Tom Tancredo

Mr. TANCREDO

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.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on September 10 and 11, we are going to be holding an event here in Washington, D.C. We call it the Day of Remembrance Event. The Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus is sponsoring this day of remembrance for victims of open borders on those days, September 11, in Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, information about that is available if one were to go to the Web site, victimsvoice.org. Activities on that day will include press availability for dozens of victims who are willing to tell their stories, a news conference at 11 a.m. for victims identified and introduced by Members of Congress who are members of the Immigration Reform Caucus. There will be a photo display illustrating dozens of victims' stories, later a dinner program to honor victims and present the first annual Kris Eggle award for heroism in immigration law enforcement. The purpose of the day of remembrance is to expand public awareness and understanding of the immense harm done to our Nation and our citizens by our open borders policy and lax enforcement of our immigration laws. For too long we have talked about these problems in terms only related to numbers. We have used lots of statistics to try and bring home the point that our Nation's immigration policy, or lack thereof, our Nation's open borders policy, which is really what it is, has done enormous harm to the Nation and promises to even do greater harm to the Nation. But what we want to do on September 10 and 11, Mr. Speaker, is to actually identify the people, to put faces with the statistics, to see how these things, open borders especially and our Nation's policies toward immigration, have wreaked havoc on our population and has the potential of doing great harm to the Nation. Over a million illegal aliens enter our country each year by coming across our porous borders. Immigration authorities do not know who they are or where they are going. There are over 80,000 convicted felons on immigration agencies' absconders lists. They have been ordered deported but remain at large in the United States. There are over 100,000 additional convicted felons released from jails and prisons every year and not deported, even though the laws of the United States have been broken by these people. Over 1 million foreign workers have been allowed to come to this country to replace American workers through the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. Many of them have overstayed, hundreds of thousands of them have overstayed their visas and in fact are living here illegally but are employed in various industries, taking jobs away from Americans, forcing American citizens to change their life-style dramatically, all because American industry, American corporations have embarked upon a policy of cheap labor and they have done so with the agreement of this government and the acquiescence of the government to this policy of cheap labor. These people, the folks who have been displaced by foreign workers, the folks who have had family members killed, folks who have had family members attacked, beaten, robbed, raped, all these people are victims, as well, of course, as those who have paid the ultimate price and have died as a result of the crimes committed by people who are here illegally. These people need to be recognized, and maybe, just maybe, by bringing them to the attention of the public, by bringing them to the attention of the Congress, we will be able to move one step closer to actually gaining control of our borders. A simple request that all of them have. That is the one thing that most, in fact all of the folks who will be here, I think, have in common, a request that our borders be secured. Many of them will be asking that our relationship, especially with countries like Mexico and other countries in Latin America, be addressed so that extradition can be achieved so that when people have fled the United States after committing these heinous crimes, fled the United States from Mexico and other places that refuse to extradite criminals back to the United States, what these victims are pleading for and the families of victims are pleading for is that we negotiate with Mexico and other countries to get these people back to face justice. That is what they will be asking for. As I said, we will be giving out an award at that time, the Kris Eggle Award for Heroism and Immigration Law Enforcement. It will be presented at a dinner sponsored by the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus and the National Center for Citizenship and Immigration. Kris Eggle is someone I will talk about in just a moment or two because I am going to go through quite a list this evening. I am going to go through a list of people who have been harmed by our immigration policy, personally affected. Not too long ago, Mr. Speaker, someone came up to me and said, You know why you really cannot gain a foothold on this issue? You know why you cannot get the Congress of the United States to respond to you when you go on the floor night after night, when you offer all the amendments that you offer dealing with this issue of immigration reform? Do you know why you cannot get people to support you? It is because, frankly, when you think about it, to whom does this matter, to whom does the issue of immigration and immigration reform matter? To people coming across the border, of course, it matters a great deal. They do not want any sort of reform. They do not want anybody to stop them from coming across. For people who are bringing them across, the coyotes, the people who make money by bringing people across into this country illegally, they certainly do not want anybody to interfere. It is a big deal to them. They care a great deal about this whole issue. To the people who are affected like the individuals that I am going to bring up here tonight, they care a great deal because they have been personally affected and maybe to the point in time when that happened, up to that point in time, they were not really concerned. They were like most Americans, and that is when this friend of mine said to me: you have got a lot of people who are concerned because they are benefiting from open borders. But to most Americans it is a little concern. It is not a big one. And to most Americans, frankly, there is possibly the feeling that they too somehow, some way, maybe in a small way, but they also benefit from people who come across our borders illegally. They get their lawn mowed more inexpensively. They get their house painted, a variety of other things that we all know many people who are here illegally are employed doing. And to them they want to sort of look away. If one pressed individuals, they might say, yes, there is a problem. We really should do something about our borders. But down deep they think, I kind of benefit from it. I mean, maybe when I go to the grocery store and buy a head of lettuce, I am paying a few cents less for that head of lettuce. So maybe I should not care all that much and I am not going to really press it. I want to try to impress upon those people so that they can impress upon their Representatives in this body that it is important, that these things do matter, and that they too can be affected in the most severe fashion. So I am going to talk tonight about a lot of folks who have been affected in the most dramatic way imaginable. They have had their lives turned inside out, essentially. They have had their family members, as I say, murdered. They have lost family members. They have many times been affected by our open borders. And many of the folks are people that have been affected because they have lost their jobs. Let me say there are some, I do not know, 11 to 13 million people who are living here in the United States illegally. No one knows the exact number, of course. But that is a pretty good guess, 11 to 13 million people. And for the most part, the people who are here illegally are doing jobs that, I am told, I hear this often enough, Americans, other Americans, will not take. I challenge that, Mr. Speaker. I challenge that notion that there are all these people here taking jobs that no other American would take. And just as an example, we will talk for just a minute about the people who are dramatically affected by massive immigration of low-skilled, low-wage workers into the United States. And these are people at the lowest economic level in our society. They are more often than not low-skilled, low-wage workers who have time and again found themselves either out of jobs or only able to obtain jobs paying very little money, and these people are affected negatively. Many of them are American citizens, many of them whose families have been here for generations, longer than my family has been here; but they find themselves unable to break out of a cycle of poverty, always stuck in low-wage jobs, and the pay for those jobs does not increase as it should in a market like ours, if in fact that market were allowed to adjust because of supply and demand. But what happens when we allow 11 to 13 million people into this country illegally, many of them low-skilled, low-wage workers, is we depress the wage rates for people in that category. And simply because there are so many people seeking those jobs. In America today we know that we have changed dramatically from an industrial and agricultural society, a society that relied heavily on brawn as opposed to brains for the production of goods and services to now a technological society, an information-based society that relies heavily on the acquisition of knowledge and certain very important skills. So, therefore, folks at the lower range are already at an economic disadvantage, but we put them at an even worse economic disadvantage by importing labor, by allowing the importation of labor even in illegal fashion where millions of people come here seeking jobs that require very little skill and, therefore, are paid very little. Certain employers benefit from that arrangement. That is undeniably true. And even one can say that a lot of people are coming here and bettering their lives even though they are making very little money because where they came from, it was even worse. There is a fascinating book that has just been written; and, Mr. Speaker, I would certainly encourage anyone to get ahold of this particular book. It is called ``Mexifornia.'' ``Mexifornia.'' And it is written by a professor of the classics at an institution of higher education in California, who is also a farmer, and I believe it is Selma, California; and he is third or fourth generation on this farm, and he takes an interesting look at this phenomena. And what he describes is fascinating in a number of ways. As I said, I really do suggest people obtain this book and read it carefully because, for one thing, it is really well written. This gentleman's style of writing is great and very compelling. But it also describes a phenomenon that we do not really hear about very often, we have not read about, and that is what happens to the people who do come here as low-wage, low-skilled workers in their late teens or early 20's. What happens to them after, I do not know, 20 or 30 years at most of hard labor in the United States, 20 or 30 years where they are making minimum wage and at first it looks alluring to them? At first it looks like they can buy things that they would not have been able to buy had they stayed in the country of their birth. A material world almost immediately appeals to them and seems within reach and within their grasp, and they begin what they think is a new life in a new world that is going to be prosperous and better for them and their family, and what they find out is that after 20 or 30 years of hard labor, they are physically incapable of doing the work anymore, but there is nothing else out there for them, that they have not achieved the ``American Dream.'' They have stayed at that same level of both income and of poverty for lo these many years, and now there is nowhere left to go. There is no upward mobility left. They are just physically not able to actually pursue that dream anymore, and they become a ward of the state for all intents and purposes. They become unemployed and disillusioned, and so are their children. And what he points out in this book is that contrary to what has happened in the United States in the past in our history where immigrant families have come, labored hard, their children have then gone on to the next stage, that is to say, gotten an education, moved up the economic ladder and become part of the middle class, second or third generation, it is not happening for many of the people who are coming here today, especially from Mexico, and again for a wide variety of reasons, but it not happening. That second generation is not achieving, is not moving ahead, is not getting the education. In fact, what we see is that those kids are dropping out of high school, never getting to college, and Hispanic Americans, unfortunately, Hispanics living in this country legally or illegally, and their children are not moving ahead and achieving the same sorts of goals as immigrants of the past. And as I say, there are many reasons why this may be occurring, but it is the phenomenon. It is an interesting one, and it is one that I think should be discussed because in a way it is almost like we are importing throwaway people. We are using them for the skills that they have for the labor that they can provide, the cheap labor that they can provide for a few years and then they are discarded, and they become certainly an expense for the taxpayers of the Nation, and that is why often we hear the phrase ``cheap labor is not cheap.'' Cheap labor costs us a great deal. It costs us in terms of the depressed wage rates that it imposes upon low-skilled, low-wage workers in the United States and, therefore, essentially a drag on the economy. It costs us in terms of the infrastructure that has to be created to support the basic needs of the people who come here and of their children who do not get out of this cycle of poverty. It is a fact, an empirically provable fact, that these folks unfortunately access the welfare system far more than nonimmigrants. It is also a fact that our schools are inundated with children with great difficulties, especially language difficulties, therefore creating an expense, a significant expense, to try to teach. All these things are happening in the pursuit of cheap labor, cheap labor at the low-skill level. By the way, the book I mentioned earlier, ``Mexifornia,'' it is written by a gentleman by the name of Victor Davis Hanson. It is called ``Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.'' And in the small critique of the book the author says, ``Massive illegal immigration from Mexico into California, Victor Davis Hanson writes, ``coupled with the loss of confidence and the old melting pot model of transforming newcomers into Americans is changing the very nature of the State.'' He says, ``Yet we Californians have been inadequate in meeting this challenge, both failing to control our borders with Mexico and to integrate the new alien population into our mainstream.'' The critique says, ``Noted for his military histories and especially his social commentary of post-9/11 American life, Hanson is a fifth- generation Californian who teaches college classics courses and runs a family farm. ``Mexifornia'' is part history, part political analysis, part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century and how the real losers in the chaos caused by hemorrhaging borders are the Mexican immigrants themselves. ``A large part of the problem, Hanson believes, comes from the opportunistic coalition that stymies immigration reform and, even worse, stifles an honest discussion of this growing problem.'' And how true that statement is. How desperately we try to avoid the discussion of this problem, yet how desperately we need to discuss the problem. ``Corporations,'' he says, ``contractors, and agribusiness demand cheap wage labor from Mexico, whatever the social consequences. Meanwhile, academics, journalists, government bureaucrats, and La Raza advocates envision illegal aliens as a vast new political constituency for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement.'' Again, how powerful those words. Mr. Speaker, I just cannot emphasize how important they are to understand. ``Advocates envision legal aliens as a vast new political constituency for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement.'' How many times I have come to this floor and explained that the problem I have is the problem that occurs in both political parties, on the one hand, the Republican Party that seeks this cheap labor and, on the other hand, the Democratic Party that seeks, as it is pointed out here, a political constituency ``committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement.'' Oh, how well that is put. ``Mexifornia'' is an indictment of the policies that got California into its present mess. But this beautifully written book also reflects Hanson's strong belief that our traditions of assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage may yet remedy a problem that the politicians and ideologues have allowed to get out of hand; and I certainly hope that that is possible. But I guarantee my colleagues this, and I think that Mr. Hanson agrees, if I remember correctly in the book, that unless we begin to control our borders, unless we begin to actually get a handle on our borders, to be able to say that they are even somewhat secure, we can never, and I mean never, begin to think about a solution. Because although America is, of course, as has been stated many times, a nation of immigrants. It is a nation of immigration that has occurred at peaks and valleys where we have had significant increases over time in immigration and significant decreases. We have had periods of high immigration and periods of very low immigration, and usually those periods of high immigration are followed by periods of low immigration that give us enough time to actually integrate the people who have come here in the wave of immigration. That is not happening today, and that is desperately needed. We need a time out, Mr. Speaker. We need time as a Nation to integrate the people who have come here, to encourage them to become part of this American mosaic. But there are so many forces arrayed against that integration, against that process that I worry about our being able to accomplish it. I have stated on many occasions that we have something called a cult of multiculturalism that pervades our society, that encourages separation of groups in the country, again, the victimized classes. It encourages people to keep separate their language, keep separate their culture, even their political allegiances. It encourages them to keep citizenship of a country from which they came. So now we have 6 to 8 to 10 million, we are not sure how