Speech #970024004

President. in recent testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State. Justice. Commerce. and the Judiciary. the Executive Director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Mr. Roger Conner. made a compelling argument against cutting the strength of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. INS is scheduled to absorb 40 percent of all personnel cuts to be made in the Department of Justice. Mr. Conner stated in his testimony that: At a time when immigration and pressures to immigrate to the United States have never been greater. it is folly to further emasculate an already crippled law enforcement and border defense agency. Immigration to this country. counting both legal and illegal immigrants. is at the highest level in our history. Estimates of illegal immigration are rising steadily. and the stock of resident illegal immigrants has risen steadily from the 3.5 to 6 million that demographers from the Bureau of the Census estimated lived here in the mid1970s. And the workload of the INS has never been greater. More than a quarter of a billion border crossings will be made this year. I agree completely that such a reduction for INS is "pennywise and poundfoolish." In order to save $8.2 million. the administration is willing to open our borders to hundreds of thousands more illegal alien workers who will compete with 8 million unemployed Americans for jobs. Since the Congressional Budget Office states that every 1 percentage point increase in unemployment costs the Federal Government $29 billion each year. it will not take very long for the increased flow of illegal alien workers to result in a complete offset of the $8.2 million "paper" reduction in spending. I ask that Mr. Conners remarks be printed in the RECORD.