Speech #1030047083

NY. Many have already arrived in Miami. and a significant number will remain in Florida. While their HIV status has made their arrival an especially newsworthy event. these latest 158 Haitians are just a drop in the sea of immigration problems that almost defy description. I met this morning with several officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to specifically get an update on their plans for handling of the HIVinfected Haitians. I asked how Florida is likely to be affected. and what enforcement mechanisms are in place to ensure that those who do request asylum actually end up going through the examinations of the process in a timely manner. It would be an understatement to say the picture they painted was in any way encouraging. The political refugee system Is clearly overwhelmed by a wellmeaning. but totally unworkable. set of immigration laws. practices. and procedures. The results of this are really quite devastating for our Nation in terms of protecting America from the cost of illegal aliens. which is. by our calculation. in excess of $27.5 billion over the next 5 years. and I suspect that is a very low estimate. and in terms of the public health threats. which are still unknown. and in terms of the public safety concerns that are associated with the illegal alien problem. When we try to examine the problem and ask the representatives of INS why they cannot keep up. it is just simply numbers. We are dealing with something like 3 million illegal entries a year coming into our country. They do not all stay. of course. We do not know how many of them actually do stay. We know something like 1.2 million illegal aliens get intercepted at the border and turned around. That does not mean to say they might not come in the next day. These numbers do not really mean a whole lot except there are so many people coming into our country illegally. and we have so few judges and so few guards and so few immigration and customs authorities to deal with them. Just last year. I am told. we had 120.000 asylum claims that came in who were caught and we had to process. Those are ones we know about. 120.000 that we did get on top of. I know just at the Miami airport alone every month we have 50. and at Kennedy and Now York it is many times that.