many, people who are living here with dual citizenship, with something that has never, ever been the case in the past. We have had 100,000 at any given time in the Nation, but in the last several years it has grown into the millions and maybe close to 10 million people. Again, we are not positive, but we know there are at least 6 million, which again is far more than we have ever had in the past, people who are claiming dual citizenship. Why is this happening, and what are the implications of that kind of a phenomenon? What does that mean for America? I suggest that the problems are significant and that they are real and they are problems that we must discuss on this floor and we must discuss in this body and in the other body and in the White House, even though they are distressing to some, even though they are certainly politically unpopular to talk about, even though we risk the epithets that are always attached and thrown at people who do try to discuss these issues. No one, no one, Mr. Speaker, enjoys being called names because they are committed to the concept of immigration reform. No one enjoys getting the kind of mail that we get and getting the kind of calls that I get. No one thinks that that is pleasurable. No one wants to be at odds with their own party, their own President over issues like this. Certainly I do not. But I assure my colleagues that the problem is so severe, at least I believe it to be so severe, that one must endure those things if they are to live up to the commitment they made when they took an oath of office to serve in this body. So tonight, as I say, among other things, I wanted to talk about individuals. I wanted to give my colleagues faces and names to go with the statistics that I oftentimes come to this body and present. There is another Web site that I might mention. It is called ImmigrationsHumanCost.org, from which I have taken a number of individual cases that I want to share with my colleagues tonight. As this site identifies, there are an enormous number of Americans who have been harmed by the criminals who pass through the Nation's open borders. For that reason, this section can only provide a symbolic tribute to the many unnamed victims who have been killed, raped, robbed, crippled, and otherwise personally violated. Remember, I mentioned earlier that there are really two categories of individuals who have been harmed by our country's immigration policy: the low-wage worker and the higher-skilled workers, and I will talk about them later also, those people who have been displaced in their jobs, thrown out of their jobs or are now underemployed because we have imported what is called H-1B or L-1 workers into this country by the hundreds of thousands, now reaching I think into the millions. These people have come over from India, primarily, but from all over the world, really, and taken jobs from American workers; and, again, we will talk about that. But those people are also victims of our open borders policy, and their lives deserve to be critiqued, and their problems deserve to be identified, especially in this body that allows this kind of a thing to go on. But first we are going to talk a little bit about the people who have been victimized by violent crime perpetrated by people who have come here illegally or have fled this country for the safe haven of Mexico and other countries that will not extradite them to the United States. The first one I might mention is a gentleman by the name of Kris Eggle. I mentioned him before. I told my colleagues that we are going to have, on September 10 and 11 that week, we are going to be holding a series of events; and on that evening of September 10 we will be holding a dinner honoring Mr. Eggle. We are handing out an award in his name. This will be an award given to someone who has served this Nation faithfully in a law enforcement capacity and who has either given his or her life in that quest or has done something extraordinary to help defend the Nation's borders. The murder of Kris Eggle. He was a park ranger in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona. It happened on August 9, 2002. It was very little noted by the media. We brought it to the attention of this body, this particular crime. I tried over and over again; and, finally, we did get some attention paid to it. I went to Mr. Eggle's funeral. He was 28 years old. I went to his funeral in Arizona, and I saw his family. I saw their tears, and I saw the tears of his colleagues, and I wept with them. He was a young man cut down in his prime, killed by an illegal alien who crossed the border for the purpose of evading the law in Mexico after they had committed several murders there in some sort of drug-related deal. Mr. Eggle was a valedictorian and an Eagle Scout who joined the National Park Service because he loved the outdoors. Organ Pipe, by the way, is considered to be the most dangerous of the national park system. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 illegal aliens and 700,000 pounds of drugs were intercepted in the park in 2001. Now that just gives us a hint of the volume of both the traffic in drugs and the traffic in people through that area, just that one area of our border. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 interdicted, 700,000 pounds of drugs. Can we imagine how much got by? I mean, they always estimate that at least five get by of every one person that gets intercepted at the border. A million people just through this area in one year. God knows how much illegal drugs were also moved through that particular area. Remember, just a tiny little area on our southern border. Imagine what that means across the whole border and across the northern border, 5,000 miles of border. The Eggle family is determined that the death will not be forgotten by working for real border control. Well, I commit myself and have committed myself to help the Eggles to do everything I possibly can to keep this young man's memory alive. Let us go on. There are others. There are many others. I am going to go through quite a few this evening. Because I want their memories to remain alive, and I want their families to know that somebody does care, and that somebody, many people in this body, hopefully, are going to join me to try to do something about this, to stop it, to make sure it does not happen to other Americans. David Nadel, a familiar community activist in Berkeley, California, owned the popular Ashkenaz dance club that featured eclectic music such as zydeco, cajun, klezmer and the blues. In 1996 he was murdered in the club by an apparent illegal alien Mexican named Juan Rivera Perez, whom Nadel had earlier ejected for harassing other patrons. Perez was in Ashkenaz as part of an English as a Second Language program graduation party. Police believe Perez escaped to Mexico, which is famously unhelpful in extraditing violent criminals. Despite the outcry from law enforcement and from victims and the press, our government does not insist on normal compliance in law enforcement from Mexican authorities. This is a theme we are going to revisit over and over in the lives of the people I am going to talk about here and in the crimes. They have gone to Mexico. They will not send them back here. Mexico first started out saying that if they faced the death penalty in the United States, they would not send them back because that was cruel and unusual punishment. They have now decided that even life imprisonment in the United States is cruel and unusual punishment. Let me say clearly that it presents this picture of Mexico with this benevolent society with a very sort of progressive, if you will, attitude about criminal justice. I will tell my colleagues this, Mr. Speaker. It is not uncommon at all that people get executed in Mexico for committing certain crimes. The difference is oftentimes the police do not wait for a trial to execute the perpetrator or even the alleged perpetrator. So it is not that they have this sort of attitude that, again, we have to be much more liberal in the way we treat criminals than in the United States. They could not care less how we treat criminals. Frankly, what they are doing, Mr. Speaker, is trying to use this as a way to leverage the United States into coming up with a ``migration accord,'' something that many people in this body care about a great deal, have tried many times, as a matter of fact, to get past a migration accord. Now, what is this migration accord? It is simply an agreement between the United States and Mexico that certain people are hoping for that will, in fact, eventually create amnesty for all the people living here illegally, and the government of Mexico wants that so they use every kind of trick they can imagine to get us to do it, including the use of the extradition treaty with the United States and making it more difficult to get people back here to actually serve for their crimes. Another case of justice denied, the murderer of a Phoenix high school student, Tanee Natividad, merely crossed the border into Mexico to escape law enforcement, her murder. A local television station was able to track down the murderer in a bar just a few miles across the border without much effort. Max LaMadrid had no reason to hide because the Mexican Government actually helps violent criminals escape American justice. According to Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano, action by the Mexican Supreme Court making it more difficult to extradite criminals has ``created an incentive for people to flee into Mexico as a safe harbor.'' True, Attorney General Napolitano, you have done absolutely nothing to help us change this situation, to help us address the problem. You are part of the problem. At one time Mexico would not extradite criminals who might be subject to the death penalty. Therefore, they have given a free pass to rapists, kidnappers and child molesters. In fact, the investigating reporter in this case found 100 cases of violent criminals from the Phoenix area escaping into Mexico in just a few years. Meanwhile, the grieving family of a 16-year-old Tanee gets no justice, like thousands of others in the Southwest. I want you to understand, Mr. Speaker, that for every single person I identify here, for every person whose name I bring to the attention of this body, there are literally hundreds, in fact, there are thousands and thousands of others who suffer the same sort of plight but whose names will not be brought to our attention, because for one thing, there simply is not time. We could be here for months, never once stopping in just identifying the names of the victims. But that is again what we hope to do, some of the things we hope to do on September 10 and 11 when we invite all people who have been victimized by our open borders to come to Washington, come to the Nation's Capital and express their concern, tell their story to their Representatives and to their Senators. That will be the next day's activities. On the 11th they will be visiting their Congressmen, their Senators, telling them about how they have been victimized by open borders. Mr. Speaker, we, of course, encourage everyone to go to that Web site and sign up, victimsvoice.org. Let us go on to Darlene Squires, the distraught mother of a disabled teenager, one of two girls who were raped on October 24, is pictured here on this page. Her daughter was one of two who were raped on October 21, 2002, by three members of a Salvadoran street gang located in Somerville, Massachusetts. Age 17 and 14, both victims are deaf and one has cerebral palsy. Miss Squires believed that the attacks were a retaliation against her family because her husband confronted the young men after they had harassed the Squires' son. Later reports indicated the men arrested for the crime were illegal aliens. Law enforcement officials who were concerned about increased violence from this, it is called MS-13 Gang, which was believed to have originated in part with soldiers and their families who left El Salvador. Local residents estimate the gang has more than 100 members in their community. An update a few months after the Squires crime showed that gang problem in the community has only gotten worse. The lives of many law enforcement officers have been lost at the hands of criminal and violent aliens. One such officer is David March. This is a gentleman I will talk about at some length. He was a Los Angeles County Sheriff. He was killed when he pulled over a car for a routine traffic stop. The driver was a dangerous Mexican drug dealer, Armando Garcia, which I have a picture here. Mr. Garcia had been deported twice, get that, he had been deported twice and had a long history of violent crimes. After shooting Sheriff March twice in the head, Garcia was able to escape and is believed to be in Mexico where officials refuse to send him back for trial. Garcia is also wanted for two attempted murders. The Attorneys General of all 50 States wrote to Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell to demand action on the extradition issue. Now, I want to go back and explain, deported twice. This means he simply came back across the border each time, and time and again this happens. This is not unique. This is not an aberration. That is my point in bringing this out. If this were something that happened, a horrible, tragic situation that we can say, well, gee, goodness knows that does not happen a lot. It happens all the time. It happens literally thousands of times across this country. This is the gentleman, Armando Garcia, who shot Sheriff March when he walked up to the car, then got out and shot him twice more in the head. I visited with Mrs. March not too long ago. I went to the memorial that is on a rather nondescript street in an industrial area in Los Angeles. Hundreds of thousands of cars traveling by all the time, every month or so and thousands of cars a day; and I do not know how many even notice this small memorial that is on the side of the street. But Mrs. March goes by all the time. And she stops and she gets out and she kneels down, and she says a prayer for her husband and the father of her child. And she says a prayer that her husband's killer will be extradited back to the United States and face justice so she can begin to put her life in order and put this event behind her, if you ever can, of course. I visited that place with her and she shed tears and I shed tears. And these incidents, as I say, point out that the statistics need to be reinforced with real names and real faces so that people understand they are not just numbers. And that these people have actually experienced what they have experienced as a result of policies either adopted by this body and this government or policies we refuse to adopt, policies that would actually begin to secure the border. It is certainly true, Mr. Speaker, that even if we did everything possible to secure our borders, even if we did everything we could possibly do, that things like this still may happen. Certainly they will. People may still be able to get across the border. Surely that is true. We will never be able to secure it 100 percent, but I guarantee you this, at least we will be able to say to Mrs. March and all of the other families of all of the other victims that we have tried everything we can do to protect them and their loved ones. We cannot say that today. In all good conscience we cannot say that today. Now, compared with many others we have identified who suffered violent crime, Barbara Vidlak got off easy and was just a victim of identity theft. Still you would not want her problems. The rip-off of her Social Security number by an illegal immigrant has caused Barbara's phone to be turned off, loss of health insurance for her two children, as well as extra money out of her pocket for credit checks and expenses such as lost time at work. She has also had to act as a detective to track down the culprit who filled her life with turmoil and stress. The reporting on this crime is notable for its relentless sympathy for the perpetrator, even when the damage to the victim is obvious for all to see. Rather than note how illegal immigration is not a victimless crime, reported Cindy Gonzalez, ``an immigrant rights activist'' who says that in some ways both women are victims, both Ms. Vidlak and the person who stole her identity. No, I would tell the immigrants rights activist, that is absolutely and patently untrue. Ms. Vidlak is the aggrieved party. She is the victim, not the perpetrator, not the person who stole her identity. How about 18-year-old Tricia Taylor of Detroit? She was in court in December of 2002 to hear the plea of the illegal alien who caused her to lose both legs above the knees. Jose Carcamo was driving under the influence of alcohol and speeding when he drove over a curb and smashed Taylor into a wall. One report stated that Carcamo had 17 violations since 1995. Another noted he was drag racing at the time of the crash. It was agreed that the car was traveling between 50 and 75 miles per hour on a street posted for 25 miles per hour. Taylor's companion, Noah Menard, suffered a fractured skull and collar bone, as well as requiring 8 pins to reconstruct her mangled elbow. The INS has twice begun deportation proceedings to return him to El Salvador, but regrettably did not follow through. Carcamo will be out of jail in a few years, but Tricia Taylor faces a lifetime of pain and disability because of another failure of the INS to remove a dangerous alien. Another American stymied in pursuit of justice for a murder trial is Ron Cornell. His son Joey was killed by Gonzalo Villalobos who escaped to Mexico and like so many others is being protected by the Mexican Government's refusal to extradite. At one point, Gonzalo Villalobos' whereabouts in El Salvador were known precisely, but there is no extradition cooperation with that nation either. You all remember perhaps that after the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 the United States sent $110 million in disaster relief to El Salvador, but they will not even talk to us about an extradition treaty. In June 2002, four residents of Whidbey Island in Washington were the shooting victims of a Jamaican national who was evidently frustrated that his plans had been ruined to get a green card through a marriage to an American woman. Preston Dean Douglas angered his girlfriend Holly Swartz because he sexually abused her 7-year-old daughter. When Holly moved herself and her child into her mother's house, Douglas reacted by shooting Holly, her mother, Marjorie Monnet, the mother of eight children, Marjorie's son Bruce, and Bruce's girlfriend, Sierra Klug. Holly and Marjorie were killed. Bruce and Sierra survived. Douglas shot and killed himself. Reportedly Douglas was in the country illegally, though he was working as a bouncer at a local Chinese restaurant. One day after New Year's 2003, 6-year-old Jose Soto was riding his bike around the parking lot in his parents' apartment house when he was struck and severely injured by a man backing out in a red truck. Witnesses were shocked when the