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“RECOGNIZING THOSE WHO SACRIFICED OR RISKED THEIR LIVES ON D-DAY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3285-H3289 on June 6, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RECOGNIZING THOSE WHO SACRIFICED OR RISKED THEIR LIVES ON D-DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to first of all recognize and memorialize those whose lives were either given and/or risked on this date in 1945.
We have heard many moving comments, many moving speeches in tribute to the D-Day heroes. I can add little to the beautiful oratory that has been exemplified here by a number of speakers with regard to D-Day and what we owe the folks who participated in that horrendous event.
I also think to myself about the America for which those men either died or sacrificed their lives, and the kind of America that existed then, and, to a certain extent, the kind of America that exists today, and the difference that may exist. For the most part, it is the same America, and that is a good thing. But there are things that I think are somewhat disconcerting when we look at the Nation today.
Not too long ago, I think it was about a week ago, actually, there was an article in my local paper, in the Denver Post. It talked about the difference in attitudes of people today who are 20 years old or younger, the difference in attitudes between them and people older than them with regard to patriotism or love of this country.
It found that people 20 years old or younger really, perhaps to put it this way, knew very little about America. They really had very little understanding of who we are as a nation, who we are as a people, and the principles upon which this Nation was founded. They did not understand, in fact, the significance of September 11.
Many of them stated that the event was not that significant, from their standpoint, and maybe we even deserved it. That was some of the discussion. I have heard, as a matter of fact, from many people who are in academia, many people in higher education, and one professor in particular, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado who came up to me at a dinner that I was at not too long ago, last week, I believe, and he talked about what happened in his classroom on September 11 and the day after.
He said he came into his classroom and there was a buzz. He did not know what had happened yet. He had not seen the television accounts, but the kids had, the students had. This was at the University of Colorado, as I say. They asked him what he thought about that event. He, having just heard of it, said, I will think about it and talk to you about it tomorrow. What is your opinion?
He said that most of them felt that we deserved it; that it was something that America, because we are a country that takes advantage of so many other people around the world, that our support for Israel really set us up for this, and for a variety of other reasons that we actually deserved it. This was on September 11, when most of us were reeling from the impact of that event on our minds and on our hearts.
He said he went back the next day, and he said, I have thought about it. I thought to myself that perhaps the reason that you feel the way you do is because you do not believe in the rule of law. You do not believe that there is anything actually that you can describe as good or bad, evil or precious; that everything is the same, and that laws essentially, as a nation is created by law, is based on the concept of good and evil, and that once we destroy that concept in our own minds or that once we kind of buy into this idea that everything is essentially the same, that there are no actions that we can describe as bad, that there are in fact no countries that we can describe as evil, there are no cultures that are less deserving of our praise than others. Once we buy into that multiculturalism, cultural relativism, once we buy into that concept, then it is not hard to understand how they can come to believe that the United States probably deserved what happened to it.
Because, after all, we are no better than anybody else on the planet, in fact, as we tell our children in school day in and day out, in schools throughout the Nation, in classrooms throughout the Nation, that there is nothing unique about America.
We teach our children from the doctrine of relativism, cultural relativism. It permeates our schools and it permeates our lives. It permeates our philosophy of government, and has for far too long, and it has an effect.
When we do that, when children do not understand who we are or what we are as a Nation, it is not surprising, then, that they would respond as they did in this professor at the University of Colorado's classroom. Why would we expect them to be shocked and just abhor what had gone on? Nothing is unique about America, nothing is good. As I say, mostly we tell them that everything is bad; that America's history is rife with examples of slavery and a variety of other ills, what we did to the Native Americans, and all the things that we heap upon ourselves, all the problems that were undeniably problems.
They are nothing about which we should be proud, that is true. But if we only concentrate on that, if we think that is all America is is the maltreatment of Indians and/or the institution of slavery, if they think that is all there is, then no one could be expected to be enthusiastic about the concept of America.
