Speech #1040272481

Mr. President. today. we will pass legislation we hope will significantly reduce illegal immigration in this country. We could have passed this bill in the Senate last week. Unfortunately. partisan politics almost derailed efforts of the Congress. and particularly the efforts of the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee. ALAN SIMPSON. who. under extraordinary circumstances. has worked long and hard to produce a bipartisan. farreaching immigration bill. That is because. in the end. the Clinton administration threatened to veto either the omnibus appropriations billand shut down the Federal Governmentor a standalone immigration bill unless some of our reforms were deleted from title 5 of the immigration conference report. It is interesting that the immigration conference report. with title 5 intact. passed the House last week with bipartisan support by a vote of 305123. Notwithstanding this strong support. in order to ensure passage of this historic immigration measure. important provisions of title 5 have been deleted. One of the most important provisions dropped from title 5 would have required that sponsors who bring their immigrant relatives into the United States earn 200 percent of poverty in order to bring in extended relatives or 140 percent of poverty when they sponsor their spouses or their minor children. Revised title 5 changed the income requirement for all sponsors to 125 percent of poverty. At that income level. the sponsor could already be participating in several welfarerelated programs. including. but not limited to. food stamps. reduced school lunch. Medicaid for pregnant women and children under the age of 6. and the Women. Infants. and Children (WIC] program. In other words. the sponsors may well not be capable of supporting the immigrants they sponsor. Another provision that was removed from title 5 would have clarified the definition of "public charge." Under the Housepassed conference report. an immigrant could be deportedbut would not necessarily be deportedif he or she received Federal public benefits for an aggregate of 12 months over a period of 7 years. That provision was dropped during Saturdays negotiations. The Housepassed conference report would have required that public housing authorities verify the status of individuals who obtain public housing benefits. Individuals would have had 3 months to verify their status with a public housing authority or they would be required to vacate the unit. Revised title 5 will give an illegal alien 18 months to vacate the housing unit. In addition. revised title 5 will now give discretionary authority to public housing authorities to determine whether or not they will verify if someone in this country has a legal right to federallyassisted housing. This doesnt make sense to me since. in my home State of Arizona. officials of the Maricopa County Housing Authority alone estimate that 40 percent of the people receiving housing assistance in the county are illegal aliens. In Maricopa County. there are 1.334 section 8 units and 917 units available. There are over 6.500 individuals on the waiting list there. There are other provisions in title 5 that shouldnt have been dropped from the immigration conference report. It is my hope that in the future. partisan politics will play a smaller role than it did on Saturday in efforts to effectively reform our Nations immigration laws. Having said that. I do believe it would be a great disservice to the people of Arizona and the rest of the Nation if this illegal immigration conference report were not to pass the Congress during the 104th Congress. In Arizonas Tucson sector alone. the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended more than 300.000 illegal aliens this year. It is estimated that for every illegal immigrant arrested. four slip through undetected. These undetected entrants are costing Arizonans millions of dollars. In fact. the State of Arizona estimates that it spends over $200 million each year on the medical care. education. and incarceration of undocumented immigrants. Thats about equal to what the State spends each year to run Arizona State University. With this immigration bill. we have the opportunity to lift this financial burden off the States by forcing the Federal Government to take responsibility for reducing illegal immigration. and to reimburse States for many of the illegal immigrationrelated costs they incur. Perhaps most importantly for Arizona. under the immigration conference report. our borders will be better secured. One of my amendments to the bill will increase the number of border patrol agents by 5.000 over 5 years. nearly doubling the current number of agents. An increased border patrol presence in Arizona will help cities and towns such as Nogales. Naco. and Douglas. which have experienced surges in illegal immigration and borderrelated crime. The immigration bill will also require that the security features on the bordercrossing card be improved to counter fraud. There will be new monetary and civil penalties for illegal entry. In addition. every illegal immigration apprehended will be fingerprinted. Preinspection at foreign airports of passenger bound for the U.S. will be increased. The bill creates a mandatory. expedited removal process for aliens arriving without proper documentation. except if they have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries. Penalties for alien smugglers will be increased and deportation of criminal aliens will be expedited. In addition to beefing up our borders. the bill cracks down on those individuals who overstay their visas. Half of those who temporarily enter the country legally remain here illegally. The bill requires that an entryexit control system be developed to track those individuals. Visas overstayers will also be ineligible to return to the U.S. for a number of years. depending on how long they overstayed their visas. The immigration bill also provides for mandatory detention of most deportable. criminal aliens and requires that those aliens be deported within 90 days. The bill also authorize $150 million for the costs of detaining and removing deportable or inadmissible aliens and increases the number of detention spaces to 9.000 by the end of Finally. this immigration bill will remove many of the incentives for illegal entry. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that 10 percent of the workforce in Arizona is made up of illegal aliens. H.R. 2202 sets up three pilot projects. to be implemented in high illegal immigration States. that will determine the employment eligibility of workers and thereby reduce the number of illegal aliens trying to get U.S. jobs. While I may well vote against the omnibus bill to which this legislation is attached and while I am very disappointed about the last minute changes to the immigration part of the bill. I nevertheless believe that part of the omnibus bill should be passed. I am confident that this legislation is the keystone we will build upon in the future.