Speech #970256786

JAMES SRNmisimiNM. JR.. ON H.R. 6514 It is difficult for me to understand how H.R. 6514. the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1982. can be characterized as immigration reform. This legislation does not even represent the lowest common de. nominator needed to accomplish immigra. tion reform. H.R. 0514 should not be enacted into law for two reasons: it fails to deal effectively with the problem of legal immigration. and it provides amnesty provisions for illegal aliens residing in our country. H.R. 6514 falls to deal with the problem of legal immigration in several ways. First. there is the failure to set a cap on the number of immigrants. asylees. parolees. entrants. etc.. who enter our country each year. One of the major criticisms the Ameri. can people have with the present immigration law is that we have "different strokes for different folks." or different quotas for different people. resulting in no real hard or fast limitation on how many foreigners are legally admitted into the United States on an annual basis. If a cap on legal immigra. tion is not enacted then the current number of legal immigrants entering our country will continue to mushroom. In 1977. legal immigration was 399.000. In 1980. it was 808.000. In 1981. it was 697.000. with an in. crease expected in 1982. Legal immigration mushroomed at a time of rising unemployment. at a time when we have been unable to provide enough jobs for our own American citizens. This has soured the American people on the entire issue of immigration and substantially reduced the compassion the American people have historically felt toward refugees from oppression and political and religious persecution around the world. Americans are having a difficult time understanding why our government continues to allow more people in this country who compete for jobs and place a drain on the treasuries of our state. local. and federal governments. Public opinion polls show that 80 percent of the American people want reductions in legal admissions. "Compassion fatigue" has. indeed. set in. While some have argued that those are unsubstantiated fears. there are hard facts to support these concerns. For instance. a Presidential Report in 1980 revealed that taxpayers have spent over $2 billion a year in refugee admissions. Billions of dollars more have been spent since this report was issued. These figures are put into greater perspective by a GAO report which showed that over 70 percent of the Indochinese refugees of employable age had requested public assistance. Most requests were made within 30 days of arrival. In my own state of Wisconsin. which held more than 15.000 CubanHaitian refugees at Fort McCoy. I heard many complaints from both the state and local government officials strongly obJecting to the open ended refugee policies. Placing refugees under the legal immigration cap is essential for our country to be able to withstand increasing pressure in the future for more refugee admission. The current refugee explosion is only a preview of things to come. For instance. our world populations will increase another two billion by the end of the century. This means the labor force will grow by 900.000.000 people. who will join some 50 million currently unemployed.