{time} 1815
No one could be expected to be too upset when foreigners come to the country and drive airplanes into buildings, kill 3,000 people. It is illogical to assume that they would be anything else but what they are. There is a price that we pay in this country for that kind of education and for a lack on the part of many people in this country to actually even tell their own children about America. This fear that if you extol the virtues of America and explain that, yes, there was in fact slavery in the United States, but it was the United States, it was the West in general that has abolished slavery, Western European and American thought, Western European liberal democracy, actually brought this world far more good things than it ever did bring bad things. And that is something most people have to understand and do not now know or believe. Western civilization gave this world far more in terms of personal wealth, the rule of law, a philosophic basis for man to live in peace and harmony, and one in which, as I say, provided the most for the most, called democratic capitalism, free enterprise. These are all great parts of the Western civilization that we so often decry. And we do this at our peril.
It will eventually eat away at the fiber of this country so that it is not just those children or those people here 20 years or younger who take this cynical view of America and who refuse to be excited by the flag. In this article they talked about the fact that they were not patriotic at all. They did not even think about the country in patriotic ways. And the only way they described patriotism was, as one person said, patriotism does not mean following your country blindly. Well, that is true, of course. It is absolutely true. It does not mean following your country or your government blindly. But it does mean understanding what the government is all about, what our Nation is all about and what we owe those people who died for it or gave their limbs, as my father-in-law did on the U.S.S. Hornet in the World War II where he lost both of his legs.
The country for which those men gave their lives on D-Day is not the same country today in many ways. And it is, I think, discouraging. Now, that is not to say that there are not many millions of children, we had a lot of them here just a little bit ago, who exemplify the best in America, and who certainly are willing to talk about the United States in patriotic terms and certainly probably are willing to risk their life and limb to defend it; and we have hundreds of thousands of men and women presently in the Armed Forces of the United States doing exactly that, risking their safety, risking their life and limbs in service to the Nation and in defense of the Nation. And I say, God bless them. God bless those people who have given their lives in service of this Nation.
I am reminded, however, of a poem that I had to learn when I was in high school, a poem by Thomas Macaulay, and it is called Horatius at the Gate. And I only remember a short bit of it. It went on for a lot longer than I can recall tonight. But it was something like this, again, Horatius at the Gate, and I have to explain the background of it for just a second.
There was a time, I believe it was under the Emperor Trajen in ancient Rome when barbarians were at the gate of Rome and had conquered everything in between their land and Rome itself. And there was great panic and fear throughout Rome as to what was going to happen at the point in time that the barbarians breached the gates and came into the city. And as myth or story has it, a young man by the name of Horatius bravely volunteered to go to one end of a bridge that separated Rome from the horde that was invading. And he took two friends with him and they volunteered to go to the other side of the bridge and hold off the, because it was a narrow bridge, hold that as long as they could against the army oncoming while the rest of their compatriots cut down the bridge on the other side, therefore, of course, giving their lives in this cause.
The poem, again, as I remember it by Thomas Macaulay says, ``Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate: `To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his father, and the temples of his gods.' ''.
Now that is all I can recall of that poem. But I think about it often because I think to myself if we do not, in fact, tell our children about America, if we do not imbue them with a sense of history about who we are and what we are, and the good things of America, the wonderful, incredible things it has given the world, the things that make it the envy of the world, the things that make it the place to which if we raised all of the gates all over the world, everyone would come.
And what does that tell you? All of those of you who have such a cynical view of America, all those of you who have this culturally relativistic view of America, what does that tell you that if you lift the gates they all come here? It tells you that there is something better about America, something unique. And you know that we have to tell our children this because, in fact, if we do not tell our children this, there is absolutely no reason to think that they would intuitively come to these conclusions.
I taught for 8 years in the Jefferson County Public School system, and I can remember thinking to myself, no kid comes to this classroom with an appreciation of fine art. I was not an art teacher. No kid comes to school with an appreciation of fine music, classical music. Nobody just intuitively says, boy, I think I want to paint. They may want to paint, but they do not have an appreciation for fine art or fine classical music or classical literature. You do not just have that in you. Generally you have to be taught those things in life.
