Speech #1040206058

For example. under this bill. criminal aliens will no longer have the luxury of deciding whether they will serve their sentence in this country or their home country. On the contrary. this bill allows for the renegotiation of prisonertransfer treaties that will take away that decision from the criminal alien. In addition. this bill places new restrictionsmuchneeded restrictionson the use of welfare by immigrants. For the first time. selfsufficiency will be the watchword for those coming to the United States. By making noncitizens ineligible for Federal meanstested programs. and by "deeming" a sponsors income attributable to an immigrant. the American taxpayer will no longer be financially responsible for new arrivals. Mr. President. currently. individuals who sponsor an immigrants entry into the United States must pledge financial support for that immigrant by signing an affidavit. But those affidavits. as It turns out. are not legally binding. and therefore not enforceable. Consequently. they are simply not worth the paper they are printed on. Under this bill. though. the sponsors affidavit of support will be a legally binding document. thereby creating a legal claim that the Federal Government or any State government can seek to enforce. Moreover. the affidavit remains enforceable against the sponsor until the immigrant becomes a naturalized citizen. or has worked 40 qualifying quarters in this country. Mr. President. each of the provisions that I have noted are. I believe. good provisions. Each will be effective in combating the problem of illegal immigration. But on their own. these reforms cannot stem the root of the problem. They cannot get at the underlying cause for why the United States has such a large illegal alien population. now estimated by the INS at some 4 million persons. On the contrary. the only way to effectively halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States is to take away the biggest magnet of all: the magnet of Jobs. Pure and simple. we must do more to deny jobs to those who are in the country unlawfully than we are presently doing. And I believe that the most realistic way to turn off the jobs magnet is through the new worker verification system provided for in this bill. This provision. jointly crafted by Senators SIMPSON and KENNEDY. will require the President. acting through the Justice Department. to conduct several local or regional pilot programs over the next 3 years to test new and better ways of verifying employment eligibility. These pilot programs will test the feasibility of implementing electronic or telephonic verification systems that will reduce employment of illegal immigrants. while at the same time protecting the privacy of all Americans. The verification systems that will be tested in these demonstration projects will be required to reliably determine whether the person applying for employment is actually eligible to work. and whether or not such individual is an Imposter. fraudulently claiming another persons identity. Under the terms of the SimpsonKennedy amendment. any system tested would be required to reliably verify employment authorization within 5 business days. and do so in 99 percent of all inquiries.