Sam Farr: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding. I look forward to this debate. As was said, I lived in Colombia, and I have a…”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding. I look forward to this debate. As was said, I lived in Colombia, and I have a different perspective than a lot of people. First of all, I think we have to put in perspective that the Latin American market is important to the United States. If you take Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, just three countries, they equal the entire European trade, and they exceed the trade with Japan and China. It's a very important market. Colombia is a country that you have heard a lot about, particularly on crime. And as you remember, there is big, big drug production and a lot of crime, particularly paramilitaries who have killed a lot of labor leaders. But what has not been stated is that Colombia is one of the few countries in the world that keeps track of crimes against people who happen to be unionists, not necessarily that they are killed because they are unionists, but because they are killed and they happen to be a member of a union. So they have this data. We don't do that in the United States. Colombia has set up a separate ministry just to handle labor crimes and put those judges, prosecutors, investigators, and everybody in place in every single one of the departments or states in Colombia. We don't do that in the United States.…”