Speech #920282948

That is. that I do not come to the same conclusion he does with respect to this amendment. It seems ridiculous to me that an alien can walk into a social security office in this country and get a social security card and number without stating anything more than his name and address. We had testimony to the effect that some illegal aliens have two. three. four. and more social security numbers. and they use different cards for different purposes. At the very least. the Social Security Administration should be compelled by law. as the gentleman says. to indicate by some code on the card whether the individual is a citizen or not. Because of this practice the Social Security Administration at the present time has no way of knowing whether a person is even an alien or not. so you could pass this amendment. and it will not compel them to take any action whatsoever. Now. if in addition. we amended the law to require the Social Security Administration to indicate by the number whether a person Is an alien or not. they could then report to the Immigration Service all social security numbers of people who are not citizens. and the Immigration Service could make the determination of whether they think that each particular individual is or is not an illegal alien. If the Service determines a person is an illegal alien. it could then contact the Internal Revenue Service to determine from the employers payroll tax returns bearing social security numbers. the identity of the particular aliens employer. They could then notify the employer that he is employing an illegal alien. But this would require a very large administrative machinery. even though computers could turn out the information. We have testimony to the effect that there would be millions of social security numbers that would have to be reviewed for this purpose every calendar quarter. and that the Immigration Service would have to have an enormous number of people working on this to make much use of it. So you are talking about not just a simple requirement that HEW report all aliens whom they know to be illegal aliens. you are talking about an involved procedure that would have to be set up. They will have to employ hundreds of people. They will have to set up a whole new elaborate computerized machinery.