Speech #990275204

In Los Angeles County alone. there is a cost to the taxpayers of nearly $300 million a year. The cost of my amendment for the first year would be about $60 million. but the benefits would be 10 or 15 times that much. We need to do something besides the provisions that we have in this legislation if we truly want to stop illegal aliens from crossing the border and coming into our country. It will be some time before the benefits of employer sanctions ever take hold. There are many people who cross the border just so that their children can be born in hospitals in the United States and they become citizens down the line when they become of age. In Los Angeles County alone. over 80 percent of all the children born in the publicly supported hospitals are born of illegal aliens. This is a very severe problem for our State and for all of the States bordering on the border. and for many others that do not. I believe that it is essential that we take this positive step and we protect the people in our Border Patrol from the deaths they have suffered. from the victims that they have become because they are such a long. thin line that they really cannot protect themselves. It is a war zone down in Tijuana and in other cities on the Mexican border. Let us protect our Border Patrol by at least giving them the manpower to do their job.