I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that children do not innately understand the beauty of America. It is just a place to them. It is where they were born. It is like if I had not even seen anything else, this is the world to me, so what is the big deal. They have to be taught. We have to believe it, we as parents have to believe and pass this on to our children. And we are.
And something is happening in our country that I believe deserves our attention. I do not mean that it is catastrophic. I am not claiming it is the end of civilization as we know it, especially Western civilization, although I am claiming it is a danger to Western civilization, and I do believe that we are in this world, as Mr. Huntington puts it in his book, ``Clash of Civilizations,'' we are, in fact, fighting, the West as a civilization is in a way at war. Not a war we have brought upon ourselves, but a war started a long time ago. It is a clash that we have been wrestling with, dealing with for literally hundreds of years. It is the West against radical Islam. That is the most dramatic clash of civilization that I can think of to date. And as I have said, it is a clash that has been going on for a long, long time.
I must disagree with those among us, those political pundits, those observers of the scene who suggest that the war we are in today is a war with only a small element of the religion of Islam, somebody that has, in fact, some group that has in effect highjacked the religion. I believe it is much broader than that. I believe we are at war with fundamentalist Islam. And it is far, far more expansive than just a small group of people who happened to climb into planes on September 11.
Speaking of that, one little interesting factoid I came across at some point in time, I cannot remember when, but in 1683 the Muslim armies made their greatest incursions into the West. It was the farthest they ever got and it was to the gates of Vienna. As we all know, the battle had been going on between the Crusaders and the Muslim world for some time and Islam, I should say, specifically for some time. And the farthest into the West that the Islamic armies were able to get was the gates of Vienna in 1683.
There the King of Poland turned back the Islamic armies. That was the last great battle of that clash, of that particular clash. And it is interesting to note the date of that battle, 1683, as I said, but more specifically the date was September 11, 1683.
Now, a coincidence, certainly very possible. An interesting little factoid, that is the way I always refer to it. But I am telling you that people in the Islamic world know this battle and know this date. It is not a tiny fragment of history to them. It is something very important to them.
My point is here we are in a clash of civilizations, I believe. Samuel Huntington's book I have referenced before and I reference it again tonight because I believe it is enormously important. I believe every American should read it. And by the way, I do not get any royalties or anything else. I know I have talked about it a lot, but it is just because I consider it to be a very, very good analysis. I read it once in the mid 1990s when it first came out. After September 11 I went back and read it again because I found it to be quite profound and quite prophetic.
Mr. Huntington talks about this clash of civilizations, which is the name of it. And I will not give a book report on it tonight, but I will say that for people who are still interested in analyzing the events leading up to September 11 and subsequent events, for people who are interested in looking at the background of the conflict right now going on in Israel with the Palestinians, the conflict that is now causing us to focus a great deal of attention on India and Pakistan, these are clashes of civilizations.
It is a clash of civilizations that goes on in Sudan. Sudan is perhaps the quintessential clash of civilization. Or maybe put it this way, a flash point in this clash of civilization. It is perhaps the best example we can look at to explain what is going on in the world today. Arabic north, Islam is the religion. Black African in the south with Christianity and animism as the religion. Two different cultures. Two different languages. Actually, many different languages. But two different countries essentially that have been artificially bound together by the British after their colonization. And after they actually left the country they created this here kind of artificial country we call Sudan. I say it is artificial because the two people groups have absolutely nothing to do with each other. They have nothing in common with each other. They have been fighting now for 47 years. They will be fighting for the next 100 years if the country continues to stay as it is today, one nation surrounded by one boundary.
I believe that Sudan needs to be divided into two nations. I believe the United States should recognize South Sudan as the new government of Sudan of the south. And we should do so quickly and provide them with whatever aid necessary to help them defend themselves against the Khartoum government.
