Speech #970012513

West Germany. Belgium. Italy. and Luxembourg all use such cards to control employment of illegal aliens. By establishing an identification card for all citizens and legal aliens. civil rights advocates could not argue that this effort to regulate the flow of illegal aliens will unduly burden ethnic Americans. It is widely believed that the major attraction of foreigners entering the United States illegally is the availability of employment. A system which makes the employment of such illegal aliens highly difficult or impossible diminishes this attraction and concurrently increases opportunities either for Americans or for those who comply with the legal prerequisites for work visas and temporary resident status. It is estimated that there are between 3.5 and 12 million illegal aliens currently in the United States. During fiscal year 1979 the Immigration and Nationalization Service located over 1.000.000 aliens who were deportable under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Of these people 93 percent had entered the country illegally and 7 percent had violated the terms of their legal entry. Furthermore. approximately 93 percent were Mexican nationalist and at least 30 percent were repeat offenders. Part of the responsibility for this large influx of illegal immigrants must be borne by our current outdated social security registration program. The systern should be updated to control the influx of illegal aliens into our Nations work force. This legislation improves the administration of social security by implementing procedures to prevent duplicative and false registration numbers. These improvements coupled with other provisions of this bill calling for a strengthening of our national border patrol and a tightening of the asylum procedures for immigrants wishing to permanently enter this country should effectively cut down the number of illegal aliens within our country. Finally. this legislation establishes procedures to effectively regulate the large numbers of illegal aliens who now reside in our country by establishing procedures enabling them to obtain permanent resident status. Because of their underground work status. many illegal aliens are willing to accept less than minimum salary and work in substandard conditions in return for protection by their employers from deportation. By providing a degree of legitimacy to these aliens we will reduce the unfair advantages such employers hold over those who do not hire illegal aliens. Mr. President. I commend Senator HUDDLESTON for taking the lead in restricting our immigration procedures and am pleased to join him as an original cosponsor. I urge my other colleagues to pass favorably upon these proposed improvements in our immigration and social security registration systems. Laws which are not effectively enforced denigrate and undermine the fundamental principle that ours is indeed a nation of laws and not men.