[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HOW LIMITING INTERNATIONAL VISITOR VISAS HURTS SMALL TOURISM BUSINESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
WASHINGTON, DC, JUNE 19, 2002
__________
Serial No. 107-63
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business
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81-127 WASHINGTON : 2002
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
DONALD MANZULLO, Illinois, Chairman
LARRY COMBEST, Texas NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
SUE W. KELLY, New York BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
STEVE. CHABOT, Ohio DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin
PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania Islands
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JOHN R. THUNE, South Dakota TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MICHAEL PENCE, Indiana STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas
DARRELL E. ISSA, California DAVID D. PHELPS, Illinois
SAM GRAVES, Missouri GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
FELIX J. GRUCCI, Jr., New York MARK UDALL, Colorado
TODD W. AKIN, Missouri JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania BRAD CARSON, Oklahoma
ANIBAL ACEVEDO-VILA, Puerto Rico
Doug Thomas, Staff Director
Phil Eskeland, Deputy Staff Director
Michael Day, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on June 19, 2002.................................... 1
WITNESSES
Ziglar, Hon. James, Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization
Service, U.S. Justice Department............................... 4
Bush, Hon. John Ellis ``Jeb'', Governor, State of Florida, via
videotape...................................................... 7
Sullivan, Hon. Thomas, Chief Counsel, Office of Advocacy, U.S.
Small Business Administration.................................. 9
McDermott, Mark, Director, Arizona Office of Tourism, on behalf
of Western States Tourism Policy Council....................... 10
Lewis, John, Retired, former Assistant Director, Federal Bureau
of Investigation, National Security Division................... 13
Amrine, Neil, President, Guide Service of Washington, on behalf
of the Travel Industry Association of America.................. 15
Highfield, Del, Owner, Camping Resort of the Palm Beaches, on
behalf of National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds..... 17
White, Ellen, President, Canadian Snowbird Association........... 19
Hjelle, Mark, Vice President & General Counsel, The Brickman
Group, on behalf of American Nursery & Landscape Association... 20
APPENDIX
Opening statements:
Manzullo, Hon. Donald........................................ 47
Velazquez, Hon. Nydia........................................ 49
Jones, Hon. Stephanie Tubbs.................................. 55
Udall, Hon. Tom.............................................. 57
Prepared statements:
Ziglar, Hon. James........................................... 59
Bush, Hon. John Ellis ``Jeb''................................ 68
Sullivan, Hon. Thomas........................................ 70
McDermott, Mark.............................................. 80
Lewis, John.................................................. 87
Amrine, Neil................................................. 88
Highfield, Del............................................... 93
White, Ellen................................................. 97
Hjelle, Mark................................................. 103
Additional information:
Federal Register, Vol. 67, No. 71, April 12, 2002............ 109
The Washington Post, Wednesday, June 19, 2002, ``Sept. 11
Plot Likely Hatched in '98, Tenet Says'' Page A10.......... 114
Letter to Mrs. Ellen White, Canadian Snowbird Assc. from
James Ziglar, U.S. Department of Justice................... 115
Letter to James Ziglar, U.S. Department of Justice from
Chairman Manzullo & Ranking Member Velazquez............... 116
Letter to James Ziglar, U.S. Department of Justice from
Senator Harry Reid......................................... 118
Letter to James Ziglar, U.S. Department of Justice from
Florida Governor Jeb Bush.................................. 120
Letter to Immigration and Naturalization Service from the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce................................... 121
Letter from Jolene Wade, Fountain of Youth Spa RV Resort,
California................................................. 127
Illinois-Canadian trade statistics........................... 128
New York-Canadian trade statistics........................... 130
The Washington Times, Tuesday, June 18, 2002; ``Terrorists
recruited from U.S. seen as a rising threat,'' Page A3..... 132
Center for Immigration Studies--Summary table of the
immigration status of foreign born terrorists.............. 133
HOW LIMITING INTERNATIONAL VISITOR VISAS HURTS SMALL TOURISM BUSINESS
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2002
House of Representatives,
Committee on Small Business,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:20 a.m. in Room
2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Donald Manzullo
[chairman of the Committee] presiding.
