Speech #920156678

Mr. Speaker. the steadily rising rate of illegal immigration into the United States is due to many diverse factors contributing to a common resultthe presence of millions of aliens illegally here and draining our economy. One of the critical factors contributing to this situation is the lack of manpower to properly patrol our borders. We are justly proud of the fact that our 4.000 mile border with Canada is the longest unguarded frontier in the world. But the very fact that it is unguarded is an open invitation to aliens who cannot legally pass our entry ports. The same. to a lesser extent. is true of our 2.000 mile border with Mexico. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has only 1.655 men in its border patrol to man 6.000 miles of frontier. Most of these men are concentrated on the Mexican border. and even there it is estimated that coverage is far from satisfactory. The Border Patrol seems to have been given a low priority where our immigration budget is concerned. In order to cope with sharp increases in legal entries. the Immigration and Naturalization Service has had to beef up personnel at ports of entry. The magnitude of this problem can be seen In terms of 2 million entries from sea and airports in 1955 to 10.4 million in 1970. a jump of 420 percent. Meanwhile. entries at land border ports increased from 119.8 million in 1955 to over 238 million in 1970. almost 100 percent. This increased the workloads of immigration examiners. Border Patrol agents. criminal investigators. deportation officers. and so forth. While the workloads increased. personnel totals went up only slightly. The Border Patrol has increased only 173 since 1955. Because of budgetary limitations. the Border Patrol has not been able to expand enough to cope with the problem of illegal border crossers. Our 4.000 mile Canadian border. be-