Speech #1040190319

Mr. Chairman. first of all I would like to respond to some of the concerns that the gentleman from Michigan shared with us. Now. the first was that he was worried about the 200percent poverty rate level of income that we required of sponsors of immigrants coming into the country. Let me just say that that provision was in the Senate welfare reform bill that passed 87 to 12. with large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supporting that welfare reform bill. In addition to that. what this is trying to address is the crisis that we have in America today where we continue to admit people coming in under the sponsorship of individuals who are at the poverty level. So it should not surprise us that as a result of our current immigration law we have 20 percent of all legal immigrants. for instance. on welfare. it should not surprise us that the number of immigrants applying for supplemental security income. a form of welfare. has increased 580 percent over 12 years. That is the crisis that we are trying to address by simply saying someone has to be solvent before they can sponsor an immigrant coming into the country. when they have to say they are going to be financially responsible for them. Another concern mentioned by the gentleman from Michigan was in regard to the verification program. I just want to reassure him that it is a voluntary program that is going to be offered as a convenience to employers for 3 years. If it does not work. we will not continue it. But the important point here is that. according to the Social Security Administration. we have a 99.5percent accuracy rate when all we are doing is checking the name and the Social Security number of someone to find out whether they are eligible to work. The whole point of the verification system. of course. is to reduce the fraudulent use of documents. protect jobs for American citizens and legal immigrants already in this country. and help reduce discrimination at the workplace. The error rate that the gentleman mentioned was not an error rate. It is called a secondary verification rate. and sometimes it ranges from 17 to 20 percent. as was mentioned. But this is just simply showing that the system works. Those are the times when there was not a person with the right Social Security number. and in many instances those were illegal aliens who should not be employed in this country. Last. the gentleman expressed concern or endorsed. which I liked. the free market approach to labor in this country. but I want to say to him that that is exactly why I drew up some of the figures I did about the unskilled in this country. when we continue to allow hundreds of thousands of individuals to gain entry to our country who do not have skills and do not have education. As the gentleman said. they are going to compete directly with our own citizens and own legal immigrants who are unskilled and uneducated. and that is why we see so often in the urban areas that wages are depressed and jobs are lost as a result. Mr. Chairman.