Chairman Manzullo. The Committee will come to order. Just a
little bit of information as we wait for Ms. Velazquez. Here
she is. Good morning. How are you?
The way the panel is set up, as we do with most of our
hearings here, it is more for a conversational style. The
purpose of the hearing is to try to work towards a resolution
of the topic that is at hand.
I have advised the Commissioner who is here after traveling
an entire week that if a question is asked by a Member of
Congress and he feels more comfortable having a member of his
staff answer the question because it is technical, then that
option is totally up to you, Commissioner.
The purpose is to get as much information out in the best
source that you have, so if you have to ask someone to come up
all we ask is that person just introduce themselves and spell
their name for the record and proceed to answer the question.
Mr. Ziglar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Manzullo. Today the Committee will focus on the
importance of international tourism to our nation's small
businesses. Over 25 million overseas visitors came to our
country in 2000, giving us a trade surplus of $14 billion. Last
April, the INS proposed a rule to change the automatic default
period for tourist visas from non-waiver countries from six
months to 30 days.
I understand there has been a lot of confusion about this
proposal. Many media reports say that all visitors would be
limited to stay in the U.S. for a maximum of 30 days. However,
the proposal will grant any international visitor from a non-
visa waiver country the time they believe is appropriate to
visit the U.S. up to six months, provided they can demonstrate
to an INS immigration inspector a rationale for staying in the
country for more than 30 days.
Regardless of this clarification, the proposal may well
endanger the confidence of foreign travelers desiring to visit
the U.S. for longer than 30 days. According to an INS fact
sheet, the new rule will require visitors to, and we quote,
``explain to an INS immigration inspector the nature and
purpose of their visit so the inspector can determine the
appropriate length of stay. While INS inspectors will make
every effort to determine a fair and reasonable time period,
the burden of proof rests with the alien. When the time needed
to accomplish the purpose of the visit cannot be determined,
INS will grant a 30 day period of admission.''
The proposed rule itself states that ``where there is any
ambiguity whether a shorter or longer period of admission would
be fair and reasonable under the circumstances'' then the visa
will be issued for 30 days.
The main justification for this proposal is to fight
terrorism, obviously an extremely important objective, yet this
policy change has very little to do with fighting terrorism. In
yesterday's Washington Times, there was a report about the
growing threat of terrorist forces recruiting disaffected U.S.
citizens with passports in order to avoid our immigration laws.
There must be a better way to accomplish the legitimate
objectives of the INS without significantly damaging the U.S.
travel and tourism industry. We certainly need better sharing
of intelligence data so that our consular officers abroad and
our immigration inspectors at the border know who to deny entry
into the United States.
The INS also claims this rule will not have a significant
economic impact on a substantial number of small entities
because this rule only applies to non-immigrant aliens visiting
the U.S., not to small entities. They also claim this is not a
major rule that will have an impact on the economy of $100
million or more. The INS has not provided research or any
documentation to substantiate this statement made in the
proposed rule.
The travel and tourism industry in the U.S. is dominated by
small businesses. This industry relies heavily on international
visitors for their livelihood. In 2000, the Commerce Department
estimated that 939,000 visitors from non-visa waiver countries
contributed almost $2.1 billion to the U.S. economy. That is a
significant impact in my book.
Finally, I have a concern about how our Canadian friends
will be treated under this new rule. Currently, most Canadians
crossing our border do not need a passport. They are not given
anything in paper by our INS immigration inspectors documenting
how long they are allowed to stay in this country because they
are automatically assumed to have a default admission period of
six months. Yet how will this rule affect them?
While I welcome Homeland Security Director Tim Ridge's
clarification to deliver a formal notice to Canada saying
Canadians can still head to the U.S. for up to six months, it
is also preferable for this to be included in the final rule.
Canadians have a vested interest in not staying in the U.S.
beyond six months because otherwise they will lose their health
insurance and also have to pay U.S. taxes.
There were nearly 14.6 million arrivals of Canadian
citizens through our border in 2000. They spent nearly $10
billion in the U.S., including $162 million in my home state of
Illinois. How this issue affecting Canadians is resolved is of
great interest to me. Continued progress on the Smart Border
plan with our Canadian friends will probably do more to fight
terrorism than any other initiative.