man stopped and pulled the child from under the truck and roughly threw him aside before speeding off. At this writing, Jose is in critical condition in the Houston hospital and the perpetrator is believed to be on his way to Mexico, if not already there. The man's name was released a few days later, Jose Ines Morales. As noted above, once a criminal has reached Mexico, he has effectively alluded the law permanently. Sister Helen Chaska was murdered in late September 2002 by being strangled with her rosary beads. The beads were found embedded in her neck. She was also raped, as was another nun who accompanied Sister Helen during walking prayers. Both women were in Klamath Falls, Oregon, doing missionary work when the crimes occurred. Her accused murderer is Maximiliano Esparza, who is in the United States illegally. He was convicted of 1988 of robbery and kidnapping in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and he was released in 1992 and was on probation until 1995. By law, this man should have been deported to Mexico after his release in 1992. Instead, the INS allowed him to remain in the United States and commit even more heinous crimes. By the way, I want to harken back a moment to statistics I gave earlier. Right now, there are approximately 400,000 people who have been ordered to be deported; that is to say, they have somehow gotten themselves afoul of the law. They have gotten into the criminal justice system, and they have been found guilty by a court. Usually, this is an immigration court, and they have been ordered deported. Now they are supposed to leave from the courtroom and go right into the hands of the INS and be deported to their country of origin, but we do not, in fact, deport people very often, and the INS really does not pay an awful lot of attention, so that 400,000 of the millions who have gone through this process are now walking around the United States. Eighty thousand of those, at least 80,000 of those are criminals who are violent criminals, felons, rapists, murderers, robbers, walking around our streets because the INS failed to do their job, committing crimes like the ones I am going through here. It has been a decade since Oregon State trooper Bret Clodfelter was murdered by an illegal alien, but the crime has not been forgotten. Trooper Clodfelter of Klamath Falls had arrested three Mexican men for being drunk and disorderly, then offered them a ride and was murdered for his generosity. The prosecutor sought the death penalty, but one dissenting juror meant Francisco Manzo-Hernandez got life in prison instead. To add to the tragedy, Clodfelter's widow Rene committed suicide a year after her husband was murdered. The couple had been married just over a month when her husband was murdered. Officer Sheila Herring was lost to a bullet from an illegal alien in an early morning altercation at a Norfolk bar on January 16. The accused man, Mario Roberto Keen, a citizen of Jamaica, had reportedly shot a man in the bar after the police were called. When several officers arrived, Keen opened fire and shot Officer Herring, who died later in surgery. Keen was shot and killed at the scene. He had been sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1990 for the selling of cocaine and was later deported but somehow got back into the United States. Imagine that. Keen attempted to reenter the United States again in 1997, was reportedly barred from entering. It is not known when Keen was successful in entering the United States, but he did get back in. He got back in time to kill Sheila Herring. From all accounts she was an excellent police officer, loved her job. She had been a cop in Detroit for 10 years before moving to Virginia. She was 39, had an 18-year-old daughter. Angie Morfin of Salinas, California, testified before the House Immigration Subcommittee in June, 1999, about the murder of her 13- year-old son by an illegal alien gangster. Her boy Ruben was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot down by a Mexican who escaped to Mexico. Her testimony also noted how the Latino community in her town wants immigration laws enforced, particularly to deal with the problem of illegal gangs that are responsible for a lot of violent criminal activity. Since her son's murder, Angie Morfin has spoken out about the need for more border patrol agents and other enforcement to make her community safer so no other mother must suffer the loss she has. Thirteen-year-old Laura Ayala went missing in March, 2002, taken just a few feet from her home in Houston. At this writing there is no child, no body, although blood identified as being hers was identified in 2002 in the car of a man believed to be connected with her abduction. Because of some evidence that she had been taken to Mexico, part of the search has been there. One complication was that Houston's policy of sanctuary, now get this, Mr. Speaker, Houston's policy of sanctuary which disallows police from investigating a person's citizenship status is in effect. Illegal alien Walter Alexander Sorto was in police hands for traffic tickets but could not be deported because of the sanctuary policy of the city of Houston. He is believed to be connected in Laura Ayala's disappearance which occurred several months after the ticket problem. Houston police officer John Nickell testified before Congress about how sanctuary laws inhibit the effectiveness of beat cops to deal with criminals and to prevent crime. Let me talk about this sanctuary policy for just a moment, because we had a fascinating vote on the House floor not too many nights ago. It was in the debate over the first appropriations bill for the Homeland Security Department, and I brought to the floor an amendment. The amendment said simply this, that if any city, like Houston, refuses to cooperate with the INS, has this sanctuary policy, then they could not apply for funds under the Homeland Security Act and any grant from any agency covered by the Homeland Security Department. Now, I remind my colleagues that any city wishing to obtain the grant, all they have to do, of course, is to change this policy of sanctuary for people who are breaking the law and living here illegally, but this amendment went down. I think we got 102 votes out of 435 votes, amazing, amazing as it was to me certainly that we could not even get a majority of the people in this body to agree that the laws that we have already passed in the United States should be enforced. Amazing. The danger on the highway from truckloads of illegal aliens in border areas has been increasing drastically. It is not unusual for a van full of aliens to speed down the road in the wrong direction, avoiding American law enforcement, causing death and injury to both American citizens and foreigners. One of the worst examples took place near San Diego June 25, 2002, where seven people were killed, at least 31 injured when a van tried to avoid a border checkpoint by turning the lights off and speeding against oncoming traffic in the wrong lane. Larry S. Baca of Albuquerque was killed when his Ford was smashed head-on by the immigrant van and knocked airborne. On March 10, 2003, two men were killed and 20 people injured when a stolen truck loaded with illegal aliens tried to outrun American authorities. Dana Pevia was kidnapped from her North Carolina school bus stop in 1999 when she was only 11. In March, 2003, she was able to escape her captivity in Mexico and visit the American consulate in Guadalajara. The officials there contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and, through them, reached Dana's mother Wanda. Wanda returned home a few days later with her two children. The apparent kidnapper Hector Frausto, a Mexican construction worker, was arrested in North Carolina on March 27. Dana was evidently forcibly kept captive by his family in Mexico for much of that time. She was only able to get away because she had the help of a sympathetic neighbor. The unasked question is why the obvious suspect's family in Mexico was not investigated for 4 years. Was the unhelpful Mexican legal system being obstructionist yet again? Then there was the Marti family. Sean, just 24 years old, and his daughter Sage, who was 5 months old, were killed February 27 by a drunk driver, illegal alien, who was driving the wrong way on Highway 84 in Idaho. Natalie Marti was in a coma after the head-on crash and returned slowly to waking consciousness over a period of weeks. With coma victims, full mental functioning and memory can take much longer. She had attended college in Boise where she and Sean managed an apartment complex. Edgar Vasquez Hernandez, who worked as a house framer, was charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of aggravated driving. Court records show Hernandez was intoxicated at the time of the crash. That story is repeated over and over and over again. Maria Suarez was only 16 and living in Los Angeles when she was sold for $200 to a 68-year-old man, Anselmo Covarrubias, who presented himself in the neighborhood as a brujo, a magician. He raped and abused her, utilizing brainwashing where he had said he had powers of the devil, as he had done to many Mexican girls. He held them in virtual slavery. Another woman bludgeoned Mr. Covarrubias to death, and Suarez hid the weapon but was not directly involved in the killing. Still, she served 22 years in prison and is slated to be released within a year. Phoenix police officer Robert Sitek was shot four times during a traffic stop altercation with an illegal alien that became violent. He and his partner David Thwing were on routine patrol when a red truck cut off their squad car. When the officers stopped the truck, the driver began shooting. Officer Sitek was in cardiac arrest by the time he reached the hospital and lost a considerable amount of blood. Shooter Francisco A. Gallardo was a Mexican citizen who had recently completed a 7-year prison term for aggravated assault. He had been deported after his release but had returned to Arizona. He was shot and killed as he tried to escape by Officer Thwing. David Lazarus, a familiar name to the readers of the San Francisco Chronicle business pages, and the reporter appears occasionally on television news shows like This Week In Northern California on the local PBS affiliate. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time for this evening, and I will return with stories of many, many more people who are victims of our porous borders.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I first of all want to start off my comments tonight by saying I guess I am pleased to say and proud to say that there is a young man that I want to pay tribute to for just a moment, and his name is Randy Gifford. He is in California right now. He has had a number of really very exciting things happen in the near past because one is that he had his first child. He and his dear wife have given birth to a young boy by the name of Gabriel, and that was just the beginning of a lot of really good things that have been happening to them recently; and in fact I just found out a little bit ago that he had his first film, the first film that he has written and directed accepted to be debuted at the Breckenridge Film Festival in Colorado, and I have no doubt that this talented young man will soon be looking back at this particular accomplishment as the first step in a journey that is going to be a very successful one and one that he can look back on with great pride. I look at it with great pride because he is my son. I wanted to discuss a number of things tonight, and so many issues come to the fore, so many important decisions need to be made by this Congress and so many challenging issues confront us that it is hard to pick from this panoply of different agendas which one we should focus on. I certainly will talk about immigration. It is always a topic that I think needs to be discussed and needs to be dealt with in the light of day, but before that let me just talk about a couple of other things. And I listened to my colleagues on the other side tonight discuss their concerns with regard to Iraq, and really a lot of what they said boiled down to a concern, I guess, over the veracity of the administration and whether our goals, the goals of the United States as set out by the President of the United States were legitimate. Was the President being truthful? Was this some sort of scam, I guess, that was being played on the American public? To actually put men and women of this country, our young men and women who serve us so well in the Armed Forces, would we really place them at risk if we were not sure, if we did not believe with all our hearts that the vital interests of the United States were at risk? And I certainly understand that there can be questions about the authenticity of information that we received, whether or not the information that was received from all the various sources from which we gathered information were legitimate and what weight we should have put on some sources and some decisions as opposed to others. All that is of course legitimate fodder for discussion and debate. At a certain point it does sound, as I listened to my friends on the other side talk about this issue, that there is something that motivates them that perhaps goes beyond that desire for a legitimate understanding of exactly what happened and what were the circumstances that brought us to where we are today. I must admit to a certain extent it does seem like what is underlying the rhetoric is an overwhelming desire to find something wrong, to find something out that is bad, that is negative, that would perhaps lead to some sort of political change in this Nation, and that at some point in time it does sound to me like that desire supersedes all of the other desires and that the quest for legitimate inquiry is left behind in the dust and the desire to make political hay takes hold. And there is so much that can be said, and there are so many little technical points here and there; and I think that the administration and especially Secretary Rumsfeld, who I saw on television over the weekend, had done such a great job in explaining in very simple terms, in very common sense ways, in very honest analysis what we believe to be the case, how we got the information we got, how that information led to a series of decisions that eventually meant a commitment of U.S. forces in Iraq. By the way, those of us who are in the position having to vote to support that decision, none of us come to that place, I think, easily. Certainly I know I did not. I do not think there is a Member of this Congress, frankly, who cavalierly cast a vote on something like that. And all of us wonder, and certainly I do, whenever I have to cast a vote to send someone's children off to war, I have to think about whether or not I am willing to send my son Randy or his brother Ray, and this is the highest possible standard I can imagine for any of us; but it is the standard we should all use because of course it is perhaps somewhat easier to vote to send someone else's children off to war than it is one's own; so we have to think about this very carefully: Am I willing to do this? Are the risks to the Nation so great that we would actually commit our forces? I believed, and I still believe, that the risks were that great. But it was not easy. It was not easy. Because I do not for a moment think that American power should be projected around the world in a cavalier fashion; and I believe that, for the most part, this country, under this President, has committed American troops only after it became apparent that that was the only option available to us and that it was in the pursuit of legitimate and laudable goals, both in the defense of the United States and the liberation of the people of Iraq. Interestingly, we see e-mails from the troops on the ground in Iraq, we see alternate sources of news, I guess I should say, on the Internet and even some of the popular media that portray a completely different picture of what is going on in Iraq today than what the popular media portrays. Every day the popular media suggests that things are falling apart in Iraq, that our involvement there is not turning out to be a positive thing. And certainly, every day, the most unfortunate news that we receive is that some American has either been hurt or wounded, hurt or killed in Iraq, and this is, especially to the family of those folks who have been wounded or killed, this is the ultimate in the sacrifice that this Nation has made and has asked them to make. So for them, it is everything. We must, however, try to put it in perspective and understand what it is that we are trying to gain, what it is that we are trying to do there and who the enemy really is. And that is a very, very wide- ranging question, who the enemy really is and what it is we are trying to accomplish. But I think that the goals were laudable. I believe that our President operated with the best information available to him and made a decision and, although a very difficult one, I believe he made it with his heart in the right place. Not too long ago, Mr. Speaker, I heard of an exchange between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Archbishop of Canterbury; and, in a way, I think this exchange sums up in a very succinct way what it is that motivates America today and what has motivated America for most of its history in terms of any sort of foreign policy goals. I think we can be proud of what it is that we have either accomplished or are trying to accomplish. Because it is not for territorial gain. It is not for any sort of economic gain. It is not for that that America extends its power around the world, or projects its power around the world, or risks its men and women. And in this exchange that I mentioned, I think again it characterizes it better than I ever, ever could in any other words. The Archbishop of Canterbury said to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and I am having to paraphrase here, because I do not have the exact quote, but it was very close to this. He said, isn't it true, Mr. Secretary, that the war in Iraq is nothing more than a desire on the part of the United States to extend its hegemony around the world and to maybe even, as an imperialistic power, gain control of other lands and places and people? And Secretary of State Powell said, Archbishop, you know, over the last hundred years or so, the United States has sent its young men and women off to defend freedom in far-off lands all over the world, and many of them did not come back. And the only thing we ever asked for in return, he said, the only land we ever wanted in return for that expenditure of our blood was the land necessary to bury the folks who did not return. And I think that is the truth about America. I think that it is something that we can be proud of. It is unfortunate that lives have to be expended in the quest for our own peace and security, but that is the nature of this world. I do believe with all my heart that we are in another very, very dangerous and very challenging