E-mail a friendRep. Tom Tancredo
airdate May 17, 2006
Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo has represented Colorado's 6th District since '99. The lifelong Coloradan and Denver native adopted immigration reform as his personal issue and chairs the House Immigration Reform Caucus. Prior to being elected to Congress, Tancredo taught for several years at Drake Junior High School, served in the state legislature and in the Department of Education under former presidents Reagan and Bush. He's expressed interest in seeking the '08 Republican presidential nomination.
Rep. Tom Tancredo
Tavis: Congressman Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, is chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. In that role he, perhaps more than any other political figure in the country, has propelled the issue of immigration to the forefront of American politics. He joins us tonight from Washington. Congressman, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Rep. Tom Tancredo: Pleasure, sir.
Tavis: As we talk here tonight, over the last couple of days, at least, the Senate has started voting on certain amendments on their immigration bill. Tell me what the difference is, as you know this much better than I, between what the House passed back in December, and what the Senate is voting on now.
Tancredo: Okay. To the best of my knowledge, and I have just been picking up bits and pieces throughout the day as to where the Senate is, well, I can tell you that the House bill was focused entirely on enforcement. It, it did three things in particular. It said that, that we should have a fence, 700 miles of fencing along the southern border. It said that we should have the Insta-Check system, which is now voluntary, where an employer can actually go to the Social Security website and check and see whether their employers have good, valid Social Security numbers.
We made that mandatory. It is now voluntary. And we also then encouraged state and local law enforcement officers to help us out. Provided training, and some financing for that. Those were the three big things that we did. There were a lot of other little ones. But it focused on almost, well, no. It focused entirely on enforcement. The Senate bill is trying to come up with something that kind of meshes the idea of enforcement, along with a guest worker slash amnesty proposal
That is where we're gonna run into trouble. What they want is to have some way for the people who are presently here illegally to remain here. And they are wrestling with that themselves, in terms of how to portray it. But that is the basic difference.
Tavis: It sounds to me, Congressman, like what the Senate is debating and in fact voting on is much more closely aligned with what the President had to say earlier this week than the bill that you all passed in the House.
Tancredo: That is absolutely true. The President did exactly the same thing. He started out talking about enforcement. Talking about sending the National Guard to the border. Everybody said, people that think as I do said yes, good idea. And talking about a card that would be something that every legal alien in the country would need to have in order to get employed.
Still, good idea. Then he lapsed into this discussion of the guest worker program and the amnesty deal. That's where it all falls apart, at least for me, and I hope for, and I think for a majority of my colleagues in the House. Or at least on the Republican side.
Tavis: You raise an interesting point here now that I raised at the top of this program. So much of the hell that the President is catching on this issue is coming from his own party, people like you.
Tancredo: Yes, sir, that is true. The base, as we call it, the base, these are the hardcore Republicans, the Democrats have their base. They are very concerned about this, and his numbers show it. The President's numbers show it. When we talk about a President whose approval rating is down in the, what, 30 some percent? That's gotta mean that not only Democrats and Independents are upset, but a lot of conservatives.
Tavis: Tell me how it is that you get traction on this issue, how it is that America, for that matter, gets real immigration reform when the party that runs everything in Washington right now is itself divided on this very issue?
Tancredo: Well, the House really wasn't divided. We passed the bill with 200 and some Republicans, and 37 or more Democrats. The Senate is where it's divided, and the question there is whether or not we can actually get a bill out that will reflect more of the House position than the Senate position. But the division is, it's an interesting situation, frankly.
I think that there are enough Republicans even in the Senate to perhaps sustain a veto. I said that wrong. To perhaps sustain a filibuster. I would like to see them try, anyway. And I think you would see that Republicans would rally to them. The Republican base would certainly rally to them. There are members of the Senate, and because of the peculiar Senate rules, it doesn't take many to actually stop everything from going on over this. Stop anything from progressing. It's a very weird mix. The situation is very fluid. But as I say, at least in the House, I guarantee you there was no split in the Republican Party.
Tavis: So why not give the President credit for doing something, rather than a swift kick in the behind for not doing what you wanted him to do?
Tancredo: Because he ruins it. He ruins the, when he starts talking about enforcement, we can, as I say, get sort of enthusiastic. But it is ruined entirely by his commitment to amnesty. It is a terrible public policy. And I do not believe, first of all, I have to tell you I am leery about the administration's commitment to the concept of enforcement. And so, I'm not willing to give them a package that includes amnesty and a guest worker plan.