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So all that said, let me get back just now to the idea that Horatius was at the gates, and my point here is that if we did not tell our children about who we are, if we do not, in fact, explain to them what the West really means, what Western civilization is all about, if we condemn Western civilization to the trash heap of history to our children via the way we explain it, via the way we teach it, then it is exactly where it will end up because when the time comes for the next Horatius to be at the gate, when the time comes for the next group of people to risk their lives on some beachhead far away or even nearby, where will they be? Where will they come from? Will Horatius be there for us? Who will be the next Horatius at our gate?
As I say today, thank God, I believe there are hundreds of thousands or millions of people who are willing to stand at the gate. I just wonder how long that will be the case if the generation is already coming up here in the United States that thinks of this country as not really worth fighting for.
I remember when I was in college, it was during the late 1960s, and we were in the midst of a very, very ugly war and a great deal of anti-
war sentiment in the United States; and I remember a guy carrying a sign in a protest rally at my school, and it said there is nothing worth dying for. I remember thinking to myself at the time, I mean, here is a guy who looked like he had just gotten back from the spring break in Cozumel and who probably drove up to the campus in his BMW and really dressed really quite well under the circumstances, even though carrying a sign, not a lot of his friends were dressed very well, he was, and I remember thinking to myself, here is a person who lives in the greatest society ever created, ever to actually be on this planet, who has benefited in every possible way from the sacrifices of so many, here he is with a sign saying there is nothing worth dying for.
The most depressing part of that to me, Mr. Speaker, was really what could have been written there on the other side of the sign is there is nothing worth living for, and that is really the only other way that I think we can look at what he was really saying there and what a dull, drab life that must be, a life that gives someone nothing worth dying for and essentially nothing worth living for.
I think that although he may have been an aberration, that today there are far too many people that could hold up that same sign. They were in this professor's class at CU, as I mentioned earlier, and we have all come across them.
The clash of civilization that I mentioned is the big picture; and it gets down to a very specific thing: how do we see it in the United States. We saw it on 9-11, a very specific clash point of the clash of civilizations. And one of the other things that Huntington points out in his book that I found so interesting is he talked about massive immigration not just into the United States but all around the world and how that affects how nations act and react, especially democracies; and it is interesting to note that it is becoming more and more difficult for our friends and allies in Europe to actually put themselves in the position of supporting the United States as we may go into Iraq or other areas of the Middle East.
One of the reasons why they are having a difficult time doing that is, of course, over time, over the last decade or so, they have had a massive number of people come in who are Arabic, who are Muslim; and therefore they make up, of course, a bulk of the voting block in the country, and that puts pressure on a democratic government.
Here in the United States, we have certainly a massive immigration, not from the Middle East, although we have quite a number, we have massive immigration primarily from Mexico; but we have massive immigration from all over the world. There is an effect of massive immigration into the United States. It will have an effect, and it is something that needs to be discussed.
I know to many people it is kind of a frightening topic, one that a lot of people want to shy away from, but I believe that everything I have said tonight to date makes it imperative that we talk about this because it will impact who we are, what we are and whether we will in fact survive as a Nation and as the leader of the West in this clash.
We are becoming a cleft Nation, I think that is the way Huntington put it, as a matter of fact, cleft, split in half, because of massive immigration. We are developing two countries within this country, a country with two different languages, two different cultures, sets of ideas. We have a strange phenomenon that has never, ever happened before in the history of immigration into this country, which we all recognize fully well is everyone's background here, everyone, including Native Americans. At some point they came across a land bridge from Siberia. So everybody in this Nation is a result of someone immigrating, emigrating from where they are, emigrating into the United States or into North America.
Never before in the history of immigration into this Nation, even in the heyday, in the early 1900s, when my grandparents came, 1903 my grandfather came, never have we seen anything like this where people are refusing to actually disconnect from their country of origin and reconnect with America.