battle, and it may be called a clash of civilizations. I happen to believe that it is. There are many people who would challenge that, I am sure, and want to characterize what is happening is as just a series of small engagements here and there brought about by individuals who have ``hijacked a religion.'' I believe it is more serious than that, and I believe that the battle is bigger than that. I believe it is a clash of civilizations. I believe western civilization is, in fact, at stake. The values, the principles that we stand for are being challenged around the world, and they are at risk. And it is extremely important for Americans to understand what is at risk and why we fight. Because if it is not for what I have just said, then the fight may be in vain and lives expended for naught. But if the fight is for what I suggest it is, then it is worth the endeavor. It is even worth the thought that we have to send our own off to war. Now what worries me about the kind of discussion we have had on the floor tonight and has been happening almost every week certainly for the last several weeks by members of the other party is that in a way, as I say, to the extent that they are trying to simply make sure that the decisions that were made were good ones or what information we may have made those decisions upon was faulty or good, all of that is appropriate, and I do not for a moment suggest that it should not be a discussion on the floor of the House. But after a while it begins to play into the hands of those people who, in fact, do hope for the demise of this civilization and of our country in particular, because we represent its best and brightest hope. So it is important for us, after all the rhetoric is done, all of the partisan snipes have been made, sniping has been made, that we revisit this basic underlying fact: that there is a challenge to the United States of America and to western civilization. It is posed by radicals, Islamists, people who cannot see a world in which they can coexist with western ideals, the ideals of individual freedom, the rule of law, and the ability for men and women to select from whatever they want to select from to follow, the dictates of their heart when it comes to a religion that they choose to adhere to. These things are true. The evidence is there. Thousands of Americans are dead in this battle and are dead at the hands of the people who are trying to accomplish what I have just described, the overthrow of western civilization and of the United States in particular. So please keep that in mind. Let us put this in perspective. The threat is real. The challenge is enormous. And it is incumbent upon every one of us to tell America what is at stake. It is incumbent upon every one of us to talk about the values that we should cherish and, for the most part, do cherish. It is incumbent upon the President and the Members of this body to tell the American people that there are things, in fact, worth defending, that there are principles worth risking life and limb for. And this thing in Iraq, this battle in Iraq is just a battle in a war, a war that is going to be fought for a long time, a war that will claim many more lives, unfortunately, and depressingly. But that is the truth, and not facing it head on leaves us open to a very, I think, corrosive sort of influence that I hope we can avoid. Because, in fact, as I say, the stakes are great. The risk is great. So it is important I think for us all to put that into perspective when we listen to the rhetoric of our friends on the other side of the aisle. Western civilization and America in particular is worth fighting for. It is worth saving. It is the best and greatest hope of mankind, I believe. And people should be willing to say that here on this floor and from the White House and in the media. It is worth fighting for. Now, let me go on to several other topics, if I could. When we talk about what is worth fighting for and where to commit American troops, there is another issue that is developing right now and it is the debate over whether or not we should be sending troops to Liberia as ``peacekeepers.'' Well, there is not a lot of peace in Liberia to keep right now. We would have to create it. This is the difference. I mean, we have to ask ourselves. This is the question that I think is incredibly legitimate: What are the vital interests of the United States that are at stake in Liberia? Is it a place of great human rights abuses? It is undeniably that. Are there places throughout the world where those abuses are just as great if not greater? Undeniably so. Are there places on the African continent where human rights abuses are even greater than in Liberia? Absolutely so. I think, of course, immediately of Sudan, a country with which I have some intimate knowledge, having traveled there, having been the sponsor of the Sudan Peace Act and having committed as much as any other Member of this Congress to bringing an end to that conflict in that war-torn nation. But never in the discussion of the problems in Sudan did I ever suggest putting American troops in there because, of course, I could not see that, in fact, it did rise to that level, that it rose to the level of a situation that placed American vital interests at stake. I want to do everything I can, everything possible to bring an end to the conflict there and an end to the conflict in Liberia. But American troops I do not believe should go there. I do not believe that American troops should have been used in Bosnia. I would not have voted for it. I must admit to my colleagues that I believed it was an adventure that we should not have embarked upon, even though there were horrendous atrocities there. I did not see where it was in the interests of the United States. What was the threat from Bosnia to the United States? I do not believe it existed. And do we do what we can to help logistically? Do we send materials? Do we send aid? Absolutely. I think that is a laudable goal, again. But it does not rise to the level that I mentioned earlier, which is what I need to tell me whether or not I will vote to send American men and women and/or my own children off to war. So I hope we do not commit troops in Liberia, Mr. Speaker. I hope that we will do what we can. I hope we will provide what we can to the members of the African Union, or to ECOFS, the Economic Community of African States. I believe we should, in fact, do what we can to support them logistically, but I do not believe that troops are necessary there or even would be a good thing for the region. Today as we see over and over again by reports continually coming back to us even though there are people today in Liberia saying that they want Americans there, many of those same folks would, I fear, in a short time be saying that they want Americans out and be doing things in order to effect that eventual end. So I want an end to the fighting. I want to do what we can. I would not sends troops there, and I hope we do not. Now, that is the kind of foreign policy discussion and I could certainly go on at length about each one of these things, but because this is that hour where we sometimes have to share the last hour with another speaker, my time has been cut in half so I want to get on to two more things, and these are on the domestic-policy sides of things. I wanted to really make a couple of comments about some things that are happening that are, I think, again, worthy of note and certainly issues that are becoming quite controversial in the United States. Now, we have had a lot of discussion recently about a new provision for Medicare that adds $400 billion or so, it could go up to what those people suggest is a trillion dollars in cost, to add prescription benefits to the Medicare plan. And I am a ``no'' vote, and I do believe that it is not the right thing to do. I do not believe we should expand this program. I believe that Medicare itself is a program that is in desperate need of reform and the amount of reform that comes with the bill that we talked about earlier, that we passed on this floor earlier, the amount of reform is rather small. The amount of mandates for a new program, mandatory spending is really high. I just do not think it balances out, but I think there is a way to achieve a reduction in the costs of prescription drugs for every senior in the United States and that is to allow reimportation. What does that mean? It means that in Canada and Mexico and other countries around the world, drugs are being sold, exactly the same drugs are being sold at much lower prices than any American is able to buy them at their drug store or pharmacy. So how does that happen? It happens that the countries on both sides of the United States have laws that restrict the amount that can be charged for drugs. And so you say to yourself, well, then why are the pharmaceutical companies selling drugs in those countries? Well, they are making a profit they say, but not enough of a profit to support all of the research that needs to be done and all of the advertising that is being done on television in the United States to push their drugs. Well, I must tell you that I think that is not a legitimate excuse for having the cost of one drug be $1 in one country and $20 in the other for a single pill. And I want to let the market dictate the actual cost of the drugs and the profit to the companies, and so I would allow for reimportation. Well, let me tell you what has happened recently. The pharmaceutical companies have put on a full court press here because the possibility is that this idea of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), he has been the primary sponsor of this concept for quite some time. And because it is finally coming to the floor, it is finally raising up to a level where people can begin to think about the possibility of it passing, the drug companies are going ballistic. And they have gone out and sought out all kinds of friends that would not have necessarily thought would have been supporters of their side of the coin. Earlier this week, the Traditional Values Coalition, an organization in which I am certainly familiar and in the past have been supportive, they sent out a letter stating that the passage of this Gutknecht bill I was telling you about, the drug reimportation bill, would effectively repeal the prohibition on mailing abortion products around the world. Now, they say that it would allow abortion-inducing drugs to be mailed from international locations to individuals in the United States who are not pharmacists or doctors. These unscrupulous individuals would then be free to mail these abortion-producing drugs throughout the Nation to our daughters without parental knowledge. This is a direct quote from the mailing that went out from the Traditional Values Coalition who I believe, I must tell you, Mr. Speaker, I believe they have been co-opted here. And I just wonder to what extent they have actually benefited as a result of their decision to come in in opposition to the reimportation bill. Have they benefited financially? I would like to see whether or not this has been the case, because my hunch is they have. These mailers were sent out in en masse in a congressional district of a number of Members, myself included, who are and have always been and will continue to be staunchly pro-life. I have a 100 percent voting record on pro-life issues. The gentleman from Minnesota's (Mr. Gutknecht) bill, which the Traditional Values Coalition has characterized as the Abortion Drug Importation Act, is a pharmaceutical market access bill, completely separate from other Federal laws which govern the administration and distribution of specific drugs. In fact, if the Gutknecht bill passes, RU-486, the abortion bill, will still be governed by the same distribution regulations it currently falls under. The idea that under the Gutknecht bill pregnant teenagers would be able to mail in for a bottle of RU-486 pills as if they were aspirin is political scare- mongering of the worst and lowest kind. Now, I have seen the disinformation mailings that the Traditional Values Coalition is sending out. And in addition to being ridiculously disingenuous, they are also very slick, very expensive, which begs the question: Who is really behind these efforts? The Traditional Values Coalition has obtained huge pro-life voting lists which have to be purchased to be used by other groups, and targeted conservative pro- life Members who are in competitive races. Their tactics are reprehensible, immoral, unethical, and belie the name of the group. In fact, their actions represent anything but traditional values. There are, in fact, legitimate arguments to be made both for and against the merits of reimportation, but it is ludicrous to suggest that it is somehow an abortion issue. I simply wanted to bring that to the attention of the body tonight, Mr. Speaker, because I believe with all my heart in the concept of, I am a pro-life Member of this body and I believe in protecting life at its earliest beginning, at conception. And I have voted that way, and I want that to be the culture of this country; I want us to be a pro-life Nation. And I worry that actions like this taken by the Traditional Values Coalition actually hurt that effort because it places the coalition, I think, in a light that it should not be seen in, does not want to be seen in. I think it implies that they are willing to actually profit from the discussion of this, and they want to profit even if they have to fudge the facts a little bit. And it does not help them, and it does not help our cause. So I am going to join with other Members of the pro-life coalition in the House of Representatives to denounce this activity on the part of the Traditional Values Coalition and to say in no uncertain terms that this kind of lobbying is absolutely unacceptable, and it is certainly at the least disingenuous. That is the first of the domestic policy issues. And then I suppose to no one's surprise, the final domestic policy issue with which I want to deal tonight is, of course, immigration. I want to spend a little time, the remaining time I have, as a matter of fact, on the discussion of one specific aspect of immigration and that is the toll that massive immigration is taking on the jobs of Americans, both low-skilled, low- wage jobs and high-skilled, high-wage jobs, spending a little time on the latter, H1B visas in particular. H1B visas, I will be using that term quite a bit, and let me explain what that means. An H1B visa is simply a category of visa that we hand out to people all over the world so that they can come to the United States for a specific purpose. In this case, the H1B visas were created specifically for sort of high-tech or white collar workers who were ostensibly needed in the United States because that industry was growing, as you recall, the bubble was expanding dramatically and everybody and their brother was making money at it; and there was a lot of employment and many of the firms came to us, many of the very high- tech firms came to this Congress and said, we have to have more people. We cannot fill the jobs we have here in the computer sciences, computer technology, high-tech jobs; we cannot fill them with people coming out of our colleges because there just are not enough. There are not enough of them so we need to go outside the country and bring people in here for a certain period of time until we can actually fill the job with an American citizen, and so Congress responded and created something called the H-1B visa. It was expanded in 1999 when the Congress raised the cap to 195,000 a year from its previous level of about 65,000. In 2000, Congress enacted the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act which expanded the program again, contained few protections for American workers. Congress was persuaded at the time that there was a critical shortage of computer scientists, software engineers and programmers. Even if that were true and I would tell my colleagues that now we are finding out that maybe that was not as accurate as we had hoped, maybe some of the testimony that was provided by companies like Sun Microsystems when they testified to the Senate and said that they really needed these people and that they would never displace American workers, apparently it sort of I guess was not true. They are now saying, no, that they did, in fact, replace American workers and did so because essentially foreign workers will work for less. Whatever was the case in 1998, 1996 in terms of the need for this particular program, no shortage exists today in the program. No program shortage exists in terms of the supply of labor for the high-tech industries in America, does not exist. It is not there. No one can suggest that there are no American workers today who are seeking jobs in the high-tech field because we know that that is not true. We know that as a matter of fact that the area that has been hit hardest by the drop in the dot com bubble, the burst of that dot com bubble I should say, where unemployment ranges maybe 7 to 7.5 percent, there is massive unemployment and underemployment of American workers in the computer field. The number of H-1B visas is supposedly limited by a cap, but that cap is often exceeded through loopholes and extensions, and beginning in 2000, all universities and nonprofits were exempted from the cap. In 1998, the cap was supposed to be 65,000. Do my colleagues know how many actually came in? Two hundred and five thousand. In 1999, the cap was 115,000. Do my colleagues know how many we took in? Two hundred and thirty-four thousand. In the year 2000, the cap was 115,000. We took in 294,000. In 2001, the cap was 107,000. We took in 384,000. In 2002, when the cap went to 195,000, we took in 294,100. In 2000, Congress added an exemption for universities and nonprofits. As I say, in the 2 years of 2001 and 2002, 342,000 H-1B visas were issued in this category. If we add to this number the number of visas already issued not yet up for renewal, it is clear that there are well over 600,000 H-1B visa holders employed in 2002. There are a number of problems with the program as it has been operated since it was expanded in 1998. Do we need the program? Is the program based on valid analysis of real labor market conditions? I would say it is not adequately tied to demonstrated labor shortages in the fields of computer science and technology. In fact, in 1996, the Department of Labor's Inspector General found that the program does not protect workers' jobs. It allows aliens to immigrate based on attachment to a specific job and then shops their services in competition with equally or more qualified workers without regard to the prevailing wage. All of these things they are supposed to not be able to do. They are not supposed to be able to dislocate any American worker. They are not supposed to be able to pay anything less than the going wage, but in fact, it has happened continuously and indiscriminately. The Department of Labor's certification program does not meet its intent of excluding foreign workers when qualified, willing, U.S. workers are available. In 2000, a report by the National Research Council concluded that there is no analytical base on which to set the proper level of H-1B visas and that decisions to increase or reduce the cap on such visas are fundamentally political. Continuing cries of shortages come from high-tech industry lobbyists, yet academic and government studies fail to find evidence of any shortage. A National Research Council report in 2001 concluded that the H-1B visas have an adverse impact on wage levels. According to estimates among professionals in the field, there are at least 800,000 unemployed and underemployed computer technicians and programmers in the United States of America. Could it be that there is a relationship between this number and the 1,300,000 plus H-1B visas now in this country? