Mr. President. as Members are aware. in 1980 Congress enacted the Housing and Community Development Act which prohibited illegal aliens from receiving public housing benefits. For 6 years. there has not been any effective control mechanism to enforce the 1980 law. We have not been very successful in getting any kind of effective enforcement. In fact. earlier this year I had all the people who run the public housing projects in Texas come to see me. and their message was that they could do more to serve people who were legitimately eligible for public housing benefits if we would preclude illegal aliens from getting those benefits than they could do if we had a substantial increase in the budget. Since I am always looking for ways to provide more benefits without having to add to the budget. I wanted to find a way to force HUD to implement the law. I thought my colleagues might be interested in the fact that based on census data analyzed by the Department of Justice it is currently estimated that between $200 and $250 million a year of HUD benefits go to people who are not eligible as a result of their illegal alien status. In fact. Mr. President. we could avoid $200 to $250 million of expenses in serving illegal aliens. Those benefits could go to citizens and permanent resident aliens if we enforced the law. This letter commits HUD to strict enforcement.
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