Speech #1040196691

President. I rise tonight to make an opening statement with regard to the bill. S. 1664. on illegal immigration. Let me begin by stating my support for this legislation. It is the product of much work In our Judiciary Committee and before that in the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. And. in my judgment. although there are parts of the bill that I still hope to see us modify during the deliberations this week. it is an extraordinary piece of legislation which moves in the right direction. and it is in no small measure thanks to the Senator from Wyoming that we have this fine piece of legislation before us. His work both In the context of this legislation and over the past 17 years on immigrationrelated matters has been exceptional. It is a reflection of a Senator who is deeply committed to accomplishing a job that is difficult. and I commend him for it. Mr. President. those who refuse to play by the rules who come here illegally become. as a result. a burden on our society. and it should not be tolerated. The illegal immigration is a betrayal of our long tradition of welcoming those who play by the rules. If the Federal Government did its job of keeping out. tracking down. and expelling illegal aliens. we would not have an immigration problem that confronts America today. By definition. Illegal immigrants are lawbreakers. and based on statistics. illegal immigrants are coming here at a very high rate. It is estimated at about 300.000 per year. Our bill to address illegal immigration. S. 1664. deals effectively and aggressively with the real problem of illegal immigrationreforms to our border patrols. our visa policies. criminal alien policies and rules concerning immigrant use of welfare. First. with respect to border patrols. this bill begins in the obvious place. by fighting the problem of illegal immigration at the border. Our illegal immigration reform bill provides for the addition of 4.700 Border Patrol agents over the next 5 years. a 90 percent increase over the current level. It adds 300 new INS investigators for the next 3 years to investigate the smuggling and employment of illegal aliens. an increase of nearly 100 percent over current levels. These Increases will help us address the fundamental. the basic problem of illegal immigration by providing the manpower necessary to address the problem of those who come to this country without proper documentation. That is only a start of how this bill attempts to reform the immigration laws as they pertain to illegal immigrants. Another category of illegal aliens is those who overstay their visas. aliens who come here legally but then overstay. This bill addresses that problem and forcefully. First. it establishes the first substantial penalties for visa overstays. Second. it bars visa overstayers for even applying for a new visa for 5 years if they fail to appear for a deportation hearing. It also charges 300 INS investigators to seek out these aliens and to enforce the bills rules. It is Important to keep in mind that contrary to some charges made over recent weeks. visa overstayers commonly are not individuals who come here on permanent family visas. Rather. the bulk of visa overstayers come to this country as tourists or students. then stay beyond the expiration of their visas. Thus. it is wise and fitting that we should address those who break the law. those who overstay the visa. with sharp. stiff penalties rather than attempting to address this problem by changing in some ways the penalties for those who are playing by the rules either by reducing the number of immigrants who may come to this country or dealing with those who are in fact not creating the problem. A third area which this bill addresses and which I have been very active in working on pertains to criminal aliens. By conservative estimates. almost half a million felons are living in this country illegally. These aliens have been convicted of murder. rape. drug trafficking. potentially such crimes as espionage. sabotage. treason and/or a number of other serious crimes and are therefore. under the current laws of our country. deportable. Unfortunately. in the vast majority of cases. our officials cannot deport these criminals because of a breakdown in the deportation process. Principally. the problem relates to the interminable amount of appeals which deportable aliens who are criminals havo at their disposal. As a consequence. many of these noncitizen lawbreakers end up back on our streets to prey on lawabiding American citizens. In the original bill of the Senator from Wyoming. a number of needed provisions were contained. That bill originally directed the Attorney General to provide regulations permitting special inquiry officers to enter final orders of deportation stipulated to by the alien. It authorized Federal judges to order deportation as a condition of probation. And it made other similar efforts to address the criminal alien problem. I am glad. however. that the Judiciary Committee saw fit to go even further and to add to and strengthen these provisions by adopting four amendments on which I worked with a number of other Senators on the committee to see adopted. These amendments would create expedited procedures for deporting criminal aliens. The provisions would first prohibit the Attorney General from releasing such criminal aliens from custody. second. end judicial review for orders of deportation entered against these criminal aliens while maintaining the right to administrative review. In short. once the criminal alien had exhausted all appeals available under the criminal laws. the criminal alien would still have the full deportation administrative provisions to protect him. that is. a deportation hearing and the ability to appeal any order of deportation to the Board of Immigration Appeals. but that would end the process as opposed to triggering a return to the court system. That will be positive because it will mean the actual deportation of more criminal aliens and the freeing up of the court system from many of these frivolous lawsuits. In addition. the criminal alien deportation procedures require the Attorney General to deport criminal aliens within 30 days or the conclusion of the aliens prison sentence. What I believe this will lead to is the initiation of the deportation proceedings well in advance of the end of the sentence so that upon release the criminal aliens will be leaving the country. Finally. our legislation permits State criminal courts to enter conclusive findings of fact during sentencing that an alien has been convicted of a deportable offense. In addition. the State courts. upon making those findings of fact. will be required to report them to the Attorney General so that criminal aliens who are convicted of deportable offenses in State courts would be known by the authorities. that is. the Department of Justice and the Attorney General. in such a fashion as to allow for the deportation proceedings to begin. These reforms would not affect any of the aliens due process protections on the underlying criminal offense. Aliens would still be entitled to the lengthy appellate and habeas corpus review. just like U.S. citizens. But abuses of the appeals process would stop there and not continue on through the deportation provisions themselves. Mr. President. this makes sense. The fact is. if there are. as is currently estimated. a minimum of onehalf million noncitizens who are people who have committed serious crimes in this country. to me it makes sense that the laws which allow those people to be deported ought to be enforced so those slots can be taken by lawabiding citizens who want to come to this country and make a positive contribution rather than come to the country and commit serious criminal violations. These provisions collectively will allow us to dramatically increase the number of criminal aliens who are deported. Most recent estimates suggest that current amount is nowhere higher than 4 to 6 percent of the criminal aliens who are deportable in this country. That means that somewhere over 90 percent of the criminal aliens who could be deported are not. primarily because of a lack of a process to make expeditious deportation feasible. Our bill would change that. It would mean that criminal aliens would be leaving the country and. therefore. there would be more slots in this country for immigrants who want to make a contribution. Another area which this bill addresses effectively. I think. are restrictions on welfare benefits available to noncitizens. The problem of immigrant welfare use is often overstated. According to the Urban Institute. nonrefugee. workingage immigrants are no more likely to use welfare than are nativeborn Americans. But I continue to believe we should concentrate on requiring that all immigrants be responsible for themselves. rather than become dependent on Government programs. To encourage responsibility. we first should concentrate on preventing illegal aliens. who undermine our laws by even being here. from receiving welfare benefits. In addition. we should prevent immigrants from collecting welfare payments until they have worked here and contributed taxes to our welfare system or until they become citizens. Third. we should hold sponsors of legal Immigrants financially liable for up to 10 years for welfare payments those they sponsor improperly receive. As you know. the sponsorship agreements that people sign in order to bring someone to this country are very. very infrequently upheld. very infrequently enforced. I think the legislation we have now will provide us with the tools to enforce such sponsorship agreements. It will attribute the sponsors income to the immigrant sponsor for 5 years should the immigrant seek welfare payments. That will. on the one hand. dramatically reduce those eligible and. in addition. allow us to collect from the person who makes the original commitment of sponsorship. Collectively. these provisions address. and address effectively. the illegal immigration problems which we currently confront. They do so without punishing lawabiding people and companies. However. there are certain parts of the legislation before us which I think go too far and place the focus. not on those who are breaking the rules. but rather too much on those who are playing by the rules.