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report that unemployment among electronics engineers has soared to 7 percent. Among computer hardware engineers the rate is 6.5 percent. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers says that these employees lost 241,000 jobs over the past 2 years, and computer scientists and systems analysts lost 175,000 jobs. One of the Nation's leading academic experts on the computer science industry, Dr. Norman Matloff of the University of California at Davis, has demonstrated that there is no shortage of U.S. workers to fill these jobs. A UCLA study cited by Dr. Matloff shows that H-1B workers are paid 30 percent less than comparable Americans, and a Cornell University Study found that this difference is 20 to 30 percent. Remember, this was started out to be a temporary program. It was supposed to be a response to a temporary labor shortage in the computer science industry. Yet, by its structure, it has become a way for foreign workers to enter our labor market and then take up permanent residence. The 3-year term of the H-1B visa can be renewed for a second 3-year term for a total of 6 years. After 3 years, the worker can begin his petition for a change in status to permanent resident, and hundreds of thousands have done that. A 6-year term is not a temporary visa, and it ought to be changed to a single 2-year term that is not renewable. In fact, this whole program ought to be abolished. There is no need for it, and you cannot prove it. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair. We have to ask ourselves, are there adequate worker protections in the H-1B visa program? All right. The present program pays lip service to worker protection, but in reality an independent study by the Department of Labor's own Inspector General has shown that these protections are a sham. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers believes that so-called safeguards to prevent employers from laying off workers and hiring H-1B employees are ineffective and limited to the employers' actions over a 90-day period prior to the hiring of H-1Bs. This 90-day rule is easily evaded and must be expanded to 6 months if the program is retained. Also, H-1B workers who are laid off must be required to return to their country of origin within 60-days. A General Accounting Office report found that the training funds appropriated and aimed at helping displaced U.S. workers are misused and benefit comparatively few U.S. workers. Lastly, are the qualifications and experiences of H-1B visa workers frequently fraudulent? That is a great question. Accusations that H-1B visa applicants often falsify their educational background and experience were verified by the State Department's Inspector General. Documents are frequently and routinely falsified. A yearlong study of the H-1B visa application from the American Consulate in India found that 45 percent of the work experience claims were fraudulent. There are places in India that they call body shops. These are simply companies that are set up for the purpose of creating these false documents, false degrees and diplomas and attaching them to the H-1B workers, sending them on. Once that worker gets here, it really does not matter because no one really comments on it, and they become part of our labor pool. The Department of Labor Inspector General has averaged 14 indictments and 11 convictions in the labor certification program each year since 1996; and believe me, that is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. The program could be amended and reformed and its major abuses corrected, but the simple fact is we do not need the program at all. It should be repealed, and I have introduced a bill to do just that. We could reduce the cap to 25,000 or 35,000; but the truth is we do not even need 10,000 new H-1B visas when we have unemployment of 7 percent among software engineers. That is why I have introduced H.R. 2688 to repeal the H-1B program. It is now in the Committee of the Judiciary, and I ask for Members' support of this measure. I also have to say that this is just an example of something that I think needs to be discussed on this floor, and the American people have to understand and we need to tell them about it. That is the fact that we have embarked, both the Congress of the United States and the administration, and this is not new, this has been a long time in coming, we have embarked upon a cheap labor program. We have decided that it is in the best interests of someone, certainly the corporations, especially the high-tech corporations, to do what is necessary to reduce the wage rates of American workers who were employed in that industry. We have testimony, we have hundreds and hundreds of examples, we have tons of empirical evidence to show that the whole H-1B program is a fraud and that the idea that it came as a result of some need that still exists is ludicrous. So why are we still doing it? Why do we allow the 1 million or more H-1B visa holders who are living here essentially illegally, why do we allow them to stay? One reason, Mr. Speaker. It is because the high-tech corporations of this country have opposed it. They have put a great deal of their money into lobbying against any reversal of this program and of the whole philosophy of cheap labor. Maybe it is something that we cannot avoid that we will be forced, that all American workers will be forced to lower their wages, lower their standard of living to meet the competitors around the word who are competing for these jobs. If that is it, I want somebody who believes that to stand up and tell the American people that is where we are going and they will have to take less money for what they are doing, what they want to do for the rest of their lives, the jobs they are involved in, or become underemployed or unemployed. Maybe they have to sell their homes and get a smaller house and their whole standard of living has to change because of this whole new world economy. If that is the case, and I do not believe it is, but if that is what we believe to be the case, tell the American people that is what we are doing. Do not hide it under these things called temporary worker visas that are necessary because of the great demand that exists for these jobs and the low supply of labor in the United States to fill that demand, because that is absolutely and clearly a sham. It is a lie that is untrue, and we should not continue to perpetrate that lie. We have talked about the problems with the massive immigration into this country, specifically in the area of jobs and what it has done to the labor markets. We concentrated for a long time on low-skilled, low- wage workers and what the effect of massive immigration of folks in that particular category meant to low-skilled, low-wage workers here. Guess what it is. This is not brain surgery, as they say. It is pretty simple to understand that if you bring millions of people into this country every single year who have very few skills, that they are going to compete with other low-skilled, low-wage workers in America. And these are primarily recent immigrants. But even those people who have been here for many years because, unfortunately, many times people who are in the minority communities who are stuck in these low-wage jobs, they are the most negatively affected by massive immigration because it is their jobs that are at risk, and it is their wages that go down. It is a cheap labor policy. Yet we hear from both sides of the aisle how we need to encourage this phenomenon. From the Democrats who are petrified of actually impeding the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, or legal immigrants, for fear that their voting constituent rolls would be impaired negatively, that the numbers would not be rising as quickly as they would like of potential voters for the Democratic Party, because they fear that political outcome and because a significant chunk of their supporters come from immigrant groups and immigration groups that want to expand immigration into the country, because that is the case, they will do nothing to impede this flow. On my side of the aisle there is this desire for cheap labor. We want to respond to the needs of corporations in this country that have lobbied so hard to get cheaper labor. Well, both of these agendas I think are unworthy of our efforts. Both sides of the aisle should think about something that is far more important than the immediate political future of either party, and that is the effect of this kind of massive immigration, legal and illegal, on the people of this country. Is it right and proper that our own Nation's borders should be porous so as to allow the flow of millions of people into this country to take the jobs of American citizens, to force people either to work for less money than they were working for just a few years ago or be unemployed, in order to achieve these political goals that I have just described, cheap labor and greater political benefit, greater potential voter pool? I think it is despicable, Mr. Speaker; but that is exactly where we are. That is exactly where we are because there is no other way that you can possibly explain this phenomenon. How can we explain the fact that maybe 70 percent of the population consistently tells pollsters that they are in desperate need and they have a great desire for control of immigration, for securing our borders, for even reducing the amount of legal immigration so we can actually integrate those people, the millions that have come in in the recent past? People say we are a Nation of immigrants. In this Nation's past we have had periods of high immigration, but we have had periods of very low immigration. It has been cyclical. It has not been a constantly increasing pattern since the day the Nation was founded. There are many decades with low-to-almost-nonexistent immigration in terms of the ratio of people coming and leaving, and yet the economy actually grew. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, immigration was a very small percentage of the population growth of this country, and yet we had an enormous growth rate in the productivity of the country and in the economy itself. There are many times in our Nation's history where that has happened. We do not need massive immigration to fuel economic growth. We can point to the areas, as I say, the times in the past where this economic growth has been achieved without massive immigration. We need a time- out. We need some time to actually in a way, if you will, digest the massive numbers of people that have come in and to help them get integrated into this country. That has been the process in the past. But we are abandoning that for the political goals that I have identified here. We are suggesting that we can keep the doors open forever, that our borders can and, in fact, should be erased. There are people who believe that. I want them to stand up in front of this body and defend it. I want them to say that we need to have open borders, because that is what they really want. I think that it is just, as I said earlier, about the need to tell the American people exactly what it is we are involved with even in the clash of civilizations. It is important to tell the American people what we are involved with in terms of our immigration policy and let them make the decision as to whether we are right or wrong, who is right or wrong. Maybe I am 180 degrees off base. Maybe I am completely wrong about my concerns with regard to immigration and the impact it will have on this country, the negative impact. Let us get it debated. I want somebody to stand up and say, no. In fact, we need to abolish the borders. We need to repeal all the laws on immigration. We are just a region. We are not really a country at all. Lines on the map, they have become anachronistic, not important at all; and, in fact, markets should determine the flow of goods and services and people and that is all. Markets should determine everything. Maybe they have got a case to make. Let them make it to the American people. I believe that we have a duty to the people of this Nation to tell them exactly what is at stake here, just as I said earlier about the war on terrorism, what is at stake. Mr. Speaker, I believe with all my heart that massive immigration into this country will not only determine what kind of a country we become, that is divided, balkanized or united, it will determine whether or not we will be a country, a nation, at all. There are folks who want us to simply be a place on the earth that has residents, not citizens. The whole concept of citizenship is under attack every single day. Constantly, we are seeing proposals, especially on the other side of the aisle but not uniquely from the Democrats, something from our side, too, proposals to have amnesty for people who are living here illegally, proposals to extend all kinds of benefits to people who are living here illegally, proposals to give people who are living here illegally, who have violated the laws of the land to come in, proposals to say to them, we not only will teach all of your children in K-12, we will teach them in higher education at taxpayers' expense, that we will give you driver's licenses, that we will give you social service benefits, and that we will in fact even let you vote. There are places called sanctuary cities popping up all over the country, and they are telling their police forces in these cities that they are not to cooperate with the INS in any way, shape or form. They are telling people in the community that they can come and vote if they are simply residents of the community, not citizens of the United States but simply residents of a community. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if in fact that is what we are doing, if in fact you provide all of the benefits of citizenship to people who are not citizens and in fact are not even here legally, then what in the world is the value of the word? What is the value of citizenship? It is destroyed. It means nothing. That is what is at stake here. It is not just jobs. Believe me, if you are one of the folks that is out of work, that is a pretty important issue. But it is not even the most important issue for the Nation to deal with right now. We have got to think about what is the effect of the elimination of the concept of citizenship. What does it mean when a nation abandons its own borders? What does it mean when it tells people by the millions that they should attach themselves not to the principles of the United States, the principles of western civilization but they should actually hang onto the political and cultural heritage that they came with and that they came from, they should keep it, and they should keep the language, not become immersed in an English language, not become part of the American mosaic but stay separate and distinct. How does that benefit us if our goal is to create a continuing American society revolving around the ideals on which this Nation was founded? And that is important to understand, that this country uniquely was founded on ideas, nothing else. No other country has that distinction. Ideas are the only thing that holds us together here. It is not culture, it is not language, it is not habit, not custom, none of those, not the color of our skin, not our ethnicity, none of those things do we have in common in this Nation. What holds us together is an adherence to principles. Mr. Speaker, I fear that that adherence is being destroyed in the pursuit, in this incredible desire, I call it the cult of multiculturalism that permeates our society, the cult of multiculturalism. Multicultural is a term that can be positive in many respects. You can explain how important it is to be a diverse country and the value of that and all that, and I can certainly understand that. As an Italian American, I certainly appreciate my heritage and try to pass it on to my children, but I stop far short of suggesting that that heritage has anything superior to offer to the American culture that my grandparents accepted and desired and had a strong desire to move into as quickly as possible. It is the cult of multiculturalism that permeates our society, this desire to destroy everything that is good about America, to say to children, there is nothing unique about America, nothing good about America, that every other society is as good if not better, that all cultures, no matter what they do, if they force women to be thrown on the funeral pyre of their husband, if they stone women for adultery, if they perform various operations on them. You can go on and on and on about certain things other cultures do and you can say, it's okay, it is just another culture. Mr. Speaker, I think that western civilization is superior. I do. I believe it is superior. I think it has at least as much to offer, and if you do not want to buy that, then consider it has at least to offer as any other culture in the world. There are many things that we should be prideful of, there are many things that are part of western civilization and American culture that we should try to hang on to and fight for. It goes back to that first discussion we had tonight. It is very hard to make sure that you can do that if your own society is being torn apart, being cut up into little pieces, everybody is put into victimized classes and told that whatever culture they came from was better, was superior and they should hang on to it; politically, hang on to it; ethnically, hang on to it; linguistically, hang on to it. This is not what America was founded on. It has to be discussed, has to be brought to the attention of the American public and ask them for their opinion and then reflect that opinion here in this body and in the White House. This issue has got to be brought up in every debate, in every election in the country from city council to the President of the United States. It is the overriding domestic issue. It will determine where we are as a Nation; and, as I say, it will determine if we are a Nation. That is why it is important. That is why I bring it to this body night after night as long as I have the voice to do so.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 1472.