I now yield for the purpose of an opening statement to my
colleague and good friend from the Empire State, Mrs.
Velazquez.
[Chairman Manzullo's statement may be found in the
appendix.]
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Tourism benefits
American small businesses from shops and charters to airline
suppliers and concessionaires. It is hard to overestimate the
influence of this sector. During the last decade, travel and
tourism became an established leader in a modern services
economy.
When counted as an export contribution, travel and tourism
more than doubled, from $26 billion in 1986 to $90 billion in
1996. This sector is our number one services export and has
produced a trade surplus every year since 1989. Here is a
demonstration of tourism on the local level. In 1996, a record
46.5 million people visited the United States. Every one spent
an average of $1,500, including a third on lodging, another
third on retail and a fifth on food.
Clearly, international travel to the United States is a
vital small business export, just like selling software or
wheat. It boosts our GDP and supports more than one million
jobs. How the Immigration and Naturalization Service's new
regulations for tourist visas will affect this vibrantand vital
sector should concern this Committee.
After September 11, the INS had to act to protect our
security. Most of the terrorists involved in the attacks were
in this country on valid entry visas. In fact, nine of the 19
known hijackers were in the country on tourist visas. The INS
rewrote the rules on non-immigrant visas, including tourist
visas, and the President has proposed to create an entire new
Department of Homeland Security as part of a broad
restructuring process. We must not forfeit our oversight and
duty to stem any unanticipated consequences during this push to
secure the country against future terrorist attacks.
We are here to examine the impact of the INS' proposed
reform of the B-1/B-2 visa procedures. While this move is an
attempt to address an area of concern, it should not result
simply in a false sense of security while inconveniencing
visitors and disrupting our vital and growing small business
tourism sector.
It is apparent that the INS has not fully examined or
anticipated the impacts of these vast changes as required by
the Regulatory Flexibility Act and SBREFA. The INS must also
conduct outreach and consider less burdensome regulatory
alternatives.
The new regulations eliminate the six month visa and reduce
most stays to 30 days. This will clearly inconvenience a
majority of visitors since a 30 day visa means the average
visitor of 20 days has about a week and a half leeway to make
their trip. Given that, many potential visitors may simply
choose somewhere else to go.
This new policy deters the people we want to visit, those
who stay the longest and spend their money at small businesses
across this country. This is the effect that we wish the INS
would consult with small businesses on before taking.
With a close look at this regulation, we can increase
security in the visa process without adversely affecting small
business. We should also fix a firm time frame to develop new
rules and ensure predictability for visitors. Most importantly,
this process cannot be concluded without small business input.
As in most things, achieving the best balance of all the
interests involved should be our goal. This Committee needs to
assert oversight powers now at the very beginning of the effort
to restructure our government's homeland security
infrastructure before it becomes too big and unwieldy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Ms. Velazquez's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you. We have in our midst Ron
Erdman from the Department of Commerce. Ron, where are you?
Mr. Erdman. Right here in the back.
Chairman Manzullo. Ron, could you have a seat somewhere up
front just in case some statistics come up that we need in your
position as Deputy Director of Travel and Tourism at the
Department of Commerce? We would be able to have you come and
give those stats for us. If you could have a seat here next to
Laura over there against the wall, that would be fine. Thank
you.
We look forward to the testimony of the witnesses. We have
a five minute clock. That clock is not going to apply to the
first two witnesses. The first witness is Jim Ziglar. I do not
know how it could apply to a videotape of Governor Bush. Mr.
Ziglar, we welcome you here. We know you have been on extensive
travel. We look forward to your testimony. Thank you, sir.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES W. ZIGLAR, COMMISSIONER, U.S.
IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
Mr. Ziglar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your
calling this hearing so that we can have a chance to discuss
the INS' recently published proposed rules with respect to B-2
visitors and B-1 visitors to the United States.
I would like to briefly explain our reasons for issuing
this proposed rule and clarify some misinterpretations and
misperceptions. First, let me make it very clear that this is
not a 30 day rule for visits to the United States. Our proposal
is to admit all visitors for up to, but not more than, six
months based on the purpose and stated duration of their visit.
