Speech #1040267229

He is a model legislator and a pleasure to work with. I wish him well. The gentleman from Arizona. who spoke a few minutes ago. is so totally wrong when he says this is the bill that will finally do something about illegal immigration. Everyone knows. when they think about it. the only effective ways to do something to deter illegal immigration are at the border. and this bill authorizes more Border Patrol. but already the Committee on Appropriations and the administration have gone far beyond the authorization contained in this particular bill to do that. Setting up and committing to a national verification program to make employer sanctions meaningful. This bill started out like that but totally fell apart on the House floor. primarily at the behest of the majority party Members. And then to go after those industries that systematically recruit and employ illegal immigrants in order to have a competitive edge in wages and working conditions in their own operations. The Border Patrol increase is being done by the administration and the other 2 provisions are outrageously ignored in this conference report. I voted for this bill when it came out of the House of Representatives. I indicated I would vote for it in the form it was in if the Gallegly amendment was removed. The Gallegly amendment was removed. but in a dozen different ways the conference report is worse than the House bill and in many cases. notwithstanding the Committee on Rules waivers. exceeds the scope of what either House did in the most draconian ways. Draconian against illegal immigration? No. Draconian against legal immigrants. This is truly a desire by the people who lost on both the House and Senate floor in their efforts to cut back on legal immigration to do the same thing. but in the most unfair fashion. not straightforwardly by reducing the numbers but by focusing on the working class people in the society and stripping them of their right to bring legal immigrants over. The new welfare law bars legal immigrants from programs such as SSI and food stamps and from Medicaid for 5 years. It gives States the ability to permanently deny AFDC and Medicaid to legal immigrants. This conference report goes much. much further than that. makes legal immigrants not ineligible for these three or four programs but subject to deportation for use of almost every meanstested program for which they are eligible under the welfare law. In other words. what the welfare conference did not do. they decided to do here. and not declare ineligibility but make you subject to deportation. Let me tell you what that means. You are a legal immigrant child who goes through high school. applies to a college based on your superb academic performance and test scores. You get admitted to an expensive university. ivy league college. Stanford. You apply for a student loan. If you are on that student loan for more than a year. you are subject to deportation. What an outrageous provision that is. What a slap in the face of this countrys traditions that is.