Speech #920165820

Mr. Speaker. inadequate law enforcement is one of the major reasons the illegal alien problem continues to grow. The Immigration and Natutalization Service does not have the manpower in the field to do the job satisfactorily. and when it does. the courts are likely to administer only a slap on the wrist. At present. the employer is not liable to prosecution. and the alien who has been apprehended usually is just put aboard a bus and sent back to Mexico. In thousands upon thousands of cases. these people turn right around and come back. Now. there are laws. but they simply are not being enforced adequately. For example. under section 275 of the Immigration and Nationality Act any alien convicted of entering the country illegally can be jailed for up to 6 months and fined up to $500 on the first offense and on subsequent convictions he could get 2 years and a $1.000 fine. A convicted smuggler is liable to up to 5 years or a $2.000 fine or both for each alien. Perhaps because of the heavy dockets. the courts have been leaning over backward on this issue. It is a fact that the employer is not penalized. although it is inconceivable to me that he never knows he is employing illegal aliens until Immigration conducts a raid. Certainly. if he is holding back part of a mans wages he must know the man is an alien working illegally. The thing to do. then is to enforce the law to the limit where smugglers and illegal entrants are concerned. and to draft new legislation imposing severe penalties on employers who knowingly hire aliens ineligible for employment. Of course. that is going to be the sticker-"knowingly" hiring the alien who does not have a bona fide "green card" entitling him to work. But it seems to me that a country that has progressed as far technologically as we have should be able tocome up with an identification system that would be awfully hard to beat. And in the meantime. if we hit these people hard in the courtswhether they are big farm operators or illegal aliensthen perhaps we can make them hurt enough to learn that this racket is unprofitable. Only when we take the profit out of itand make it too risky from a legal standpointwill we be sure we are reaching a solution.