Speech #980210572

A decision has to be made by the Members whether or not we are going to establish a legal. workable program for temporary workers or whether we are going to sit back and tolerate the gross abuses. the violations. the exploitation that is going on with the present illegal system. I urge Members in the course of the debate. and I know there will be a number of red herrings raised. there will be a number of distortions raised. but I urge Members to try to look at the facts and also to consider the realities that we face. The fact is that the problem of illegal immigration in this country demonstrates that our current immigration laws are simply not working. In the first 3 months of fiscal year 1984 over 350.000 undocumented aliens were apprehended at our borders. The Commissioner of the INS estimates that 500.000 Illegal aliens successfully entered the United States during the same period. We know what the estimates are. that there are something like 8 to 10 million undocumented aliens in this country. They are the victims of blatant exploitation on all sides. They are bought and sold on a daily basis. They have no rights. They have no protections. They deprive others of jobs and they live in constant fear of arrest and deportation. Todays reality is one in which our immigration laws are systematically ignored and abused. in which an enormous black market has sprung up around traffic in illegal aliens. in which the human suffering and the anguish are very real. I do not believe that that kind of situation is tolerable any longer. We have to develop an immigration policy which is workable and effective and which imposes standards and controls that can be enforced. In order to develop a comprehensive an successful immigration policy. we must recognize. in addition to the facts that I pointed out. the realities we are dealing with. One of the realities is the possibility that we will continue to experience a need for foreign labor. This is not something that just sprung up overnight. This is not something that we ought to be shocked about. because the reality has been there since the turn of the century. It began in World War I with an immigration policy bringing temporary workers into the country. In World War II we had a policy to bring workers into the country. It followed with the bracero program to bring workers into the country. When we did away with the bracero program. migrants continued to come in. only illegally. So this country in one way or another over the last 50 to 60 years has experienced the use of foreign workers. It is not new to our society nor new to our economy.