This is evidenced by many things, not the least of which is the very dramatic and very easy to explain, I guess, aspect of this phenomenon, that is, that there are now at least 6 million people in the United States that claim dual citizenship. This is unique. That has never happened before in America. When most people I know came to the country, they did so, as I say, even if they wanted to, really if they wanted to stay connected to their country of origin, it was very difficult to do. They came to the United States, and they lived in ghettoes where they could speak the language of their home country; but in a relatively short time, they were either overwhelmed by the country or themselves were forced into the American mainstream.
Again, this is not happening in America today. The multiculturalism phenomenon, the multiculturalism philosophy tells us we cannot forcibly have people integrate into our society; we have to teach them in their own language in our schools. We will do anything to help them actually separate themselves out of our society and create these Balkanized areas of the United States.
What we do is to instead of accentuating our common desires and common traits and characteristics, we accentuate all of the differences. That creates a Balkanized society. It is not a good thing, I believe.
I may be wrong. I certainly may be wrong in my interpretation of what massive immigration means to a culture, but I believe that at least it needs to be debated. That is the least we can expect when we recognize that the potential for having it affect America so dramatically is there.
Of course, there is a national security issue. Of course, there is a national security issue. Who for a moment thinks that our borders can possibly remain undefended and essentially porous and that we will not be, therefore, prime, prime targets for the next person who wants to come into the United States and do something untoward?
Not too long ago I was in Arizona, and we visited the border; and it is hard to believe that this is a picture of the border, but it is. On this side of this barb-wire fence here is the United States; on the other side, Mexico. There is a well-rutted road here, deeply rutted road, I should say, that comes through; and by the way, this road is not on any forest service map. This is not an official road. This is a road made by people coming into the country illegally. This is a gate they come through.
On this side of the gate there is a sign with the following words:
``All persons and vehicles must enter the United States at designated ports of entry only.'' This is underlined, a designated port of entry. Any person or vehicle entering this point is in violation of the U.S. code such and such, et cetera, et cetera. This is a sign facing the United States in a place along the border that is completely undefended, and it is almost an interesting metaphor for the entire problem here on the border.
Down here is another place along just a few miles from this one where this is Mexico on this side, this is the United States here, and there is a cattle guard at this gate. So no cattle can enter the country illegally at this point. We can rest assured of that. As we see, this road tells us anybody else can and they do, in fact, enter illegally all of the time, in fact, by the hundreds of thousands. This particular area has now become the most heavily trafficked area along the border for drugs coming into the United States and for people coming in illegally.
So the idea that we have protected borders is an illusion; and so when we talk about immigration, when we talk about especially illegal immigration, which is really exemplified here, we have to understand there are implications for the United States. There are, as I say, cultural, political, economic and national security issues that we have to take into consideration when we talk about the border, and we may not like to. It is one of the things I know people, go, oh, geez, we are not going to talk about the border, not going to talk about immigration because we know a lot of people get upset when we talk about immigration.
Well, that is true; but they are going to just have to get upset because I believe it is an enormously important topic. It has implications of great magnitude, far beyond just the things that we have a tendency of talking about in terms of jobs and resource allocation and all the rest of that stuff. It has very, very significant implications, massive immigration, into this country. It deserves our attention.
Thank God tonight the President of the United States is going to be on nationwide television, I am told, in about 1\3/4\ hours, at which time he is going to announce a proposal which I can only say is the most hopeful thing I have heard so far in this debate or the discussion we have been having over the past several months about immigration and immigration control.
It is a proposal to actually make the office of homeland defense a part of the Cabinet, a Cabinet-level Department with a lot of interesting responsibilities, and I do not know the extent to which the President will get into the details of this, but I will tell my colleagues that it is to his credit that he is bringing this up; and I do hope that the Congress of the United States responds quickly to his request for creation of this Cabinet-level Department, homeland security.
