Speech #1020161538

And I know that S. 250 is a wellintentioned bill. intended to encourage more citizens to register to vote in Federal elections. However. I fear that the bill is likely to have the unintended consequences of allowing noncitizens. citizens of foreign countries. and even illegal aliens to register to vote. I know my colleagues are not advocating that noncitizens should be allowed to vote in Federal elections. I am well aware of that. But voting is a traditional right of citizenship. In fact. according to the Congressional Research Service. all 50 States have required citizenship to vote in Federal and State elections since 1922. I think we can all agree that the rights to vote is one of the few privileges which is reserved originally for U.S. citizens. While it is true that this bill does not mandate that noncitizens be allowed to vote in Federal elections. it does facilitate the registration of noncitizens. Without a system to verify citizenship or immigration status. I think citizenship requirements cannot be properly enforced. Right now in this country and in certain States in the country we have serious problems. Noncitizens can easily obtain drivers licenses and all an illegal alien needs to do to obtain a drivers license is to present identification. That identification is often fraudulent. A legal alien. legal in their immigration status. but not eligible to vote can use legitimate documents to obtain a drivers license. Neither alien applicant is eligible to vote and yet both are able to register to vote under S. 250. Anyone within this country. I share with my colleagues. as most know. anybody in this country can buy a birth certificate. a passport and a green card. and impressive ones at that. for a few dollars to a few thousand dollars. With fraudulent documents so easily obtainable under this bill. anyone. including illegal aliens. can apply for and receive a drivers license and a voter registration card. In fact. by registering through the mail. there is not even the requirement to use any documents. fraudulent or otherwise. to identify the applicant as to his or her citizenship. The minority views of the Rules Committee report to S. 250 address this very point. And I quote from the minority views of the Rules Committee: Illegal aliens have used easy availability of voter registration cards as a means to gain entry into the United States. Voter registration cards have also been used to gain access to Federal and State benefits and even to obtain jobs with the Federal Government. A Federal grand jury sitting in Chicago investigating vote fraud in 1982 and 1986. reported: Many aliens register to vote so they can obtain documents identifying them as U.S. citizens. However. the number of aliens who actually voted is undocumented. We have learned that these aliens use their voter cards to obtain a myriad of benefits from Social Security to jobs with the Defense Department. That is from the minority views of the Rules Committee report. While the U.S. attorney was unable to document the extent of the alien voter fraud problem. the Immigration and Naturalization Service was able to identify the problem in the later election. and I quote: In 1989. the Immigration and Naturalization Service surveyed a Florida special election and found that in the election 11 percent of all ballots of foreignborn voters sampled were cast by noncitizens. Furthermore. the INS reported that there is reason to believe that In this Federal election the incidence of illegal alien voting among all ballots examined was as high as 24 percent. Those are from the minority views of the Rules Committee. While section 5 of the bill does require that the applicant attest that he or she meets all eligibility requirements. including citizenship. this is not enough. Without actual verification with the Immigration and Naturalization Service on the immigration or citizenship status of the individual. there is no basis to challenge the attestation. An employee of a State motor vehicle department cannot and should not attempt to identify noncitizens by simply looking at the person or at the application. Imagine what is there for the potential of abuse. A State motor vehicle department employee should not be doing that. Only the Immigration Service can verify citizenship status. Eligibility requirements for voter registration are already very loosely enforced in some jurisdictions with motorvoter programs. Let me share with you one example that is extraordinary. A policy analysis organization conducted an informal experiment to see how well the District of Columbiaand I remind you the District of Columbia is a motorvoter jurisdictionthey wanted to find out how they applied their own eligibility requirements. So the organization applied for voter registration for two fictitious persons with Hispanic surnames. the Hispanic equivalents of John Doe. on these forms. And one personthese are fictitious personsindicated that he was unsure of his immigration status. The other person specified that he was not a citizen. In both instances. the District of Columbia issued voter registration cards. no questions asked. Now. that experiment tells us that the motorvoter system fails to discover ineligible persons. even illegal aliens. and it even fails to discover nonexistent persons. Clearly. this bill in its present form makes it significantly easier for noncitizens to vote. So this amendment simply provides that the effective dateI am not out to pull a whizzer. pull the rug. or crater this bad bill. which is going to get cratered fast enough when it gets to the President anyway. And. there are enough horses here tr. sustain the vote. So we want to remember where this all goes. and I hope that sustainment of the veto will take place. and I think it will. But this provides that if this extraordinary piece of legislation should ever go on the statute books. the effective date of the provision allowing the simultaneous application for a drivers license and voter registration be delayed for this length of time: "until the Attorney General certifies that sufficient procedures exists to prevent voting by ineligible noncitizens." I think the amendment is as straightforward as it sounds. It merely delays the effective date until the Attorney General has determined that sufficient procedures are in place to prevent those not eligible to vote from registering to vote. If. in factplease hear thisif. in fact. such safeguards are put into place by the States. there need not be any significant delay in the bills implementation. My amendment does not require that the Attorney General determine the procedures. If all of the States create procedures which are sufficient safeguards to prevent noncitizens from voting. then certification should occur. Now. that is the essence of this amendment. I have been involved in immigration activities for many yer.rs. Oddly enough. the man that got me involved in this was at the time the senior Senator from Kentucky. Dee Huddleston. He was the only person on the floor of the U.S. Senate speaking with common sense about the need to do something about illegal immigration and legal immigrationSenator Dee Huddleston. Democrat. of Kentucky. And it was very constructive for me to work with him over the years.