Tom McClintock

House rep BLASTS Calderon

By Greg Halvorson Friday, May 21, 2010

Quietly, there is an American voice, protecting American values, and conducting himself as an American should. It is that of Tom McClintock. In response to Felipe Calderon’s parroting of progressive talking points, this California House rep verbalized his outrage in the empty House chamber. Where the Democratic caucus had earlier encouraged Calderon, http://tinyurl.com/2fvm4yt taking to their feet for his America-trashing, Mr. McClintock gave a truthful, forceful, and passionate rebuttal. The more citizens who read it, the better off we will be. http://tinyurl.com/26e4tmr

To wit:

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to take strong exception to the speech of the President of Mexico while in this chamber today.

The Mexican government has made it very clear for many years that it holds American sovereignty in contempt and President Calderon’s behavior as a guest of the Congress confirms and underscores this attitude.

It is highly inappropriate for the President of Mexico to lecture Americans on American immigration policy, just as it would be for Americans to lecture Mexico on its laws.
It is obvious that President Calderon does not understand the nature of America or the purpose of our immigration law.

Unlike Mexico’s immigration law - which is brutally exclusionary - the purpose of America’s law is not to keep people out. It is to assure that as people come to the United States, they do so with the intention of becoming Americans and of raising their children as Americans.

Unlike Mexico, our nation embraces immigration and what makes that possible is assimilation.

A century ago President Teddy Roosevelt put it this way. He said: ‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.

But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.’

That is how we have built one great nation from the people of all the nations of the world.

The largest group of immigrants now comes from Mexico. A recent RAND study discovered that during most of the 20th Century, while our immigration laws were actually enforced, assimilation worked and made possible the swift attainment of the American dream for millions of immigrants seeking to escape conditions in Mexico.

That is the broader meaning of our nation’s motto, “E Pluribus Unumâ€