I mentioned the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. The estimated cost to reimburse the Statesabout 30 cents on the dollaris $700 million this year. This funding provided for in this amendment would enable us to provide that funding to the States and to the local governments. which have had to carry the burden of housing these illegal immigrant criminals. people who have been convicted in State courts of crimes. and then the States have had to pay the expense of their incarceration. The Federal Government has in the past deemed there is at least some responsibility to help bear these costs. I think this amendment can go a long way toward meeting this responsibility. This additional $2 billion in no way covers all of the expenses that would need to be covered. But in addition to that which is already provided for in the budgetI have to take one second to compliment the chairman of the Budget Committee and the ranking member for their hard work to gain additional resources in the budget for a variety of programs to deal with comprehensive immigration reform. Their additions this year are historic and welcome and needed. What this funding does is to complement that in some additional areas they have not covered so we can get a start on comprehensive immigration reform and not be lagging behind 2 or 3 years simply because we did not anticipate the kind of expenses that would be needed to make such a program work. So I compliment the members of the Budget Committee for their hard work. I think this amendment should be accepted as an additional complement to what they did.
Keywords matched
illegal immigrant immigration