Speech #1030139011

President. the threshold question of any domestic or foreign policy initiative is. does it serve the national interestI think that is a fair questionnow as well as for the future. A secondary consideration. at least with respect to foreign policy. is will the legislation have a deleterious impact on other nations. I submit that our current immigration policy fails to satisfy either obJective. We are selling out the wellbeing of future generations of Americans and sending the wrong signals to those countries working to improve or start up their own democracies. Again. my bill recognizes that the United States will always welcome those who are genuinely fleeing persecution. but it forces other industrialized nations to share in the effort. We must ask ourselves what have we done to address this problem. Apart frem a modest increase in funding for the Border Patrol and certain provisions in the crime bill. the Senate passed no significant immigration reform provisions last year. and the House did oven less. In particular. dospite overwhelming evidence that immediate statutory reforms were neededand are neededto address the serious abuses in the political asylum process. and despite bipartisan reform proposals. neither body passed legislation to stop these abuses. Hopefully. more substantial legislative actions will be taken in 1994. Mr. President. I would like now to focus on some key facts that support my contention that the current policy is flawed. Let us look at the alarming immigration numbers. Many people mistakenly believe what the advocates of an open door immigration policy would have us thinkthat America has always admitted massive numbers of immigrants and that todays levels are generally in accord with our historic levels. Looking at this chart. we simply know that is a false premise and a false argument. Mr. President. anyone having this misperception should awaken to the facts. and the facts are these: We have the highest immigration levels in U.S. history. The annual number of immigrants entering the United States. counting both legal and illegal. is at the highest level in the history of our country. and has been running alarmingly high for nearly three decades. There are more than 1 million new immigrants each year. By contrast. we now have at least 300.000 new illegal immigrants settling here. and we have around 1 million new legal immigrants annually. In 1992. for example. the United States had over 1.2 million new immigrants. Mr. President. legal immigration is massive. While most of the spotlight has been on illegal immigration. the fact is legal immigration makes up twothirds of the flood of immigrants. For example. 957.000 new legal immigrants were admitted to the United States in 1992. Congressional mistakes have dramatically increased immigration through a series of what I believe were illadvised actions going back to 1965. when the basic notions of our immigration laws were revised. In 1990. Congress opened the floodgates by passing a 35percent increase in legal immigration. Mr. President. untold numbers of individuals are unlawfully coming to the United States every year. In 1986. Congress gave amnesty and legal status to 3.1 million individuals not lawfully residing here. and in 1990. it granted "temporary protected status"-which tends to be de facto permanent legal residenceto hundreds of thousands of others who did not play by the rules. Even after Congress has passed massive legalization programs. millions of individuals do not lawfully reside in the United States today. and many more continue to cheat the rules and continue to enter unlawfully. In 1992. for example. the Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1 million persons seeking to enter the United States illegally. And. at least 2 to 3 people escapeapprehension for every 1 that is captured. Immigration Is driving rapid population growth in the United States. The United States now has the fastest growing population of any nation in the industrialized world. Over half of our Nations population growth is attributable to legal and illegal Immigration. Largely because of our present immigration policies. the U.S. Census Bureau now estimates that our Nations population will increase from its current size of approximately 250 to 392 million by the year 2050. There is unprecedented worldwide pressures to immigrate to the United States. There are millions of people around the globe who are not refugees fleeing persecution. but who want to move to our country for economic or other reasons. In addition. the worlds refugee population has exploded. Over 20 million persons now are deemed by the United Nations to be refugees outside their home countries. and another 20 to 25 million are displaced from their homes in their own countries. Millions of these suffering people naturally would like to move to the United States. The tragic reality Is that our own resources are limited. and we can admit but a tiny fraction of even the true refugees. Mr. President. there is growing worldwide population pressures to immigrate. The worlds population of 5.4 billion is expected to increase to over 8 billion by the year 2025. and almost all of this increase is projected as coming in the poorest nations. In contrast to the United States. other industrialized nations have much more restrictive immigration policies. and most have been moving to further limit immigration to their countries. The worldwide population explosion and other developed nations immigration limits will cause the demand to Immigrate to the United States to grow astronomically. In summary. Mr. President. the immigratioa numbers are alarming and the pressures to immigrate to the United States are growing. Given the host of problems our Nation is facing and our serious budget shortfalls. there is no way that we can continue to tolerate the levels of legal or illegal immigration we have been experiencing for a number of years. Many citizens and legal residentsincluding many recent immigrantsare asking what we in Congress must ask: Why are we letting so many people come in? Quite frankly. I believe that when Congress does face this threshold questionand let me say that I will press very hard to have us do so this yearSenate and House Members will conclude overwhelmingly that the current high levels simply cannot be Justified. Like every other major Federal public policy. immigration should serve the national interest. Clearly. our present immigration policy is no longer doing so. Therefore. Congress must apply the brakes and rethink the direction of U.S. immigration policy. Labor force needs and economic conditions are disregarded in our policies. Many aspects of our current policies and procedures are patently wrong. For example. legal immigration has almost no link to U.S. employment needs or economic conditions. Only a handful. about 6 percent. of the total legal admissions. are allowed because they have a skill or vocation that is needed here. The vast majority of immigrants are admitted based on special preferences written into the immigration law that favor relatives of other recent immigrants. Sixty percent of our immigrants are admitted merely because they have relatives here. Many of these people are not immediate relatives. but are part of extended families. The nepotistic U.S. policy lets in relatives. then lets in the relatives relatives. and so on. creating an endless and evergrowing chain of new immigrants. U.S. immigration procedures are often flawed and invite abuse. We have a backlog of more than 3.4 million people who have formally filed petitions for admission. Given the complex system of preferences and quotas. almost everyone has to wait for years for a visa. and in many cases. this waiting period extends for decades--I say that in the plural. Not surprisingly. millions of people seek admission shortcuts by slipping across our borders illegally without immigration inspection. or by filing false claims for admission. Asylum claims jumped from 5.000 per year in 1981 to over 100.000 in 1992. Most of them are invalid and fraudulent. Others recognize that our political asylum process has broken down and tens of thousands have moved to take advantage of the systems defects. Fraudulent claimants know that by merely filing a claim almost anyone is given work authorization documents and is released pending a decision on their claim. which often takes well over a year. Not surprisingly. most claimants never show up for their hearing and merely continue working and living in the United States unlawfully. Penalties for violation of our immigration laws also generally are quite weak and provide little deterrent effect. Socalled alien smugglers and those entering illegally know that Congress has not given the Border Patrol and INS adequate staff and other resources to provide tough enforcement and that those dedicated public servants are being overwhelmed by the massive numbers of violators. Under our immigration laws. cheaters tend to prosper. I have focused on the excessively high levels of immigration that the United States has been experiencing and on some of the major flaws in our existing laws and procedures. I now want to shift to highlight a few of the problems that are resulting from this massive wave of immigration.