Experience and data indicate that six months far exceeds the
average length of stay for most visitors.
Since admission to the United States is not automatic, we
also propose to place responsibility to explain the purpose and
length of stay on B-2 visitors for pleasure. That is how we
currently and have for a long time admitted B-1 visitors for
business.
In instances where there is ambiguity over the exact nature
of the visit, INS proposes a default admission period of 30
days. That is where someone cannot tell you why they are here
or how long they plan to stay here. Then the default period
will be 30 days, but it is not a maximum period that visitors
get. The period is based upon what is reasonable and fair to
accomplish the purpose of the visit.
As the public, media and other interested persons have
digested these proposed changes, a number of misperceptions
have arisen regarding the rule, in particular that the INS is
seeking to establish again a 30 day time limit on visits to the
United States. That is simply not true. I keep repeating that
because I think it is important for people out there to
understand that.
I know some have said that this rule will not enhance our
security. I believe that claim is simply not true. The very
reason for these changes is the concern highlighted by the
activities of the 19 hijackers that an individual can enter the
United States for an almost automatic six months and
potentially can file for an extension and stay a year or more
without having to validate substantially the reasons that they
are here.
As you know, 18 of the 19 hijackers entered the United
States on B-2 visitor visas. In addition, an automatic six
month admission period with a generous extension policy may
lead individuals to develop permanent ties to the United
States, including employment, although illegal, that
contributes to the process of visa overstays.
As the Committee is well aware, rules and regulations have
a deterrent effect. Typical criminal behavior strives to avoid
attention. Individuals who seek to do harm to our country are
more likely to draw attention to themselves if they fail to
play by the rules. Therefore, the proposed rule makes it more
difficult for such individuals to remain undetected inside the
United States for long periods of time.
Nearly all of the 19 hijackers maintained valid status
while planning the attacks of September 11. They made concerted
efforts to do so, it is logical to assume, because that made
them less likely to come to the attention of federal
authorities.
By limiting the stay of individuals who do not have
legitimate reason to be in the United States for long periods
of time, there is a greater likelihood that those with bad
intent will appear on the radar screen of law enforcement
officials. This proposed rule will also complement our
developing an entry/exit system to record the arrival and
departure of foreign nations, something that has been mandated
by the Congress.
I believe that it is the misunderstanding that we are
reducing B-2 visitors for pleasure admission periods to only 30
days that has led to the conclusion that the travel and
tourismindustry would be harmed. The INS inspections program is
carrying out a rigorous and will carry out a rigorous education program
to ensure that all immigration inspectors fully understand that any
default period is not a new maximum admission period. Our inspectors
today determine a fair and reasonable period of admission for those
entering as B-1 visitors for business. This concept is not new for our
men and women at the ports of entry.
As I am sure the Committee can well appreciate, national
security concerns figure prominently in almost every action
currently undertaken by the government. At the INS, we take
seriously the responsibility to ensure a secure flow of people
across our borders. This requires us to balance our charge to
defend the United States from those who intend to do harm to us
and the need to secure our economic prosperity and freedoms by
keeping our borders open to legitimate travel and commerce.
Mr. Chairman, let me just divert from my text here for a
minute and make a personal comment about that. I spent most of
my career, in fact the major portion of my career, working on
Wall Street in New York, an industry that is very sensitive to
the economy of this country. Just look at what the stock market
does day in and day out.
I can tell you that I am personally very concerned about
any security measure that would have an impact on our economy
for the simple reason that if we do not have a strong economy,
we are not going to have the resources to protect ourselves, so
it is an iterative process.
I think you will see that in terms of the way we are trying
to deal with some border issues in terms of trying to have a
fast pass, if you will, concept between the Canadians and the
U.S. and the Mexicans and the U.S. where we identify people and
we have tamper-proof ways of having cards that they can pass
across the border that indicate who they are and say they have
the right kind of documents and that sort of thing. I mean, we
are working very hard to try to ameliorate the effects, the
adverse economic effects, of security measures.