Mr. TANCREDO

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

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Our schools are supposed to be safe havens, places where our children go to learn, places free from danger. For the most part, that is exactly what they are. As we have seen so many times over the last few years, our schools can sometimes bear witness to unspeakable tragedies. Names of communities that were once comfortably anonymous, like Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and most recently Red Lion, Pennsylvania; and of course my hometown of Littleton, Colorado, are now burned forever in American consciousness. Since 1996, at least 25 school shootings have occurred, leaving at least 48 people dead and 110 wounded. Countless others will be scarred by these tragedies for life. The phenomenon of school violence has touched not only those of us who live in places like Littleton, but everyone who has watched these heartbreaking catastrophes unfold on television. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would shift $5 million within title III of the bill from the $1.9 billion Higher Education section, to the Project School Emergency-Response to Violence Program, Safe Schools and Citizenship Education. As drafted, the bill currently funds this program at $5 million, or about one half of the President's 2004 budget request. My amendment, if adopted, would fund the program at the level called for in the President's budget. This program makes available short- and long-term assistance in the form of both immediate and extended services. Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the $5 million that I am attempting to shift from the Higher Education-Improvement of Postsecondary Education program was included above and beyond the President's request and that sufficient funds are available in other program accounts to meet the administration's identified needs in this area. I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. May I take that time?

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Just in the remaining time, I want to wrap up my remarks by once again referring to and recalling the fact that the problems that this Nation faces with the inability or the lack of determination on its part to actually defend its own borders creates more than problems in the job market. It creates more than problems for our schools and our hospitals in terms of the infrastructure that has to be created in order to support the illegal aliens who do come into the country. It creates other problems that are very dramatic and very real. And we are going to focus on those problems, and we are going to hold an event here in this year in September. Mr. Speaker, it will be the week of September 11, and we are inviting people to come to Washington, D.C., people who have been victims of our porous borders, and these can be people as the folks that I have identified here, the friends and relatives of the people that have been individually harmed by the fact that our borders are porous and that we do not defend them. And they can tell their story, and they can come to this Congress, and they can meet with their Representatives and their Senators and explain to them that there is a cost, a huge cost, to illegal immigration that is perhaps thought of relatively infrequently. It is not factored into much of the discussion that we have about it, but it is a very serious cost. It is a real one. And they are not people that necessarily have had just their lives disrupted by the loss of a loved one who may have lost their life as a result of someone coming across the border illegally and taking that life, whether on purpose or by accident, because there is story after story after story; as I go through them, it is of somebody who is killed or severely injured by people who have crashed into them, but it turns out they are here illegally, that they do not have insurance, and they take off, run back across the border. It is just amazing how many stories like that there are. And I want these people to be able to tell these stories. I want them to know that somebody does care, and they are not just numbers, they are not just statistics that have no real meaning in the larger sense of the term. And I want to allow them the opportunity to tell their story here. And it could be people who have lost their jobs as a result of the fact that our borders are porous, people who have come across and taken these jobs; maybe people who are underemployed, maybe people who work in the high-tech industry, but have been displaced by H1B visa workers, people who have come under that particular program and taken their jobs away from them because they will work for less. All of these people are victims of our porous borders, and they have a story to tell, and they can go to a Website, Mr. Speaker. It is called victimsvoice.com, and they can tell that story on that Website. They can register for the event in September. And I encourage people, as I say, to do that, Mr. Speaker. And I just want to say that this is a problem of, I think, a magnitude that we really have not understood, and that we desperately need to understand, and that we cannot allow cities and States throughout the Nation to begin developing their own immigration policies, begin ignoring the requirements of the Federal laws that we have in place, begin telling their law enforcement agencies that they will not cooperate with the Federal Enforcement Agency and the INS in the apprehension of criminal aliens. This is absolutely unconscionable, and something has got to happen. Some attention has got to be drawn to this problem. So I want to thank the gentleman for allowing me to wrap up my remarks.

