Walter In Denver

Backtracking

Back in July I linked to Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R, Colo) interview in Right Wing News.

One of several bizarre things he said in the interview:

John Hawkins: Do you believe we should allow that, dual citizenship?

Tom Tancredo: Of course not, it's a horrible idea...and I said, "what do you mean 'increase the flow', why do you want to increase the flow?" He said there were a lot of reasons. The issue of remittances where we have millions of Mexicans working in the United States sending back dollars. He said they send back 10 billion dollars a year. Well, that's about 30% of the GDP of Mexico (Editor's Note: I was alerted that the 30% figure does not appear to be correct).

I don't recall seeing the editor's note the first time I read that interview. I do recall thinking that anyone with a passing interest in Mexico's state of affairs would recognize the number to be wildly innaccurate. Mexico's GDP, according to the Banco de Mexico, is 6,671.3 billion Pesos - that's about 590 billion US dollars, which puts the remittance percentage closer to 1.69%.

A simple mis-statement you ask? Seems not. Here's an excerpt from a speech Rep. Tancredo gave on the floor of the US House in January of '03:

Everything has changed on the border. The government of Mexico has decided to move as many people into the United States as possible, as I was told by Juan Hernandez, who was the head of something called the Ministry for Mexicans Living in the United States, a newly-created ministry in Mexico. He was at that time the minister, and when I asked him the purpose of such an agency, I had never heard of such an agency before, he said, well, no, it is new, and I am the first minister, and the purpose is essentially to increase the flow of people into the United States from Mexico. I said, why do you want to do that? And he said there are several reasons.

He was very, very candid. I must tell my colleagues I was astounded by how candid he was when he said, well, the reason why we are trying to get as many people into the United States as possible is so that eventually we will be able to affect American policy vis-a-vis Mexico just by the number of people who exist there. He said, of course, these people send money home to Mexico. It is called remittance and it accounts for almost 30 percent of their GDP. It is a very important function. It is a very important part of the Mexican government and the Mexican economy.

You would think anyone who claims to be an expert on US immigration issues, and a US Congressman no less, would be incapable of such an error.

Posted by Walter at January 3, 2004 05:49 AM