Speech #1040204732

President. I rise today to urge my colleagues to support the AbrahamFeingold amendment to strike the worker verification proposal from this bill. It has been said many times already in the past. and today on the floor. that we cannot effectively combat illegal immigration without having a national worker verification proposal. It has been said that the employer sanction laws implemented in the 1986 act have been largely ineffective due to the absence of such a verification system. As we all know. Mr. President. there are two major channels of illegal immigration. The first is composed of those who cross our borders illegally. without visas and without inspection. Roughly 300.000 such individuals enter and remain in our country unlawfully each year. This. as we all know and agree. is unquestionably a serious problem along our southwestern border. This Congress does have a responsibility to provide additional resources to the U.S. Border Patrol and other enforcement agencies to prevent such individuals from crossing the border in the first place. So I strongly support the provisions in S. 1664 that provide additional border guards and enforcement personnel. Mr. President. the second part of the equation. though. which represents up to onehalf of the illegal immigration problem. is the problem known as visa overstayers. These are people who enter our country legally. usually on a tourist or student visa. and then remain in the United States unlawfully only after the visa has expired. But despite this phenomenon. representing up to 50 percent50 percentof our illegal immigration problem. there was not a single provision in the original committee legislation to address this problemnot a single word about half of the whole illegal immigration problem. Instead. the bill supporters proposed a massive. new national worker verification system. complete with uniform Federal identification documents. So. rather than targeting the individuals who break our laws and are here illegally. the premise of that proposal was to ensure that the identity of every worker in AmericaU.S. citizens. legal permanent residents. and so onhad to be verified by a Government agency in Washington.