I am no less concerned about this issue than I am about the
so-called fast pass, if you will, between those two countries,
so you are not talking to someone here who is unaware of the
economic consequences. I spent my entire life in the private
sector dealing with economics and the impact on markets and
other things.
Our proposals make sure that every visitor applying for
admission is questioned thoroughly in order to determine a fair
and reasonable period of admission. It is reasonable to expect
that anyone traveling to the United States should be able to
articulate to the inspector the desired period of admission, be
it verbally or with documents that outline the nature of the
trip. Requiring individuals to justify their itinerary and
length of stay is prudent policy, particularly in light of the
post September 11 world.
This proposed rule is just one of a series of steps that we
are taking to bolster the integrity of our nation's immigration
system. We have issued a number of necessary, if not
universally popular, directives. For example, we directed the
INS to publish changes to our foreign student regulations, and
this summer we will begin to deploy the automated, internet
based SEVIS system that monitors foreign students attending
American institutions of learning.
In a similar vein, I directed that no application or
petition for immigration benefits be approved before
appropriate security checks have been conducted. We have also
instituted more robust checks on refugees, and overall we have
instituted policies requiring higher levels of approval when we
grant parole or deferred inspection at our ports of entry.
We must take steps to minimize our vulnerability to those
who would exploit our generous system, and it indeed is
generous. Of equal importance are steps to guard against the
erosion of public confidence in our long and rich tradition of
welcoming people to this country.
Our aim is not to stifle international tourism and the
significant impact that tourism has on our economy. Our aim is
to make the admission process to the United States safer and
less vulnerable to abuse.
The B regulation is a proposed rule. The Administration is
open to persuasion and argument. I understand that people have
raised their concerns in good faith. This hearing and the
significant number of public comments will certainly play a
role in how we draft the final rule on this issue. This give
and take in public discourse is what this country is all about.
Thank you again for the opportunity. I am sorry I went over
my time, but I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
[Mr. Ziglar's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you, Commissioner.
Our next witness will be Pamella Dana, and I think you want
to introduce your boss to us. Is that correct?
Ms. Dana. Yes, sir.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay. Bring the mike real close to you.
STATEMENT OF PAMELLA DANA, DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF TOURISM,
TRADE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FOR THE STATE OF FLORIDA
Ms. Dana. On behalf of the State of Florida, thank you, Mr.
Chairman and Ranking Member Velazquez and Members of the
Committee, for inviting me to join you this morning.
As Florida is Director for the Office of Tourism, Trade and
Economic Development, I am very honored to be before you today
to introduce Governor Jeb Bush's videotaped testimony. On that
note, I would like to offer special thanks to your staff who
made the arrangements possible for this videotape.
This hearing is very important to many states, but none
more than Florida. With 70 million visitors to our state
annually, of which eight million are from international
destinations, tourism is Florida's largest industry. It is a
$50 billion industry, employing 850,000 people. Small
businesses comprise the bulk of those involved in the travel
industry, and they depend upon the robust flow of domestic and
international visitors to our state to keep afloat. As such,
the proposed INS regulation to limit international visitor
visas has far reaching economic implications for our state.
This issue originally came to the Governor's attention from
the Canadian Snowbird Association, a membership group of
100,000 plus. The Governor has been heavily involved in this
issue ever since. While he could not be here today, he wanted
to do this videotape to stress and emphasize the importance of
this issue to our state.
With that, I will ask that we run the Governor's testimony,
and I thank you for your time and consideration.
Chairman Manzullo. I think we are going to work on some
lights here.
[Videotape played.]
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN ELLIS ``JEB'' BUSH, GOVERNOR,
STATE OF FLORIDA
Governor Bush. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee,
thank you for allowing me to speak to you today in response to
the Immigration and Naturalization Service's proposed rule
onlimiting international visitor visas.
Let me preface my comments by emphasizing that the safety
and security of our nation and its borders are of utmost
importance. I support, as do the people of Florida, every
reasonable effort on the part of the federal government to
ensure that our citizens are protected from terrorist
activities.
At the same time, we must not impose unreasonable
restrictions on the millions of international visitors who come
to this country wishing only to enjoy our nation's natural
beauty, exciting destinations and the hospitality of our
people.
