Speech #1000006832

It was also disturbing to me. when. as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. I held hearings on emerging criminal groups and heard testimony from law enforcement officials that Nigerian nationals had virtually taken over the heroin market in the District of Columbia and that the Chinese nationals were taking hold of the drug market in New York. More recently. the Immigration and Naturalization Service released a report confirming these conclusions and noting that increasing numbers of its officers are working with other Federal law enforcement officers on drug enforcement. Clearly. current law is lacking. It allows immigration officers to exclude only those who are "traffickers." This is simply too high a standard. too difficult to define and prove. My bill would expand the existing law to keep out those who are known users of illegal drugs as well as those who possess illegal drugs. and. by incorporation. it would permit the deportation of these people. It is also important to keep the immigration laws in step with our Federal criminal laws. When Congress decides that a drug is dangerous enough to be included in the Controlled Substances Act. shouldnt that decision hold for aliens as well? I think the answer is clearly yes. It makes sense to me that if certain drugs have been proven bad enough to warrant arrest of our own citizens under the Federal Criminal Code. they should also serve as the basis of exclusion or deportation of aliens. Yet. currently only a few drugs may serve as the basis for a decision to exclude or deport an alien. My bill would tie immigration laws automatically into the code so that immigration officials could exclude or deport known users of any drugs listed in section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act. In recent times. we in the Congress have spoken much about drugs and our interest in diminishing their use. This bill is a concrete proposal to simply and directly diminish the supply of drugs. necessarily cutting down on their use.