Speech #1040190347

We have a commitment to all those people who are waiting months. years. some up to 10 years. to come to this country legally. Just as my grandparents waited legally to get in here. and just as my husbands parents waited legally to get in here. we must enforce the law. At the same time. we must recognize that there is not enough room in the United States to continue an openended legal immigration policy when we are presently unable to assimilate those already here. However. this country should not and will not deny its great tradition of the melting pot. No one will argue that immigrants have formed the backbone of our country. Immigrants from all over the world have helped make this great Nation what it is today. But. that does not mean that the current system is not in need of substantial reform. It is. No one would propose an open border policy. but that is in essence the practice today because our laws are so inadequate. As many of you know. the problems with legal immigration date back to 1986 when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. I voted against this legislation which gave lawful permanent resident status to 2.7 million illegal aliens. What this also did was afford them the benefit to petition for relatives under the family preference system. This has had the effect of pushing back many of those who had legally waited for their turn to enter the United States. They played by the rules but they still lost out. In 1990. Congress enacted the first comprehensive reform of legal immigration since 1965. Family and employmentbased preferences were separated and employmentbased preferences almost tripled from 54.000 to 140.000. Moreover. there were no longer limits on family related categories for immediate relativesspouses. unmarried minor children. and parents. Consequently. we witnessed an annual influx of 700.000 legal immigrants until 1990 and an influx of almost 1 million legal immigrants every year since. Not only have States been unable to accommodate the huge numbers of legal immigrants coming to the United States in recent years. but more than 80 percent of them are low skilled and uneducated. Unfortunately. this is a problem that we cannot work around. Therefore. we must reduce legal immigration to a level that our country can absorb while recognizing that the admission of certain groups of legal immigrants. particularly nuclearfamily members and those with high skills/ education. are in the best interest of American families. American businesses. and the American economy. In New Jersey our foreignborn population reached 13.5 percent in 1994. our highest level since 1940. One can certainly recognize why the last surge in legal immigration took place 55 years agoour country was becoming more and more industrialized. and many more jobs were to be found. But. in this current economic climate of corporate downsizing/mergers. technological advancement. and free trade. States such as New Jersey cannot absorb large numbers of people from overseas. If we set aside shear numbers and focus on the low skill/education level of many legal immigrants eligible to come to the United States. the impact is even greater. In the New York/New Jersey region 40 percent of foreignborn residents do not have high school diplomas. and 10 percent are unemployed. far greater than the 4.5 to 6.5 percent that the rest of the Nation has experienced the last few years. In New Jersey alone. 26 percent of all foreignborn residents are at the highest poverty level. The low skills/education of many legal immigrants being admitted to the United States has devastating consequences. These individuals drain money from our social service system in the form of public benefits. In fact. they receive $25 billion more in benefits than they pay in taxes. An even more startling fact is that SSI for legal immigrants has increased by 580 percent in the past 12 years. We Just cannot afford to continue to provide unlimited services when our own citizens are living below the poverty level. without health care. without Jobs. That is why. for the first time.