My state, Florida, is among the world's most popular
visitor destinations. Last year, we welcomed nearly 70 million
people. Of that 70 million, about one in ten, or nearly eight
million, came to us from a country other than the United
States.
Although the majority of these international visitors only
spend a week or two in Florida when they visit, there is a
substantial number who stay longer, sometimes for several
months. Many of them own vacation property in Florida or stay
with family or friends who live in Florida. These are the
visitors who would be directly impacted by any move to impose a
universal 30 day limit on the length of time non-citizens can
stay in this country.
Of the eight million international visitors to Florida,
nearly three million are presently required to secure visas to
enter the United States and would have their length of stay
restricted under the proposal. Their contribution to our
economy is commensurate with their significant numbers; more
than $3 billion in spending and nearly $200 million in state
sales tax revenue.
Further, the relative misunderstanding of what the proposed
rule change would actually mean to international visitors
seeking to travel to the United States is widespread. We have
experienced considerable correspondence from individuals and
organizations around the world who either believe that the
proposed rule changes would prohibit any international visits
to the United States beyond the 30 days or that the proposed
rule is in fact already in effect. Such misperceptions have led
many to ponder other vacation destinations beyond the United
States or a sell off of their vacation investments and
properties in Florida.
Confusion in the marketplace caused by simple
misunderstandings could also make it difficult for tour brokers
and operators to sell U.S. destinations for fear that clients
would not be able to complete their itineraries in the United
States.
With all of these considerations in mind, I would urge the
Committee to carefully weigh the impact that this proposal
would ultimately have on valued international tourism to the
United States.
Thank you for your kind attention.
[Governor Bush's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. I want the record to indicate that
Governor Bush stated that he personally wanted to be here, but
could not because of a commitment in California. Is that
correct?
Ms. Dana. Yes, sir.
Chairman Manzullo. Does that conclude the Governor's
testimony?
Ms. Dana. Yes, it does.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay. Thank you very much.
The next witness will be Tom Sullivan. Tom, I am going to
start the five minute clock on this, but you are used to it,
and you usually conclude in a lot shorter time than that. I
look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE THOMAS SULLIVAN, CHIEF COUNSEL,
OFFICE OF ADVOCACY, U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Velazquez, Members of the Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you this morning to address the
impact on small business of the INS proposal to reduce the
default period for admissions under a B-2 tourist visa.
My name is Tom Sullivan. I am the Chief Counsel for
Advocacy at the SBA. As Chief Counsel, I am charged with
monitoring federal agencies' compliance with the Regulatory
Flexibility Act. Please note that my office is independent and
that the views expressed in my statement do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Administration or the SBA.
The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires agencies to prepare
small business impact statements when proposing new
regulations. The analysis is prepared in order to ensure that
agencies consider their economic impact on small business and
that agencies consider reasonable alternatives that would
minimize the impact of rules on small entities.
The Act exempts agencies from these requirements if they
certify that the rule will not, if promulgated, have a
significant economic impact on a substantial number of small
businesses. If the head of the agency makes such a
certification, the agency should provide a factual basis for
the certification.
I would like to point out that last year the Office of
Advocacy worked with regulatory agencies and convinced them
many times to change their approach prior to finalizing rules
to the tune of $4.1 billion in cost savings. We are proud of
the fact that these savings were achieved by sitting agencies
down with small business and working through difficult issues.
The savings were achieved without sacrificing environmental
protection or sacrificing worker safety. The billions of
dollars saved goes back into our economy, allowing small
businesses to hire new employees, invest in new computers or
provide health care for their employees.
On April 12, INS proposed a rule limiting the period for
admission for B non-immigrant aliens. Under the current rules,
a foreign tourist is allowed to stay a minimum of six months
under a B-2 tourist visa.
It is my office's understanding that the new INS proposal
will eliminate the minimum six months admission period and
establish greater control over a B visitor's ability to extend
status or change status to that of a non-immigrant student. For
the purpose of this hearing, my comments are limited to the
aspects of the proposal which eliminate the minimum admission
period for B-2 visitors.
