Speech #920282713

Mr. Chairman. I support H.R. 16188. the Immigration and Nationality Act. The purpose of this bill. and justifiably so. is to make it unlawful for an employer to hire. knowingly. aliens who have not been lawfully admitted for permanent residence. or who are not authorized by the Attorney General to work while in the United States. For too long a time the number of aliens illegally entering this country has been growing. these illegal aliens are Working for substandard wages and are therefore standing in the way of the unemployed of our own country. Specific instances of employed illegal aliens in my own area of western Massachusetts were called to my attention within the past few years by John F. Albano. manager of the Western Massachusetts International Garment Workers Union. AFLCIO. and Charles Marchese. business agent for Carpenters Union Local 122 in Springfield. Illegal aliens from islands in the Caribbean area were working under sweatshop conditions in certain garment factories at substandard wages when taken into custody by officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The poor aliens had been promised good paying jobs when they were recruited by shoddy New York City agencies In their Island homes. After arriving in New York. they had to repay travel expenses and then pay jobfinding fees to agencies who had already contracted for their labor in Massachusetts factories. The illegal aliens were eventually deported. but the employment agency and the employer got only verbal Government reprimands. Robbing Americans of jobs was not unique to the garment industry building contractors in western Massachusetts were employing carpenters and other tradesmen who had entered illegally from Canada with job promises. Such practices ended only when the building trades unions demanded investigations by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The present exemption from antiharboring provisions tends to frustrate and defeat the declared intent of Congress in other provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. To protect the employment opportunities and labor standards of American workers we must pass H.R. 16188. Illegal aliens are generally unskilled or lowskilled workers. who compete for jobs with minority groups who have traditionally been denied opportunites to improve their skills. Consequently. this legislation is designed to remove this illegal source of competition. protect the job security of citizens of the United States and aliens lawfully present in this country. Further. this legislation establishes a threestep procedure for the imposition of sanctions on employers to insure that only those employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens are penalized. For the first violation. the Attorney General will serve a citation informing the employer of the violation. If a subsequent violation is committed within 2 years of the first citation. a fine of not more than $500 will be imposed for each alien.