this particular law is that there is no sanction should any State, local or any other agency choose to violate the law. So this amendment is similar to the one I offered during consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill. Outrage is often expressed by Members of this House when corporations flee from the United States seeking some sort of tax haven off the coast of America, yet dare to seek Federal funds in the several appropriations and tax bills that we pass in this body. They are indignant; and I, by the way, share the feeling of indignation. In that same vein, I think it is outrageous to have cities and States applying for law enforcement funds under this act when they passed laws and ordinances, which has been done in several cities and States around the country, that actually prevent the law enforcement agencies in those cities from sharing information with or obtaining information from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or as it is now known, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs. Unfortunately, there are cities in the United States that have disregarded the law. Recently, as a matter of fact, the City of New York rescinded an ordinance that it had on the books for 20 years that had prohibited police officers from communicating with the INS. Mr. Chairman, there are several cities in the United States that have chosen to pass legislation, pass laws that in fact restrict the ability of their own police forces in many cases from sharing information with the now Bureau of Immigration and Customs. This is a violation of law, the law that we have on the books. I am not trying to expand the law. I am simply trying to do something that would help us enforce the law. It is a very simple amendment. It says that if you make that choice as a city or State to make America a more dangerous place by refusing to share data with or accept data from Federal immigration authorities, that you will forgo State and local law enforcement assistance funds. If a city or State makes an affirmative choice to thumb their nose at the Federal law, then they get no Federal money under the provisions of this particular act; it is as simple as that. There are, in fact, right now we have, Lord knows, how many immigration policies being operated in the country. And the question we have to ask ourselves is, how many should there be and who should be responsible for setting immigration policy? Is it not the position, is it not the sole responsibility of the Federal Government to set immigration policies? And yet we have it now happening all over the country that cities are determining their own. Well, I guess if we cannot stop that from happening, at least what we can do is say, they cannot apply for Federal funds under this particular provision of the act. That is really all it does. It does not actually restrict any money from flowing to any city because all they have to do is, of course, abide by the law that is already on the books. I guess I have to keep reiterating, because I know on the last discussion we had on the matter there was a lot of concern about whether or not we were creating a brand-new law. I repeat, this is not creating new law. It is simply asking for some sort of enforcement mechanism or sanction for a city that decides to actually violate the law. That is all there is to it. It has no significance in terms of immigration policy. There was a lot of discussion about that, whether we were changing that. It is simply reinforcing the fact that the United States of America, the Federal Government, has the sole responsibility to set immigration policy. We cannot let States and cities do their own all over the country. Something has to be done to change that. This is my attempt to do just that.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. TANCREDO. You opposed the bill?

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to engage in a colloquy with the chairman. In 1999, the Army Corps of Engineers declared that the Cherry Creek Reservoir was in need of a $100 million expansion. The need for the expansion was based on whether projections forecasting not just one but two 1,000-year storms hitting the arid front range of Colorado in a 2- week period. Not only would the expansion be expensive, it would also inundate several neighborhoods and a high school. Given the questionable assumptions that the proposal was based on, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) and I have asked for and received limitation language in the annual energy and water appropriations bill over the last two cycles blocking the Corps of Engineers from moving forward until an independent review of the dam's safety is completed. Over the past year or so, a State and local task force has been working with the National Weather Service and the Corps of Engineers toward completion of an independent review of the underlying weather models used by the corps and the long-term safety needs in the Cherry Creek Basin. My understanding is that the group believes it will be able to complete its work later this year. It is my sincere hope that they will do so. I understand that the bill does not specifically include any money for the corps to move forward with a dam safety study at this time, and I would ask the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee to work with the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) and me to ensure that the study will not move forward until such time as this independent peer review panel has completed its work.

Mr. TANCREDO

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

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The last two fire seasons have been devastating for the American West. Millions of acres in States like Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Colorado have been reduced to charcoal by catastrophic wildfire. By most estimates, an additional 73 million acres at the very least remain at extreme high risk to catastrophic wildfire. To put that in perspective, 73 million acres is an area larger than the State of Arizona. Central to reducing the threat that these unnatural fires pose to communities, water quality and wildlife is restoring our densely packed forests to a more natural state. To do that, we must thin our forests. Mr. Chairman, I believe that the Healthy Forests bill we passed earlier this year will go a long way towards streamlining the ``analysis paralysis'' that has prevented our land managers from reducing the threat of wildfire in our overstocked forest. But in order to carry out more thinning projects, as many of my friends on the other side are fond of pointing out, the Forest Service needs additional funds. I want to give them an opportunity to put their money where their mouths are. If adopted, my amendment would transfer $57 million to the Forest Service for thinning operations from the National Endowment for the Arts. While this amendment only reduces its budget, few programs seem more worthy of outright elimination than the National Endowment for the Arts. First created in 1965, the NEA has been one of the most controversial government programs on the books almost since its inception. The most notorious aspects of the NEA have been talked about for many years, and I will not go into them today. In a tight budget year like this, it is irresponsible to squander scarce public funds on subsidizing the arts to the tune of $117 million. Clearly, enhancing the ability of the Forest Service to protect communities from wildfire is a better use of our public funds. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt's Agriculture Secretary James Wilson wrote a letter to the first chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot. In that letter Wilson wrote, ``and where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question should always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good for the greatest number over the long run.'' The choice between buying art with our tax dollars or protecting our communities from the catastrophic wildfires should be a no-brainer. It does not take a rocket scientist to determine which of these programs benefit the ``greatest number over the long run.'' I hope the Members will keep Mr. Wilson's words in mind when they consider the merits of my amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.