Speech #1010209668

These are very disturbing trends. Mr. President. and I believe they now warrant additional congressional and administration efforts to control illegal immigration. Therefore. I am today introducing legislation which would do the following: First. educate employers about their responsibility to comply with the employer sanctions lawas well as to observe carefully our Nations antidiscrimination rules. second. require the Immigration Service to construct new barriers or upgrade existing barriers at key points where large numbers of illegal aliens attempt to cross our Southern border. third. require the States to improve the security of their drivers licenses. and then direct that drivers licensesor State ID cards for those who do not driveand alien identification cards will be the sole documents acceptable to prove employment eligibility. fourth. create a system of civil fines to deter users of fraudulent documents. and fifth. require the executive branch to report to Congress each year on the levels of illegal immigration and what additional efforts might be taken to reduce them. It is with great concern that I announce these figures on illegal entries and drug traffic along our borders. I strongly feel that these measures to: First. improve the worker verification system which supports employer sanctions. and second. to improve our traditional enforcement measures. are necessary to reverse this trend. Until we are able to seriously improve the situation at our Southern border. I have come to believe that it is not wise or proper to increase our levels of legal immigration. As Father Theodore "Ted" Hesburgh. Chairman of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy noted. we should close the back door to illegal immigration and open "the front door a little more to accommodate legal migration in the interests of this country." We must face the fact that we have not yet closed that back door. In fact. we are still leaving the back door open while considering prying open the front door much wider. When I cosponsored the Senate legal immigration bill. S. 358. in February of 1989. illegal immigration levels were the lowest they had been in many years. and the trend in apprehensions of illegal aliens was noticeably downward. Therefore. when S. 358 raised legal immigration levels from 500.000 per year to 630.000 per year. I felt such an increase was justified because the back door flow of illegal immigration had been substantially reduced. Now today we are observing a different situation at the Southern border. With apprehensions likely to exceed 1 million persons during this fiscal year. I am no longer comfortable with increasing our legal immigration levels by over 25 percent. I am introducing this legislation today because I believe it will attack the two greatest weaknesses in our current enforcement efforts: First. the large number of false documents that now exist which can be used to fraudulently satisfy the employment authorization requirement of employer sanctions. and second. the few and dilapidated physical barriers that now exist on our Southern border which were originally installed to deter illegal entrants. If this legislation is approved before or concurrently with legal immigration legislation. then I can feel justified in continuing to support a legal immigration level of up to 630.000 immigrants per year. However. if this legislation is not approved. then I just do not believe it would presently be in the national interest to approve of the increases in legal immigration that are now contemplated by proposed reform legislation. Mr. President.