Speech #1050107232

Mr. Speaker. there is no more precious right of citizenship than the right to vote. When noncitizens falsely claim to be citizens in order to vote. this right is cheapened for everyone else. Congress recognized the significance of vote fraud by aliens in passing the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996. The act makes falsely claiming to be a citizen in order to register to vote or to vote a Federal criminal offense. There is currently no satisfactory way for local registrars to ensure that there are no noncitizens on their voting rolls or for the Justice Department to enforce the criminal penalties. Attempts have been made to check voting rolls against Immigration and Naturalization Service records in order to ferret out noncitizens. however. INS data at best can only tell us that a voter is a legal alien or a naturalized citizen. INS data cannot tell us whether a voter is a native born U.S. citizen or an illegal alien. Our colleague. the gentleman from California . introduced a bill to resolve this dilemma. H.R. 1428. the Voter Eligibility Verification Pilot Program Act of 1998. will provide us with the means to identify noncitizens who are either trying to register to vote or are already registered. The bill will set up a 3year pilot program in which registrars on their own initiative can send their voting rolls to the Federal Government to be checked against both Social Security Administration and INS records. Checking the rolls with both agencies is the key to a successful verification program. Just about everyone has a Social Security number. Therefore. checks against Social Security Administration records can tell us whether someone is fabricating an identity and whether someone is a nativeborn citizen. As I mentioned. the INS maintains naturalization records. Comparing .information on voters against both agencies records will let us know conclusively whether individuals are U.S. citizens or not. Illegal aliens will not be able to escape notice simply because the INS has no record of them. I know there is opposition to this bill. Opponents will argue today that the Social Security Administrations records do not always indicate whether a person is a citizen.