Speech #1090099418

So Catoosa police let them go. This is outrageous. This year alone. 12 agents of the Office of Investigations of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement served the 3.500.000 people residing in Oklahoma. Additionally. Highway 144 and US75 are major roads through Tulsa that are used to transport illegal aliens to areas throughout the country. We must provide our States and communities with the tools to arrest and detain illegal aliens. Creating a second ICE office in Tulsa. one of Oklahomas largest cities. will help improve the lack of immigration enforcement in Eastern Oklahoma. I would also like to note that my colleague. Congressman JOHN SULLIVAN. has introduced similar legislation to create an ICE office in Tulsa. Not only do I believe adding another ICE office in Tulsa will help local and Federal law enforcement. I also believe providing specific immigration training for law enforcement officers will help solve our illegal immigration crisis. Our State. local. and tribal law enforcement are experiencing increasing encounters with illegal and criminal aliens during routine police duties. The typical officer often does not know the law. policy. and procedures for determining immigration status or violationsapart from or in conjunction with other offensesconcerning alien lawbreakers. As immigration continues to affect interior communities. a key to addressing situations that intersect with other law enforcement involves providing State. local. and tribal law enforcement officers with basic training in immigration law and policy. Rather than expending millions of dollars on traditional classroom training. this basic training can be costeffectively accomplished using the Internet. Knowledge of basic immigration enforcement can complement law enforcements core mission. should a local officer have strong reason to suspect other law violations without sufficient evidence to hold or charge the alien on other offenses. immigration violations may constitute sufficient grounds to hold a criminal. This requires basic familiarity with immigration matters. therefore. this provision authorizes $3 million for a demonstration project to establish such an online training program through Cameron University in Lawton. OK. These funds will be used to develop and facilitate online training in basic immigration enforcement for up to 100.000 State. local. and tribal law enforcement officers in 6 to 8 States. similar to the 4 hours of classroom training provided to all of Alabamas state troopers in 2003. This system will also provide. at the end of the demonstration project. a "return on investment" study documenting the projects costeffectiveness. Not only are illegal immigrants increasing by crossing the border and dodging law enforcement officers. they are having "anchor babies" in rapid numbers. Anchor babies are born to illegal aliens who come to our country and have a baby who is then treated as a citizen because it was born on U.S. soil. These babies are helping the immigration population grow more rapidly than the birth rate of American citizens. In fact the Census Bureau estimates that at the time of the 2000 Census. the illegal immigration population reached approximately 8 million. Therefore. according to this estimate. the illegalalien population grew by almost half a million a year in the 1990s. These numbers are derived from a draft report given to the House immigration subcommittee by the INS that estimated the illegal population was around 3.5 million in 1990. In order for the illegal population to have reached 8 million by 2000. the net increase would be around 400.000 to 500.000 per year during the 1990s. Furthermore. according to the Center for Immigration Studies. CIS. a nonprofit immigration reform organization. based on numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics. in 2002 there were about 8.4 million illegal aliens. which represent about 3.3 percent of the total U.S. population. That same year. there were about 383.000 babies born to illegal aliens. which represents about 9.5 percent of all U.S. births in 2002. In the Spring 2005 issue of the American Physicians and Surgeons Journal. Dr. Madeleine Pelner Cosman says. "American hospitals welcome anchor babies. "Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors. each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother. father. and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders. "Anchor babies are. and instantly qualify for public welfare aid." Between 300.000 and 350.000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside." These anchor babies are being used to enable their parents to skirt the law. cross our borders. and bring in additional. illegal aliens. As the law currently stands. because these children are considered citizens. it creates an incentive for more aliens to illegally cross into our country. My bill will end this incentive by clarifying that only children born to citizens or legal permanent residents are considered citizens and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."