Because in it I am assuming he will have to have that part of the INS which is now identified as the enforcement arm. I am assuming we are talking about moving that there. I am assuming a lot of things here tonight because, as I say, I do not have all of the details. I am assuming that we are going to take certain roles and responsibilities away from other agencies, like Customs and Treasury and Agriculture. All of these agencies have specific functions for border patrol, border control, enforcement of our immigration laws.
{time} 1845
And, of course, they are all confusing with each other. They do not talk to each other and do not operate under the same sort of rules, and they have different goals in mind.
So you can actually have people on the border, down near Nogales and El Paso and along the border where we have a port of entry, who actually watch the border through binoculars because they know each one of the various stations are personed by someone else, by some other agency. And so they will watch to see which station is actually being guarded by border patrol, which is being guarded by Agriculture, which is being guarded by Customs, and if you are smuggling people in, you go through one; and if you are smuggling drugs in, you go through another.
So you have somebody at the border watching through binoculars looking and radioing down and saying, go through this line, go through that line, depending on what you are smuggling in. That is how goofy the whole system is today, and that is what needs to be corrected, and I am assuming will be corrected when the President speaks to the Nation tonight in terms of at least his policy.
Now, whether we will do anything about it is another question. Because as you know, Mr. Speaker, one of the most difficult jobs we have in this Congress is getting over not only the kind of philosophical hurdles that confront us with various pieces of legislation, but also there are massive egos involved. There is a news flash for you; that politicians have big egos. But there are a lot of people here in this body who, frankly, are going to be asked to have to give up some part of their committee oversight responsibility, and this will not go down well.
You know and I know what will happen, Mr. Speaker, the minute that that comes before a committee chairman of long-standing who says, what, you mean to tell me my little part of this thing here is going to be taken away and given to somebody else? Not on your life. So we will start this horrendous battle in the Congress of the United States to see whose ego is able to keep this Nation from actually moving forward in terms of immigration reform. It is discouraging, but I predict that that is what is going to happen.
The President, if he does what I think he is going to do here in 1 hour and 15 minutes, will set the ball in our court with this creation of the homeland defense agency, which has a specific purpose, and the purpose is to defend our borders. It will know what it is supposed to do, it will have a clear line of authority, it will have a lot of people who are employed there who have an understanding of exactly what it is we expect of them, as opposed to the situation today, where we have the INS, these two groups within INS, one enforcement and one I call the welcome wagon, and they really do not fit each other.
And even if we change those groups, even if we split those functions, as the bill that passed this House sometime ago attempted to do, we will have exactly the same people mismanaging the new agency as we have mismanaging the present agency. We will have two different lines, two different little captions on their doors, that sort of thing, but the people will be the same. And that is the problem. We have to get out of that agency. We have to get a brand new agency constructed with new people, with a common purpose in mind, dedicated to their job, and that is to protect the borders of this country and, in fact, provide homeland security.
This is a list that our immigration reform caucus came up with in October. This is actually October of 2001. We presented this list at a press conference, and we suggested that there were a lot of things we could be doing to improve the security of the border.
Number one on this list is to create a unified border security agency. A new agency to be responsible for all aspects of securing the border, including, but not limited to, responsibilities currently handled by INS, State, Customs, and the Coast Guard. That was our number one priority back in October of 2001.
I am so glad to say that it is at least now taking conceptual form, as the President of the United States is going to tell us about this evening. Or I guess I should say I hope. That is what I have been told is going to happen, and my comments tonight are all based upon that assumption.
The next thing we said was to establish a unified interagency database for the purpose of conducting background checks on visa applicants. We passed that in the House on October 12, 2001.
Number three. An automated entry and exit system for foreign visitors. This was passed and signed into law. This is the Feinstein-
Kyl bill. The Justice Department announced just yesterday initial plans for implementing this particular part of the proposal.
Number four. Maintain computerized database on foreign students. Also part of the Feinstein-Kyl bill that we have passed.
Number five. Restore political ideologies grounds for exclusion and deportation. This did pass the House again on October 12, 2001.
Number six. Restore authority of consular officers as their first line of defense. We have not done that.
