Posted July 30, 2003
By Paula R. Kaufman
Thomas Tancredo is a third-term Republican congressman from Colorado. As chairman of the 65-member Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus he deals regularly with such facts as these:
More than 33.1 million immigrants live in the United States, a number unprecedented in U.S. history. Poverty rates for immigrants and their U.S.-born children are two-thirds higher than for native-born Americans and their children and account for approximately 25 percent of those now living in poverty in this country. Twenty-four of the southernmost U.S. states have accrued almost $1 billion in unpaid medical care - all attributed to illegal immigration.
Tancredo worries about the innumerable U.S. jobs he says have been wiped out by immigration. He outspokenly faults the Bush administration for its open-border policy, which Tancredo believes not only has put Americans out of work but also suppressed their wages.
"I speak to people who lose their jobs to immigration: electricians, carpenters, high-tech workers. They call my office all the time. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are losing their jobs to immigrants, both legal and illegal," Tancredo tells Insight.
He likewise is concerned about the number of people - between 6 million and 10 million - in the United States with dual citizenship. What does this mean for America's sovereignty and the future of the country? Tancredo is not alone in his concern: Polls show that 75 percent of Americans support immigration reform.
Tancredo also blames the immigration crisis on the "liberal agenda," which he sees as encouraging immigrants to retain their language and their political allegiance to a foreign government while seeing themselves as separate and distinct from other Americans. It's a situation, he says, created by the liberal "cult of multiculturalism."
Tancredo warns about what he sees as the continuing encroachment of Mexico in the affairs of the United States. He regards the controversial matricula consular, an identification card issued by Mexico, as an effort to regularize illegal immigration into the United States.
He points out that the suspected murderer of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff David March, arrested and deported not once but three times, lives openly in Mexico and has not been arrested by Mexican officials. The Colorado congressman seeks changes in the U.S. extradition treaty with Mexico and is considering calling for congressional-oversight hearings on the influence of Mexican cartels on U.S. politics.
What guides Tancredo's attitude toward immigration, he says, is a principle as old as the republic itself - that "we are a nation bonded by a common language, culture, manners and customs."
Insight: The U.S. economy is in a slump and Americans by the millions are out of work, yet the wholesale replacement of our workers by immigrants is under way. What gives?
Rep. Thomas Tancredo: We have a cheap-labor policy. This government has determined that part of its economic policy is to undermine the value of American jobs. We have record-high unemployment rates. We have a stagnating economy. Yet this administration refuses to take any action to reduce the number of immigrants who are coming into the country [illegally], removing Americans from their jobs and replacing them with cheap labor.
To read the Q & A and more on this hot button issue:
Insight Mag