Speech #980219581

Chairman. I rise in support of this legislation. Despite what I consider to be serious deficiencies. this legislation in its present form represents a quantum jump forward in restructuring our national immigration policies. In the debate we have conducted on this floor. we have begun to explore the present and future effects of illegal immigration on our Nation. I salute the gentleman from Kentucky for his patience and persistence in bringing this matter to the floor. I salute the gentleman from New Jersey without whose firm leadership this legislation would have collapsed under the weight of contending forces. We owe them. and all the Members of this House who have poured their energies and emotions into immigration reform. a debt of gratitude. We are. as President Grover Cleveland said over a century ago. faced with a condition and not a theory. The condition is that our borders are out of control and the factors causing explosive immigration in our own hemisphere are fact. not theory. This bill is not perfect. But it is necessary. Those of us steeped in years of examining immigration and population growth trends would say it is critical. In a sense. the fact that we have devoted so much time to examining so carefully every facet of this problem is a major victory in itself. I will support this bill. but with serious reservations. My chief objection is that we have failed to consider the demographic realities facing us today. If we face up to the facts. we will see that it is imperative that we secure our borders before we grant amnesty or implement a legalization program. Lets look first at legal immigration to the United States. The United States takes twothirds of all legal immigrants who cross transnational borders. We represent 5 percent of the worlds population. We have 6.3 percent of the worlds land mass. But we accept 70 percent of the worlds legal immigrants and refugees." We are. Mr. Chairman like other nations. a nation of immigrants. but we simply cannot and should not be a land of unlimited immigration. In sheer numbers. the United States adds more people to its population than all other industrialized nations taken together. Between 1974 and 1978. the United States admitted over 3 million legal immigrants for permanent residence. Let us take a comparative look at the numbers admitted by other countries. particularly those with wide open spaces and enormous resources. Canada and Australiawhich also accept large numbers of legal immigrants for permanent residencestill take far fewer than we do. Consider that Canada is second only to the U.S.S.R. in terms of area. having 6.6 percent of the worlds land mass. Yet our northern neighbor represents only 0.57 percent of the worlds population. Likewise. Australia. which ranks sixth in terms of area with 5.1 percent. represents only 0.35 percent of the worlds population. If we look then at legal immigration to these countries. with almost as much or more of the worlds land mass than the United States and far less in population. we see that they accept far fewer immigrants. Between 1974 and 1978. Canada accepted about threefourths of a million legal immigrants for permanent residence and Australia took in about onehalf a million. Remember that this compares to over 3 million that the United States accepted during the same period. The United States admits roughly 500.000 legal immigrants a year. although at times this number has risen greatly. such as in 1980 when we accepted 800.000 legal immigrants. The countries I have just discussed take in only a fraction of the people we do. They have set coherent immigration policies to deal with both legal and illegal immigration. We have the rightand an obligation to our peopleto do the same. Just as important as the numbers of immigrants we admit. is where they come from. The United States admits almost three times as many legal immigrants every year from Latin America as we do from all of Europe. The United States admits almost as many legal immigrants from Mexico alone. and more legal immigrants from the Caribbean alone. than we do from all of Europe. And that is just legal immigration. Our illegal immigration is three times the legal limit. Undoubtedly. we need some serious reform of our legal immigration policy. But the real problem. and the one which must be addressed immediately. is illegal immigration. It is not the annual 500.000 legal immigrants the American people are protesting. its the 1.5 million or more illegal immigrants who are entering this country every year. Even as we speak. illegal border crossings are occurring at a record pace. In fiscal year 1983. the Immigration and Naturalization Service made a record 1.2 million apprehensions1 million at our southern border. Migration is what the Population Division at the United Nations has termed "the least known component of population growth" since much migration is illegal. Massive movements of migrants continue among the countries of the Americas. The more prosperous countries of the region receive workers from less prosperous countries. especially in recent years as transportation has become easier and communications have improved. Although movement is evident everywhere in the region. the largest movement in the Americas is directed toward Canada and the United States. As recorded in the U.S. census. the number of Latin Americans in our country increased five times in the last 20 years. The countries of origin in Latin America are continuing to show such rapid population growth that movements of Latin Americans northward cannot be expected to decrease. indeed the northward migration will increase exponentially. No one knows exactly how many illegal aliens are living in the United States now. but estimates range from 3 to 12 million. Nor do we know exactly how many more come in every year. However. our highest intelligence sources tell us that figure is 1.5 million or more. We must take a good hard look at illegal immigration and why it wont stop. There is. and will continue to be. great pressure to migrate in the coming years. We cannot ignore the hard plain demographic facts of life.