Speech #1060019918

Mr. Speaker. I want to bring to the Houses attention again a continuing problem with Chinese illegal immigration in Guam. This past Tuesday. on April 6. 82 were apprehended while preparing to come on shore. On Wednesday. April 7. nine more Chinese illegal immigrants were discovered by a U.S. naval vessel whose permits to work on Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. had expired. and they had decided to try their luck on Guam and boarded a small 18foot boat bound for Guam. On Friday. April 9. 93 illegal immigrants were apprehended as their boat ran aground on a reef off of Ritidian Point. On Sunday. April 11. 38 suspected illegal immigrants. including two women. were caught off of Agat where they arrived on the dilapidated wooden boat. The number of apprehended Chinese illegal immigrants in Guam caught since January of this year is now up to 473. On a per capita basis. this would be like 5.000 illegal immigrants washing up on the shores of Florida. A couple of weeks ago. I informed this body about the criminal and inhumane ramifications of this wave of illegal immigrants into Guam. The Chinese are smuggled by crime syndicates which charge them anywhere from $10.000 to $30.000 each. They set sail in squalid quarters and are sometimes abused by their smugglers. They travel over the open seas for over 20 days. Upon successfully completing the trip. they are made indentured servants and have to pay off their debt to the smugglers who brought them to the U.S. With the arrival this week of almost 200 illegal immigrants. we see the rise of other factors in Guam. Guam is undergoing current economic crisis caused by the Asian downturn. and we have no basis upon which to deal with them. Yet the INS has gone bankrupt and refuses to house these illegal immigrants and refuses to process them into the United States mainland because they have no funds. So the Government of Guam has taken on the responsibility to house these illegal immigrants at a cost of $97 a day in facilities now holding over 400 occupants when they were designed to hold only about 150. Unlike other areas inside the U.S. mainland. Guam does not have large charitable organizations capable of handling these people. Another factor has been the environmental cost of the waves of illegal immigrants. The ship which ran into the reef on Friday has leaked fuel into Guams waters. damaging the reef and killing other marine life. According to the INS officer in charge on Guam. Mr. David Johnston. the waves of illegal immigrants will not stop unless some action is taken immediately. What I have suggested through H.R. 945 is to change the INA in order not to allow or narrow the gap for claiming political asylum in Guam. What these Chinese syndicates do is use the political asylum claim on Guam in order to further their efforts and to profit from human misery and then bring them into the U.S. Another thing that we must do is that there is currently a proposal in the White House which has not seen complete fruition. and that is to form an interagency task force to deal with issues of insular areas. This is a critical need.