Speech #920282716

I welcome this opportunity to commend the gentleman from New Jersey. the Honorable PETER W. ROnMO. Jr.. the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Nationality. The bill before us today and the comprehensive hearings which preceded its drafting are indicative of the high quality efforts of the subcommittee under his very able leadership. The bill under consideration. H.R. 16188. is aimed primarily at protecting the U.S. labor market against illegal aliens. aliens who are either present in this country in violation of the immigration law or who have accepted employment in violation of their immigration status. The magnitude of the problem and the need for this legislation were carefully documented by the immigration subcommittee in their extensive hearings on illegal aliens. These hearings were held in eight cities across the country. including my own city of Chicago. It was concluded that illegal aliens have a substantial adverse impact on U.S. employment as well as on Federal and State public assistance and other benefit and service programs. It was estimated during the course of the hearings that there are between 1 and 2 million aliens illegally in this country. and that they are here almost exclusively for the purpose of obtaining employment. Furthermore. the problem is no longer primarily a regional one. as it has been in the past. The illegal alien is now found throughout the country wherever there is the promise of employment. He is increasingly found in industry as opposed to agriculture. where his apprehension is considerably more difficult. As documentation of these generalizations. testimony received by the subcommittee in Chicago indicated that over the past 10 years there has been an 800 percent increase in the number of illegal aliens apprehended in the triState Chicago INS district. which consists of Illinois. Indiana. and Wisconsin. In fiscal 1971. 9.572 deportable aliens were located in this area. 8.747 of them in Illinois. Of the deportable aliens located while employed. 90 percent were in industry and 10 percent in agriculture. I do not mean to imply in citing these statistics that the problem of the illegal alien is more serious now that it affects my part of the country than it was before when it was in somebody elses backyard. What these statistics and similar ones received in Detroit. Denver. and New York show is the extent to which this has become a national. rather than a regional problem. requiring Federal legislation rather than just strategically located increased manpower.