Speech #1040271814

The rest of that quartet were Senator KENNEDY and Congressman HOWARD BERMAN and myself. We worked up some changes to what is called title V. There are no changes in the conference report on immigration. on illegal immigration. except in that one section. Everything else is exactly the same. and it is sweeping. It is about new Border Patrol agents. 5.000. It is about new penalties for those who use or alter or make fraudulent documents. It extends the visa waiver pilot program. and it provides 900 new investigators over 3 years to enforce alien smuggling and employer sanctions. Alien smuggling can subject one to a life in prison. There are heavy penalties to those who misuse and abuse documents. and 300 INS investigators will be hired here to check on those who overstay their visas. Remember that half of the people who come to the United States illegally originally were here legally. In other words. half of the illegal population in the United States came here legally. and then. of course. visa overstayers. visa fraud. student overstayers--we have the ability now to begin to correct that. There is a newly rewritten and streamlined removal process. combining exclusion and deportation into a single legal process. We also got rid of layers of people who love to bring class actions and disrupt the normal course of the INSs work. We make the sponsors affidavit of support. finally. a legally enforceable document which should provide some relief to the U.S. taxpayer. There is a minimum INS presence in every State. There is a system of expedited removal which should curb the abuse of our asylum system while still providing a hearing for an immigration judge to those who make an asylum claim. I want to thank Senator LEAHY for his work. I did not thank him at the time the amendment passed properly. but. nevertheless. a good deal of his material is in here. He felt strongly about that and he presented it well and won the case here. We adjusted that measure somewhat but it is still a good measurenot exactly what he would have wanted and not exactly what I would have wanted. and therefore. justifiably good. There is a streamlined system for deporting aliens convicted of crimes. There is a requirement that all criminal aliens be detained until they are deported. Domestic violence and stalking are made deportable offenses. There is a provision to eliminate what is called "parachute kids." foreign students who come in and then attend public schools at taxpayer expense. I commend Senator FEINSTEmn for her work on that one. There is a pilot program for verification of eligibility to work. and there will be much more of that in the future because no matter how vigorous you want to be on illegal immigration and all the abuses of the system. nothing will work until we have a more counterfeitresistant type of verification systemwhatever that may be. whether it would eventually be a Social Security card. a slidethrough card like you use with a VISA when you make a purchase. perhaps some type of drivers license photograph. retina examination like they have done in California. But at some point in time you are going to have to have a more secure identifier. It is going to have to be used only twice in a persons life.