Speech #990215854

Americans by the millions celebrated the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. a symbol of the hope and opportunity that our Nation itself embodies. Perhaps due to Emma Lazarus. Americans have also associated the statue with questions of immigration and emigration. This association gives us an opportunity to reflect on these questions. the most pressing of which concern immigration reform. If we do not enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year. fear and anger may conquer public debate over our Southwestern borders. In all probability. public anxiety will escalate in coming years over the movement of illegal narcotics and perhaps terrorists across the border. Public anger may rise as more people discover the conditions of violence and degradation that characterize some areas of the border region. And public frustration may grow over burgeoning migration statistics and the costs illegal immigrants exact from Government services. The implications of such developments for our foreign and domestic policies are so grave as to rank 1986 immigration reform legislation as a preeminent priority for Congress. Although I have not conducted a survey. my legislative staff and I have observed an increasingly bitter tone in the letters my office receives on immigration reform issues. A growing number. of demands for military intervention on the Southwestern border reflects deep frustration over developments in the sometimeschaotic border areas. In my opinion. it is particularly significant that even the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution requesting President Reagan to send U.S. troops to the border. Jorge Bustamante. a Mexican sociologist based in Tijuana. told the Wall Street Journal in May that. in his 18 years of research on immigration issues. he had "never seen the paranoia so high in the United States." Given the recent media attention to terrorismand particularly to the possibility of terrorist actions in the United States. it is plausible to argue that a portion of this socalled paranoia can be attributed to fear of terrorism. Indeed. the May 14 edition of the Wall Street Journal discussed such anxieties in an article entitled "Fear of Terrorists Directs New Attention to Illegal Immigrants." The Journal reported that. in Brownsville. TX. an elderly woman disrupted a county commission meeting to decry rifletoting guerrillas who were allegedly wading across the Rio Grande and onto her property. When a brief electrical blackout struck El Paso recently. residents fretted about a possible terrorist attack. According to El Paso police sergeant Hank DIMatteo. "This type of thing would never have happened before. But there is a heightened sense of awareness and anticipation." Indeed. the Immigration and Naturalization Service has seen a 100percent increase in reported sightings of terrorists. While I do not believe that the United States faces a genuinely imminent threat from a terrorist march across our border. one cannot Ignore the empirical roots that give rise to worry among border area residents. During a seminar last month at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies. Richard Inzunza of the Immigration and Naturalization Service stressed the porous nature of the border. the increasingly international character of illegal movement across the Mexican border. and the limited mission of the INS. He pointed out at that time that not only were people from Mexico and other Central American and South American countries coming across the border. but we had them coming from the countries of Asia. from Africa. and from Eastern Europe. we had people from virtually all countries of the world coming across into Mexico and then coming across the border illegally into the United States. His comments were reinforced by those of David Crosland. formerly Acting Commissioner of the INS. who told the Wall Street Journal: Our Immigration system is designed to Identify persons coming here to work and to protect American labornot to protect us from terrorists. Nevertheless. Mexican authorities alerted the INS in January that four Libyans had arrived in Mexico City with large sums of money and intentions of entering the United States.