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

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House this evening on an issue of concern I think to me and to many people in this country. The best way to introduce the topic I think is to discuss what happened here on this floor not too long ago when, on June 24, I offered an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill that would have prohibited any appropriated funds from going to any city that has an official policy of prohibiting its police officers from cooperating with immigration law enforcement. Such policies are in clear violation of existing Federal law, yet that amendment was defeated. It was really one of the most bizarre episodes I think that I have been involved with since I have been in the Congress, when you propose a measure that simply says that the States and cities in this country should actually abide by the law, and, that if they do not, there would be some penalty attached to the violation of that law. That is really all it said. And yet the amendment failed. Now, let me back up and explain a little more about this whole thing and how it occurred, because it tells us something about where we are, I think, as a Nation, certainly where we are as a Congress, in our attempts to try and bring some sanity to the issue of immigration and immigration reform. We are a long way from that desired goal. Let us start with this. The Federal law being violated by cities is section 642(a) of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. A long title. It says the following: ``Notwithstanding any other provision 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, that is a lot of words. That is the legalese way of saying the following: Look, the Federal Government operates immigration policy for the lands. That is our unique constitutional role. The State governments, city governments do not have any responsibility and have no authority to get involved with immigration policy. You can certainly argue, and I do, that the Federal Government has been AWOL, if you will, on enforcing its own laws, and that is undeniably true. But that does not really in any way, shape or form, give leave to cities and States across the Nation to develop their own immigration policies, which is exactly what has been happening. So this law that was put in place in 1996 says, you know what, States, cities? You cannot do that. You cannot establish your own immigration policy. Now, the amendment that I was going to offer that evening was an amendment to the Homeland Security Act; it was the appropriations bill for homeland security. It was an amendment that simply applied if a State is in fact violating this law. Again, I have to go back and say this law is on the books today. I did not create it. I was not even here in the Congress when it was passed. But it is on the books. There is one tiny problem with this law, and that is that there is no enforcement mechanism. So it says you should not do this, but, of course, there is nothing that is bad that will happen to you, city, State, locality, if you violate the law. So I was going to take the opportunity during the passage of the Homeland Security appropriations bill to say that we are going to put some teeth into this law, and that if in fact a State or local government violates the law, they should pay some penalty; that we in fact as a Congress should say to the Nation that the laws of the Nation should be upheld. That was it, pure and simple. Now, as I say, I knew at the time that the amendment would probably not pass, and I was not surprised by its defeat. But it is important for this body and the Congress to understand what is at stake when we talk about these so-called sanctuary policies and the impact of these policies on public safety. Now, let me explain what sanctuary policies are and sanctuary cities. Cities across the land, because of local pressure, because of a variety of reasons, have passed laws, statutes, provisions that restrict their own employees specifically and often the police departments from sharing information with the INS. They say if you in fact stop or arrest someone and determine that that person is here illegally, you cannot tell the INS about that. You cannot aid the Immigration and Naturalization Service in upholding the law and enforcing the law, telling actual police departments to not aid in the enforcement of our law. This is bizarre, it is incredible, but it is happening. And they call themselves sanctuary cities. Some of these cities, by the way, actually allow people to vote, even if they are not citizens of the United States, even if they are here illegally. All they require is that you show some proof of residency in that city. That is all. Bring your utility bill and you can vote. There are places in Maryland, there are places up and down the East Coast. Again, pretty bizarre stuff, but absolutely true. Now, this House and this Congress must act to bring these cities and other jurisdictions into compliance with the law. That is why I will continue to offer this amendment on other legislation. A recent Zagby poll revealed that over 70 percent of Americans wanted our immigration laws enforced. I assure you that the same Americans want criminal aliens off the streets and out of our country. My amendment did not require any city to do anything other than obey existing Federal law. More than a dozen major cities and the State of Oregon are now acting in open violation and defiance of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Control Act. These cities are Los Angeles; San Francisco; San Jose; San Diego; Seattle; Houston; Durango, Colorado; Chicago; Portland, Maine; and Portland, Oregon. These cities and the State of Oregon have adopted official policies ordering law enforcement officials to not obey the law. Can you believe that? Let me repeat it. The leaders in these cities take an oath of office just like every Member of this body, a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and to uphold the laws of the land. Yet these same local officials are directing their law enforcement officers to ignore the Federal law and to not cooperate or communicate with immigration authorities. Now, I can understand the argument that is heard from some local officials and indeed from some law enforcement leaders. They say a city does not want to have its police officers using all their time to assist immigration officers in locating and arresting every single illegal alien residing in their locality. In many cities, the local police would have no time left for routine law enforcement or apprehending thieves, murderers or rapists. I can understand that concern, and I can understand them blaming the Federal Government for allowing so many illegal immigrants to enter this country. But all the amendment said that I introduced, all it said was that cities could not prohibit its law enforcement officers from contacting and cooperating with immigration authorities. The amendment does not require every local police officer to call the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for every arrest or traffic stop. In fact, my amendment does not require anyone to do anything. It merely says cities cannot prohibit their law enforcement officers from communicating with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they see a valid law enforcement reason for doing so. Local law enforcement officers need to have that freedom to access and use immigration data in the performance of their routine duties. We are not suggesting that local police departments become mere adjuncts of the immigration service. We are, however, suggesting that law enforcement agencies do have an obligation under existing Federal law to identify criminal aliens and turn them over to the immigration authorities for deportation. Why is this so important? It is important because there are over 80,000 criminal aliens loose on the streets; and these sanctuary laws, as they are called by their proponents, prevent local police from apprehending these criminals until after they have committed another crime. I am not talking now about all of the 9 to 13 million illegal aliens in the country. I am only talking about the illegal aliens who are already on the ICE list. ICE is the acronym for Bureau of Immigration and Custom Enforcement. They are on the ICE list for deportation. I am only talking about the approximately 375,000 absconders, aliens who are here illegally, who have been issued a final order for removal, that is deportation, by a Federal judge. Those names are now on the ICE immigration violators file, and that information is now available to law enforcement officers through the NCIC database, the National Criminal Information Center, which all law enforcement agencies use. I am most concerned about the 80,000 illegal aliens on this list of absconders who have been ordered deported because they have already committed crimes against our citizens. Why should local law enforcement officers be told by politicians to not identify these people when they come across them in the course of their routine duties? Why should local law enforcement officers not arrest and detain these criminals before they can commit another crime? I think law enforcement does want these people to get off the streets. It is the politicians who are putting handcuffs on them, and it is up to us to remove those handcuffs. Cities that have these policies are showing contempt, not only for Federal immigration law. They are showing contempt for the rights of their own citizens and for the citizens of neighboring towns and villages. They are saying in effect we care more about the rights of criminal aliens than the rights of our own citizens. Let me tell you how this practice works. When a police officer, sheriff's deputy, or State highway patrolman makes a traffic stop or otherwise has cause to question an individual whom he suspects of committing a crime, the officer routinely runs the individual's name through his on-board computer. Now, through this computer he has an instant access to the National Criminal Justice Database, called the NCIC that I mentioned before. If there is a criminal warrant outstanding for this person's arrest from any agency elsewhere, either Federal, State or local, the person is normally arrested and booked. With regard to identifying criminal aliens subject to deportation, until recently a law enforcement officer would have to place a telephone call to the INS data center, law enforcement support center, and the center would tell the officer if the individual's name is on the INS list for detainer. A detainer is an official request from one law enforcement agency to another that the person be held in custody. In a sanctuary city the police would not be allowed to make that call to the center, and the criminal alien would go free. Now, the good news is that very soon the police officer or deputy will not have to make that separate call. Information will be in the computer via the NCIC. Moreover, local jurisdictions can get partial reimbursement for the cost of holding the illegal alien in a jail through a Federal program called SCAAP, all these acronyms, I am sorry for that, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. The sanctuary city phenomenon presents an amazing paradox. Under our legal system, under the rule of recall that is the bedrock principle of our Nation, any person of any rank or any amount of wealth can be arrested if he has a warrant outstanding. A Congressman? Yes. A nationally renowned sports hero? Yes. A veteran who holds the Medal of Honor? Yes. If there is a warrant outstanding, each of these citizens is subject to arrest by the lowest ranking police officer in any jurisdiction of this Nation. But in any city that has a so-called sanctuary policy, if you are an illegal alien with a felony record and a deportation order signed by a judge, you will not be questioned about your immigration status and you will not be arrested. This is incredible. It is just absolutely unbelievable. But it is the state of affairs in this country. If you are an ordinary, tax-paying citizen of Portland, Oregon, or Chicago, or Houston, and you fail to make a court appearance, you will have an FTA on your record, and you will be arrested for failure to appear. But if you are an illegal alien who has committed two felonies and are under a detainer from Immigration and Customs because of your criminal activity, you will not be arrested. If you are stopped and questioned in these cities, the police officer is not allowed to communicate with ICE to find the information or use that information. Why is this so important? It is important because there are over 80,000 criminal aliens loose on our streets, and these sanctuary laws, as they are called by their proponents, prevent local police from apprehending these criminals until after they have committed another crime. Now, I am not talking now about all of the 9 million to 13 million aliens in the country illegally; I am only talking about the illegal aliens who are already on the ICE list for deportation. I am tonight talking only about the approximately 375,000 absconder aliens who are here illegally and who have been issued a final order for removal; that is, deportation by a Federal judge. Those names are on the ICE immigration violators file, and that information is now available to law enforcement through the NCIC. I am most concerned with the 80,000 illegal aliens on the list of absconders who have been ordered deported because they have already committed crimes against our citizens. Now, the shocking truth is that there are tens of thousands of criminal felons serving jail or prison time in these sanctuary cities who will not be turned over to ICE because the political leaders of those cities have a policy that law enforcement cannot cooperate with the INS and cannot share information with immigration authorities. Criminals will be released instead of being picked up by ICE and deported. This will happen not because ICE does not have the resources to detain them; that happens too often in too many places, but that is another issue. It will happen because the politicians in those cities have determined that this is a politically correct thing to do. Now, I am coming to a very important point about the numbers. There are two different numbers we need to understand when talking about illegal aliens who are criminals and subject to deportation. Again, the number 80,000 that I and most lawmakers have been using for the past year is not a true number of illegal aliens who are dangerous criminals. The 80,000 number is the number of felons among the approximately 375,000 individuals on the INS absconders list. But, tens of thousands of illegal aliens with felony convictions are released from State and local correctional facilities every year and never get on the absconder list. They are theoretically placed on a detainer list, but these people are not always picked up after they are released from jail. This happens because there is a tragic lack of coordination between correctional authorities and ICE. This is a gap in our criminal justice system, and it must be fixed as quickly as possible. To paint the picture in the cleanest possible terms, I have collected the following data from several State penal systems. Here are the estimated numbers of illegal aliens in some of the State correctional facilities of a few States with these sanctuary cities. California prison population, 160,000; estimated illegal, 18,697. Colorado, illegal aliens out of a population of 18,000 in prison: 748. It goes on like that. The percentage of prisoners who are illegal aliens with detainers in these 6 States ranges from 4 percent in the States of Washington to 11.6 percent in California. The weighted average is about 9 percent. If the percentage is adjusted for the documented INS undercount of deportable aliens, the percentage is 50 percent higher. Thus, the average percentage of illegal aliens in our State prison population in these States is about 14.5 percent. That means that for the country as a whole, it is safe to say that at least 10 percent of the Nation's State prison population consists of deportable criminal aliens. When these criminals are released from incarceration, they are subject to deportation, and when identified by the INS, their names are placed on the detainer list. The problem is that this does not always happen, as I say, and, in fact, it happens less than 50 percent of the time. Thus, the alarming reality is that at the present time, thousands of these criminal aliens are released back into our society and will not be deported until they commit another crime, if even then. There is no effective system in place to take them into custody as they finish their prison terms and deport them. In other words, the absconder list neither contains the thousands of additional criminal aliens who have detainers, but have not yet had a hearing and received a final order to qualify them for the absconder list, nor the additional thousands of criminal aliens who have never made it onto the detainer list in the first place. Fortunately, there is some good news. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now implementing a new database management system that will close the gap between the NCIC database for criminals and the immigration database for illegal aliens who have been ordered deported. The NCIC system used by local law enforcement will now include the names of criminal aliens from the immigration violators file and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If the name of the individual is in the immigration violators file, it will also be in the NCIC. The officer can then arrest and detain the illegal alien as a criminal whom a judge has ordered deported. The police officer will not need to place a separate telephone call to the immigration system and waste precious minutes or hours waiting for a reply. Information will be right there at his fingertips through the NCIC. As I explained, there is a huge gap in the system for identifying criminal aliens and getting them listed into the NCIC database. Whether those gaps are policy issues, they need to be fixed, but at least there is now a way for local law enforcement to readily access immigration violators file. Today the critical policy issue we in Congress must settle is should the local police officer have that information. Should the local police officers be able to arrest and detain criminal aliens who have committed crimes in this country and they are on the list for deportation, or should cities be allowed to say, no, we do not want our officers to have that information; we want those criminal aliens to go free. What are the consequences of allowing cities to be so politically correct that they can thumb their nose at the immigration law enforcement? The consequences are that we will have a growing list of victims of criminal aliens who should have been removed from our streets before the crime was ever committed. Whose side shall we choose to take? The rights of the criminals who, by law, are subject to deportation to be free to roam our streets, or the rights of citizens to be free from criminal attack? It is really purely that simple. In the 19th century this idea that a State or locality, to interpose itself between the citizens and Federal Government was known as the nullification doctrine. It died in 1865. But it has been reborn not to protect the rights of slave owners, but to protect the privileges of criminal aliens. The last time I looked, the immigration policy was the province of the Federal Government, not the city of Los Angeles or the city of Chicago or the city of Portland, Maine, and it is the responsibility of this House and this Congress to remind those cities of this fact. But if these cities want to have their own immigration policy and provide sanctuary for criminal aliens, then they should not look to the American taxpayer to subsidize their efforts. There is good reason to take a special look at these so-called sanctuary cities like Los Angeles, because it is the largest city in the largest State of the Nation. A few years ago, the INS found that 40 percent of illegal immigrants go to California, and other cities have shown that a third of their illegal aliens go to Los Angeles. Thus, what happens in Los Angeles directly affects the rest of this country. It happens that in 2000, the County of Los Angeles did a thorough study of the impact of criminal aliens on the Los Angeles County jail system. They recently shared a copy of this report with me. Among other things, they found that, first, during the decade of 1990 to 2000, the number of illegal aliens in the county jail system doubled from 11 to 23 percent. The cost impact on the county jail system also doubled from 75 million to 150 million. This is only the cost of jail administration and does not include the cost of routine police patrols and investigative activities. The Federal SCAP program, that State Criminal Assistance Program that reimburses local jails for the cost of detention being held for deportation does not adequately cover all on the costs. The recidivism rate among criminal aliens deported is 40 percent. That means 40 percent of them return and commit more crime. There are a significant number of Federal prosecutions by the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles against recidivist criminal aliens. Only 350 such cases were prosecuted in 1998 compared to 2,400 in San Diego and 3,000 in Phoenix, which is a much smaller city. A GAO study in 1997 concluded that the INS process for identifying and processing criminal aliens in jail and subject to deportation was so flawed and underfunded that more than half of the criminals who should be deported are not, and they are released back into society. The percentage of jail inmates in Los Angeles who are deportable aliens rose from 11 percent to 17 percent in June 1995 and 23 percent in January of 2000. One INS study cited by the Los Angeles County report showed that INS identified only 65 percent of the inmates who were, in fact, subject to deportation orders and thus placed on a detainer list. That means that all of the numbers of inmates on the whole list need to be adjusted upward by one half to get to the true number of aliens in the penal system who are subject to deportation. It is fair to extrapolate that out of the approximately 145,000 prisoners released each year by the Los Angeles County jail system about 35,000 are deportable aliens. And if INS deports less than half of those, that means that from Los Angeles alone over 18,000 criminal aliens are released into society instead of being deported. Over the past decade that is 180,000 criminals released and not deported. It is fair to speculate that for the Nation as a whole this number is over 500,000 over the past decade, a half million criminal aliens who should have been deported but instead were released into society to commit more crimes. Now, I have brought with me tonight a few examples of the crimes and their victims. Before I turn to those victims, I wanted to make one further point. It is not just the citizens of Los Angeles or Chicago or Houston that have their rights in jeopardy by these so-called sanctuary policies. You might say, well, the citizens of Chicago make that choice if they let their city officials make that policy; let them live with the consequences. But all we know is that we have an open and mobile society. If a criminal is stopped and questioned and released in Chicago because his immigration status was not checked, tomorrow that criminal alien may be in Cincinnati or Nashville or St. Louis. Next month he may be in Tulsa or Topeka or Springfield. I believe, and I believe that the people of the United States think that the political leaders of Chicago and Los Angeles and Houston do not have the right to make that decision for them, to turn criminals loose on the city of Topeka or Tulsa. Now, I want to show my colleagues some recent examples of the failures of immigration law enforcement. These are victims of criminal aliens who should have been deported but were not or they were deported and came back through our porous borders. Now, I think it is important, what I have done tonight is provide an awful lot of statistics and I know that is pretty boring. People glaze over at that kind of thing, too many percentages and that kind of thing. So what I would like to do here is put a human face on these statistics. We have talk about the fact that we have people in the United States being victimized by criminal aliens here and that it does not happen just once or twice. These are not isolated incidents, not just aberrations. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country who have been victimized by illegal aliens. They were victims really of our porous borders. They are victims of the policy we run in this country that allows people to come into the country at their will. Let us look at Tanee Natividad, 16-year-old Phoenix high school student murdered by Max LaMadrid who escaped across the border into neighboring Mexico. A Phoenix television station tracked him down without difficulty. They found him enjoying a drink in a bar, unconcerned about Mexican law enforcement. Like most victims of illegal aliens, young Tanee was an American citizen of Mexican decent. The television news reporter who located the murderer in Mexico found over 100 similar cases of violent criminals from the Phoenix area alone who have fled into Mexico. Why do they go into Mexico? Because Mexico will not extradite to the United States. They say they will not send someone back here to face the death penalty. Now they say they will not send back here to face life in prison. They call it cruel and unusual punishment. Let me tell you, 20 years in a Mexican prison compared to life in prison in the United States, anybody would take the life in prison. It is ridiculous to believe that the country of Mexico cares so much about the rights of these criminals. They are really doing it frankly as a way to get at the United States. They are still negotiating the issue of amnesty for illegals, and here they want to use this as a negotiating ploy. So they refuse to send back criminals who fled to Mexico, who see Mexico as a haven, who are able to escape our laws and thumb their noses at our law enforcement people and at the relatives of the victims they leave behind. David March, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy who was killed in 2002 after pulling over a car on a routine traffic stop in the suburban Los Angeles community of Irwindale. The driver was a dangerous Mexican drug dealer, Armando Garcia, who had been deported twice and had a long history of violent crimes including two attempted murders, had been deported twice, came back across our porous borders, came back to kill this law enforcement officer. Shot him once in the stomach as he walked up to the car. Then he got out, Mr. Garcia got out of the car and shot him twice in the head. Mr. Garcia should have never been in the country. Remember, he had already been deported twice. Guess where he is? He is back in Mexico. All 50 State attorneys general have written to Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell demanding that this country negotiate a new extradition treaty with Mexico to allow criminals like Garcia to stand trial in the United States for their acts. So far their pleas have gone unheeded. These are real people. They were victims of illegal immigrants in this country. They leave behind families who are mourning to this day. I met with Mrs. March last month. I saw the tears in her eyes. I stood at a memorial, a wall that was built on this curb in Irwindale, California, in an industrial section of town. Probably 99 percent of people that go by do not really see it. It is relatively small, but Mrs. March sees it when she goes by to put a new flower on the grave and to kneel down beside that grave and to say a prayer for her husband, and to ask for some justice because she knows her husband's killer is living in Mexico. They know where he is. The Mexican authorities know where he is. These are the real faces. These are not statistics. Sister Helen Chaska, murdered in the summer of 2002 by being strangled with her rosary beads. She was also raped, as was another nun who accompanied her on her walk. She was in Klamath Falls, Oregon, doing missionary work. Her accused murderer is Maximiliano Esparza. Esparza had been convicted in 1988 of robbery and kidnapping in Los Angeles, served 3 years of a 6-year term and was paroled in 1992. By law this man should have been deported after serving time for a violent felony. But the INS allowed him to remain in our country. The INS has a responsibility for Sister Helen Chaska's death. And if there were a way to bring a suit to bring some criminal action against the INS, I wish that the survivors, that the friends and relatives of these people could do it. Because I am telling you right now that I believe our government has the responsibility and the blood of these people is to an extent on the hands of this government for its policy of allowing illegal aliens to enter this country over and over and over again without fear of being arrested, without fear of being returned to their own country and especially without fear of being stopped as they try to get back into the United States. Jennette Tamayo, a 9-year-old San Jose, California, resident who was kidnapped on June 6 from her home at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. A surveillance video helped identify the kidnapper's car, and the abductor was apprehended a few days later after young Tamayo walked into a Palo Alto video store and asked for help. The accused kidnapper has used aliases, among them Enrique Alvarez, and had been identified as an illegal alien. These are just four that I bring to the attention of the body tonight, just four. There are thousands, in fact, there are hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of victims of our open borders policy. These are just four, and night after night, when I have the ability to address the House, I am going to bring more of these stories. I am going to introduce these faces to more of my colleagues and to those people who may be watching C-SPAN tonight because I want them to understand that the picture of illegal immigration that is portrayed by most of the media, that illegal immigration is nothing more than just a hardworking family coming here looking for a good life, same thing that all of our grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents, the same thing that they came here for. That is one picture. That is one picture of illegal immigration, and certainly a vast majority of people who are coming do, in fact, fit that profile, but it is only one picture of illegal immigration. Here is another that is not shown to the general public, that no one wants you to know about. They want to keep these people isolated, separated, so that people think this is only an aberration, it only happens here or there, and yes, is it not too bad and, yes, it was an illegal alien that perpetrated the crime. You cannot make any generalizations after that. You cannot really think about immigration policy just because these people were killed by illegal immigrants in this country, people that most of them have been deported more than once for committing other crimes in this country, and then you have cities in this country passing laws, telling their police officers, telling their law enforcement personnel that they cannot enforce the law.

