Speech #1030068940

I support a supervisory review of a screened out case. If it is said of a person. "You do not have a credible fear of persecution." I think there should be indeed a supervisory review. But I am troubled by the administration proposal to create a now group which might be outside the Immigration Service to review every single denied case. I think that is getting right back into the ponderousness of the process. The purpose of my bill and the administrations proposal is to create a fast. firm. and fair system of dealing with asylum claims by persons who enter this country illegally. I think we can assure fairness with a supervisory review without the cost of delay in review by a member of some superasylum review officer corps. Another concern with this proposal is adequate resources. We too often have enacted good immigration reform legislation but have failed to provide adequate funding. As a result. we have had legislation which has proven ineffective. A good example is the employer sanctions provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. legislation that has never been fully and effectively enforced by the Immigration Service due principally to the lack of adequate resources and. of course. the other reason is because the documents presented have all been fraudulent and gimmicked beyond belief. Until we have some form of universal identifier. some form of counterfeitresistant document. we will not have reform. That can be done in a nonintrusive way. Because. unless we handle the problems of illegal immigration and gimmickry. we will lose our compassion for legal immigration and bringing in what is now a very generous number. 900.000 people a year1 million if you want to count it a little differently. Nevertheless we passed that law. We did not provide the funding for the investigators needed to properly enforce it. If we do not provide adequate funding for the doubling of our asylum corps and proper funding for sufficient detention space to hold these aliens who have entered illegally until their claims can be heard. the bill will not be effective. Asylum backlogs will continue to grow and the new procedures will have no deterrent effect. The administration and the Congress must be committed to finding the resources to properly fund asylum and antismuggling legislation. and we cannot simply take the money from other immigration activities. That agency is already underfunded. So I do appreciate the efforts of the administration to address this growing problem. I suggest several changes in the Presidents proposal but there is much in the proposal I can support and will. Much of it is essentially in accord with my own activities with immigration reform bills. It is a good first step. and there is much. much more to do. I thank the chair.