Number seven. Reestablish meaningful deterrents against illegal immigration. Well, that is certainly something we have not been able to accomplish so far. But I am hoping that part of what happens tonight with the creation of this new cabinet level agency will do that.
We have, however, passed several pieces of legislation requiring the INS to hire more enforcement personnel. But because of the huge attrition rates in the INS, increasing the total number of agents has been very difficult.
One of the things we put here is a sense of the Congress calling on governors of border States, both north and south, to place National Guard troops on their State borders, Canadian border, Mexican border. It was removed from the defense appropriation bill last year. We did pass something similar to that in the House not too long ago that will probably be taken up in the Senate.
Eight. Restore asylum protection to its original intent. It is one of the most abused categories we presently have for people coming into the United States. They simply call themselves a refugee and immediately get asylum, and then we never see them again. They never come back to any sort of hearing to determine whether they are, and we allow this. We say that is all you have to do, just say you are a refugee and then come back in a couple of months and we will have a hearing. Of course, they say that when they get here, and we never see them again. We have not done anything about that.
Number nine. Establish greater cooperation between local and Federal agencies and immigration law enforcement.
This is an interesting one. The Justice Department considered a proposal to encourage cooperation between INS and local law enforcement, essentially deputizing local law enforcement agents as INS agents. After a backlash from the immigrant groups, the Department of Justice appears to have backed off of this particular proposal.
Number 10. Establishing electronic verification of identity documents for employment. Have not done that yet.
Number 11. Reject further extension of 245(i). 245(i) is amnesty. We have not rejected it, it has just not made it out of the Congress so far. We came close. We came within one vote of rejecting it on this House floor not too long ago. It now is over in the Senate, where I understand that a particular member of the other body has put a hold on this provision, the 245(i) extension.
Twelve. Abolish the diversity visa program which awards large numbers of visas annually to states that sponsor terrorism.
Have not done that. We should. In fact, at last count, 55,000 visas have been approved since September 11 to people from countries on the terrorist list; 55,000.
Thirteen. Implement a temporary moratorium on immigration in order to reduce the workload of the INS, and give agencies time to implement the provisions of our entire plan. Include an executive waiver for national security reasons.
Of course, that has not been done. I have a bill to put a moratorium on for at least 5 years. I do not think it will get heard, that is the best guess I have, anyway, in committee.
Direct Immigration and Naturalization Service to begin identifying, finding and removing aliens against whom a deportation or removal order has been issued but not enforced.
We have not done that. We have, since we published this, we have forced the INS to actually tell us how many people fit that category. How many people are in the country, we said, who have been ordered to be deported?
Now, these people, by the way, these are not people who got a parking fine. These people raped, robbed, murdered, did something, violated our laws, committed a felony, ended up in court and were aliens and were, therefore, subject to deportation.
A judge somewhere, an immigration judge, and by the way, these are not the hard core judges. These are not the hanging judges. These are immigration law judges who, more often than not, let you off with the slightest penalty. But a judge somewhere listened to the case and hammered down and said this person is out of here, is to be deported. Then they walk out the door and we never see them again.
The INS does not take them into custody. Sometimes they will send them a letter saying please report back in 6 months for deportation. Of course, it is called a run letter because when people get it, they run. So we have not accomplished much here, except we have gotten them to finally tell us how many. First they said 300,000. They have revised it upward. They now think it is about 500,000; 500,000 people have been ordered deported from the United States for violating a law, and they have simply walked out the door and we have never seen them again. These are the INS numbers. So, believe me, take that with a grain of salt as to what the real numbers are.
Well, again, I hope and pray that the President tonight is going to do what I have been told he is, what I have been told is going to happen, to announce the creation of this new department level agency, and perhaps we will know more about the specifics, what it will really mean. But as I say, Mr. Speaker, if this is what he does tonight, if this is what he proposes, then it is up to us to follow through. Because the next time something happens, we will only have ourselves to blame if we do not do everything that we can do.
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