Mr. TANCREDO

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, at least the gentleman from the other side who spoke a minute ago did reflect accurately, I think, the purpose of the amendment. It is to do exactly that. It is to restrict funds to those cities which have decided to restrict their police or other agencies from sharing information with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs. That is accurate and that is the first time it was described accurately by anybody on the other side. That is exactly what I want to do. Because, Mr. Chairman, there are in fact cities that are violating that law. We passed it in 1996. There has got to be some way for us to impose some sort of sanction or repeal the law with or if it is on the books, let us have in some teeth in that.

Mr. TANCREDO. Shall I read the law again? Does the gentleman wish me to read the law?

Mr. TANCREDO. Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit or in any other 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. As I say, this amendment does not change anything except it adds a sanction for any one of those entities that in fact violate the law.

Mr. TANCREDO. The gentleman is correct that this act, the act that we are amending, does in fact include TSA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, and First Responders, and the amendment would apply to all of those agencies also.

Mr. TANCREDO. I suppose under that interpretation that is true.

Mr. TANCREDO. If the gentleman will continue yielding, the original law in 1996, yes, it did.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I would note that the law, and as I understand the law subsequent to that time, has indicated the term INS can be used interchangeably with Homeland Security, or the Bureau of Immigration and Customs.

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to explain it again. The purpose of the amendment is to restrict the ability of cities, counties, and local entities that have violated provisions of the 1996 act which are word for word what we have described in this amendment.

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

Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Chairman, as was indicated in 1996, this body did, in fact, pass the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act. One provision of that act states notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State or local law, a Federal, State or local government entity or official may not prohibit or in any other 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. It is a good provision of law. I am glad that we passed it. One problem with it is that there are no provisions for any sort of sanction should a State, local, or any other agency choose to violate the law. It was indicated earlier there was some degree of indignation that was identified as appropriate by some of my colleagues on the other side when we have corporations, they say, who have fled from the United States, sought some sort of tax haven off the coasts of America, yet would make application for funds under this act. They were indignant and outraged; and I, by the way, share that feeling of indignation. It is also, I think, somewhat outrageous to have cities apply for funds under this act when they pass legislation, which has been done in several cities around the country, that actually prevents the law enforcement agencies in those cities from sharing information or obtaining information from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or the Bureau of Immigration and Customs as it is now known. So this is a very simple amendment. It just says a person cannot obtain funds under this act if they are, in fact, one of those cities that have done as I have just described.

Mr. TANCREDO. If the gentleman is continuing to yield, it does not. It is exactly the same wording of the 1996 act. The only thing we are doing is adding some sort of sanction for its violation.

Mr. TANCREDO. The law applies as it applied before. It does not change the application of the law, it simply provides some enforcement mechanism.

Mr. TANCREDO. Grants under the provisions of this act.

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