Speech #1040201763

I can tell you. Mr. President. out of 120.000 inmates in the California Department of Corrections. between 15.000 and 20.000 of them are illegal immigrants. servirg felony time in California. The .-..s. to the State is literally hundredb a! millions of dollars a year. The bill would create a demonstration project in Anaheim. CA. to use INS personnel to identify illegal immigrants in prison. so that they can be more rapidly deported. Historically. the way Congress has handled illegal immigration is through what are called employer sanctions. I think the intentalthough I was not here. and the Senator from Wyoming knows far better than Iwas that the reason most illegals--and I say "most"-come here illegally is because of the lure of Jobs. That is the magnet. Therefore. if you remove this magnet and prevent people from working illegally. you will deter illegal immigration. In order to work. though. employer sanctions need an accurate method of verifying whether an applicant for a job is legally entitled to work. Up to this point. relying primarily on employer sanctions. the basis on which all illegal immigration is handled in the United States. has been a colossal failure. The reason for the failure is that employers have no reliable way to determine if a prospective employee is legally entitled to work. Let me explain why. Presently. if an employer is interviewing someone for a job. he or she* might say. "Can you show me that you are legally entitled to work?" They can present to the employer 29 different documents. under present law. Under present law. no prospective employer can say. "May I see your green card?" That is a violation of law. So they must take one. two. three or four of the 29 different methods of identification offered. If somebody came in to me and I said. "Do you have an identification to show that you are a resident of California?" They would say. "Oh. yes." and hold up this card.