Speech #1090133844

My amendment would direct certain fees that already exist in the underlying bill into the account and then provide for the disbursement of the collected funds to State and local government. To which fees are we referring? Well. there is a $500 fee for immigrants who participate in the guest worker program. Right now. that fee is not marked for any purpose. and the funds simply go to the Treasury. My amendment directs this $500 fee into the State impact assistance account. Additionally. the underlying bill imposes a $2.000 fee for the undocumented immigrants to participate in the path to legalization program spelled out in title VI of the bill. plus imposes an additional fine that is left to the Department of Homeland Security to determine later. Eighty percent of these funds go to border security. 20 percent go to processing and administrative costs related to the undocumented. My amendment does not touch the 80 percent going to border security. Instead. it takes half of the processing fees--in other words. 10 percent of the $2.000 fee and the yettobe. unspecified fine by DHSand redirects that money away from Federal Government administration to this fund which will help State and local governments get reimbursed. This still leaves about $1 billion for processing and administrative costs at the Federal level.