Speech #1040128801

This is also one of those very controversial measures that came to the House. and the House version is similar to that. Lastly. I would like to talk about a provision in the Senate bill which has to do with legal immigrants. I can understand the furor of the country. as reflected by their elected Representatives in Congress. on the numbers of illegal immigrants and the burdens that illegal immigrants place upon local communities and the States. And so much of the debate in the States and the local communities and here in Congress has evolved around illegal immigrants and how we must deal with this problem constructively. In the welfare reform legislation. we do not deal with illegal immigrants. because illegal immigrants already are not eligible for most of these programs in the welfare. food stamps. Medicaid. and so forth and so on. The law specifically prohibits their participation in these programs. Unfortunately. there has been now a determination by both the House and the Senate to set down very specific prohibitions of coverage for legal immigrants. people who have followed the process. who have submitted their applications. been deemed eligible and admitted to the United States from all parts of the world. These legal immigrants are now going to be subject to a wide variety of prohibitions and limitations. For one thing. there will be in the Senate bill a prohibition on their receiving any needsbased assistance. no matter what the program is. for a period of 5 years. This is done on the assumption that legal immigrants come to the United States with sponsors who agree to be financially responsible for these individuals. What is happening is that this statement of financial responsibility is being deemed to adhere to the immigrant and therefore barring them from being eligible for any needsbased assistance. So in many instances these noncitizens would be ineligible for almost all of these programs. whether it is welfare. SSI. or other types of programs. The current immigrants would be subject to deeming for 5 years. Future immigrants coming into the United States after the enactment of these bills. for as long as they remain in the United States. would have to have worked for 40 qualifying quarters. In other words. they must work for 10 years. even if in the interim period they have become U.S. citizens. before they can be eligible for any of these needsbased assistance programs. I doubt seriously that that provision will be upheld in any court. The courts have systematically over the years barred distinctions among citizens. whether a nativeborn citizen or a naturalized citizen. But here in this legislation. something that we seldom see. at least I have not seen in the years that I have been here. a specific delineation of eligibility or ineligibility for benefits to a group of citizens of the United States merely because their status was initially that of a legal immigrant. subsequently becoming naturalized and still being barred from the rights and privileges of citizenship. I think that is fundamentally wrong and basically contrary to the Constitution that guarantees equal protection and due process. I regret that the Senate bill makes that further distinction. not just categorizing the legal immigrants as the House bill does. The House bill has a series of prohibitions to the legal immigrants. but those prohibitions stop just as soon as that individual becomes a U.S. citizen. On the Senate side. those prohibitions continue irrespective of citizenship. I certainly think that that is a provision in the law which has gone too far.