Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO)

On March 31, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) who has worked toward doing away with work visas like H1-B, expressed the dilemma of outsourcing in a global economy. In an hour-long speech on the House floor, Rep. Tancredo accused Democrats of pandering to politics and soliciting votes of Americans whose jobs were threatened without providing a constructive solution.

Rep. Tancredo’s solution: get rid of 3 million illegal aliens so that Americans desperate to have jobs and willing to do any job, would get jobs — including house cleaning, gardening, what have you — jobs that analysts claim Americans are not willing to do. “Well, I do not know how it is in the districts of my colleagues or anywhere else in the country, but I will tell my colleagues that in my district there are many people who are out of work and who are looking for any job. They will take a job in the high-tech sector from which they were fired because someone came in to work for less money, or their job was outsourced, or they will take a job, many people, who do not have the kinds of skills that would allow them to even think about a job in the high-tech industry, they will take a job as roofers or as drywall hangers or as bricklayers or as, yes, even, believe it or not, people who would clean our houses or cut our lawns. They are people who are in desperate need of a job. But we are importing millions of people to take those jobs.”

Rep. Tancredo also called for all immigrants to learn to appreciate “Western civilization” and adhere to a set of core principles and values. He said people came to America and did not want to go to countries like Pakistan or Zimbabwe, because it offered so much, not just economic betterment.

“But all I am saying is that, when you get here, there is more to being an American than just getting a job. At least there should be. It should mean more than that. Or else we are just a place of residence, that is all, not citizens. We are just a place of residence, people who reside here, not people who have an affinity for the ideas and ideals that made America what it is. This is my fear... It is I think a very serious issue, and I hope and I pray that we will as a Nation begin to grapple with it and that even in this House we will begin to debate what it means to be an American and what we have to do in terms of our own domestic policy

and our immigration policy to enhance that concept. It will determine not just what kind of a nation we are in the future that is balkanized, united or divided, it will determine whether we are a nation at all, and that is why we absolutely must enter into this debate.”