Tavis: You don't trust the President when he says he wants to put those National Guard troops on the border?
Tancredo: Oh, he'll do it, but I wanna see a long-term commitment to the concept of enforcement. No, I don't, he said it's a temporary thing, we're gonna start out with. No, he said, we're gonna go up to 6,000. What does that mean? A hundred today, a hundred tomorrow? I wanna see exactly what he's talking about.
Tavis: I guess the question is, if you really don't have, and a number of governors have complained about this, including the one here in California, if you don't have, or if you're struggling to find the 6,000 National Guard troops coming home from duty around the world, if you're struggling to find 6,000 folk to put on the borders, realistically, how in the world would you go about kicking folk out by the millions, by a conservative estimate 13 million of them, how in the heck would you get them out of here anyway, Congressman?
Tancredo: Tavis, two things here. First of all, you're talking about stretching the National Guard too far. There are 440,000 members of the National Guard in the United States. Twenty thousand of them are serving in Iraq. That leaves quite a few here in the country, which we are training. And which could be trained, by the way, on the border. It could be great training, as a matter of fact.
When you come back from Iraq today, there is a period of time for which you cannot be reassigned. It is to provide R&R, if you are a National Guardsman. We are not straining the National Guard to ask for a mere 6,000 troops to patrol the borders. Secondly, how do you deal with the people who are presently here? You do not have to do this, round them up, all this draconian talk about how we're going to deport 13 million people.
All you have to do is something that I admit is a kind of a radical idea around here, and that is enforce the law. Enforce the law. If you do that, if you go after employers who are creating the demand side of this equation, you will see an attrition. People will leave the country and go back to the country of origin, because there really are no other alternatives.
Tavis: But back to the earlier point, though. So many of these employers, come on, you and I know the truth here. So many of these employers are your friends. They're Republicans. They ain't trying to hear that.
Tancredo: Well, I don't care what they're trying to hear, and yeah, I'm a Republican, and have been one all my life. But I'm telling you that we have to stop the demand side. It is imperative. It's the core. It's the core principle. You can do a lot of stuff on the border, but as long as the magnet of jobs still pulls people into the country, they'll come. So you have to go after them.
And when I said radical approach, I meant that. It's radical because we haven't done it. Tavis, 20 years ago, we passed something called the Simpson-Missoli Act.We, number one, said we're gonna give amnesty to the people who are here illegally. We thought there were only around a million. Turned out to be three million we gave amnesty to.
Then we said, we're gonna go after employers. And we're gonna also get Mexico to help us secure that border. And it was gonna be the plan to end illegal immigration. Well, of course, all that happened is that we focused on the amnesty, and no attention paid to enforcement. And that's why I'm afraid to give this administration or any administration the ability to have a bill that has a part of it as amnesty. That's the part they'll take care of. And I'm worried about them doing anything about enforcement.
Tavis: Yet there are a number of people who feel that the failure of NAFTA is always left out of this conversation about immigration, and you can't separate those two things. Do you agree or disagree?
Tancredo: I agree. I agree. NAFTA was a disaster, especially for Mexico, especially for the small subsistence farmer in Mexico who can no longer compete. They went out of business. They came north; they went to the maquiladoras, the factories on the border. Then last year, of course, because of the globalization of the economy, the maquiladoras lost 800,000 jobs to China. So where did those people go? They came north.
Tavis: I got 45 seconds here, can we legitimately blame U.S. corporations for making more money at home, sending more jobs abroad? They don't give a living wage to these people in the countries where they work, and because they get exploited there, they come here looking for a better life. You wanna blame American corporations at all?
Tancredo: I'm telling you, I don't even know what an American corporation is anymore, frankly. For the most part, these multinational corporations have absolutely no loyalty to a particular country. They have a loyalty to the bottom line, and they couldn't care less about what happens in the United States. They are looking at their profit margins. I think it's getting more and more difficult to actually identify an American, quote, corporation.
Tavis: Tom Tancredo is a Republican out of Arizona, and at the center of...
Tancredo: I'm Colorado, Colorado.
Tavis: I'm sorry, I said Arizona,
Tavis: I'm sorry, I said Arizona. My mistake. Thank you, Colorado. Don't wanna hate on Colorado. (Laughs) A Republican out of Colorado at the center of this debate about immigration reform. Congressman, nice to have you on. We'll do it again.
Tancredo: I hope so, Tavis, it's been a pleasure.
Tavis: Take care. Up next on this program, comedian Wil Shriner. Stay with us.
Back to May 17, 2006