In the Regulatory Flexibility Act section of the INS
proposal, they certify that it would not have a significant
economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. In
my view, INS' certification is deficient because it does not
consider the impact that the proposal may have on members of
the travel and tourism industry who you will hear from directly
in a few minutes.
Representing small business, we are concerned about the
potential impact of the INS rules. Department of Commerce
statistics indicate that in the year 2000 foreign visitors
spent $70 billion in this country. SBA's statistics indicate
that the majority of the travel and tourism industry are small
business.
For example, 95 percent of all travel agencies and 84.5
percent of the tour operating businesses are currently defined
as small business. However, the proposal will affect more than
travel agencies and tour operators. It will have a foreseeable
impact on other small businesses likehotels/motels,
restaurants, sightseeing bus companies and souvenir shops.
If foreign travelers decide to travel elsewhere due to the
uncertainty that we believe is inherent in this new visa
policy, the travel and tourism industry could lose billions of
dollars. Advocacy asserts that this impact is not only logical,
it is foreseeable. Yet INS, in their proposal, made little
effort to analyze that potential impact.
Here in this proposal, flushing out the small business
impact and considering alternatives that may have assisted INS
in finding a more effective solution is the way we would have
recommended they proceed. The Office of Advocacy is obviously
sensitive to how the government approaches international
visitors in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. We
want to make sure that the regulatory approaches protect both
our national security and our economic security.
Unfortunately, the INS proposal, in our view, appears to
accomplish one, but not necessarily the other. The impact that
the proposal could have on the travel and tourism industry is a
serious concern, especially since the industry, made up almost
entirely of small business, is struggling to recover from
September 11. As the independent voice for small business
within the federal government, I urge INS to consider less
burdensome alternatives.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I am happy
to answer any questions that you may have about my statement.
[Mr. Sullivan's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you.
Our next witness is Mark McDermott, the chairman of the
Western States Tourism Policy Council and director of the
Arizona Office of Tourism. Mark, if you want to pull that mike
closer? We look forward to your testimony.
The complete statements of all the witnesses and all the
Members of Congress will be incorporated into the record
without objection.
STATEMENT OF MARK McDERMOTT, DIRECTOR, ARIZONA OFFICE OF
TOURISM, ON BEHALF OF THE WESTERN STATES TOURISM POLICY COUNCIL
Mr. McDermott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning,
Members of the Committee. I appreciate that you are going to be
hearing a lot of the same sort of testimony from most of us
this morning. In fact, most of what I have to say has already
been said indeed by the Chairman and by the Ranking Member, as
well as by previous speakers, so I will be very brief with my
remarks and get right to essentially our conclusions.
My name is Mark McDermott. I am the director of the Arizona
Office of Tourism and currently serve as chairman of the
Western States Tourism Policy Council. Just for your
information, the council was formed in 1996 and is a consortium
of currently 13 states, including Alaska, Arizona, California,
Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon,
Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Our mission is to advance the understanding and increase
the support for public policies that enhance the positive
impact of travel and tourism on the economy and the environment
of its member states and communities and their related
businesses, principally small businesses.
In all 13 of these western states, tourism is a dynamic and
vital part of the economy, and it ranks among the top three
providers of jobs in each western state and generates billions
of dollars in payroll and taxes in the west.
International visitation, especially from Canada and
Mexico, is a major economic contributor to each of these
states, and, Mr. Chairman, most of this economic activity, as
you know, because you have already stated, primarily benefits
small businesses for tourism in the nation and in the west and
is predominantly small business with many of these small
businesses ranking truly as mom and pop operations such as
restaurants, motels, RV parks, campgrounds and vendors.
The importance of international travel cannot be
understated as it pertains to us and tourism in the west, as
well as into the entire country. The visitation and economic
impact figures for international tourism, including visa waiver
and non-visa waiver countries, has already been stated, so I
will not reiterate those.
I will state, though, that for the particular purposes of
those of us in the west, Arizona provides a good example, aside
from the major tourism states of California and Nevada, in that
in 2001, in our state nearly 315,000 Canadian visitors spent
about $208 million and from Mexico, using 2000 figures, 1.5
million Mexican visitors spent more than $740 million in
Arizona.
I have mentioned Canada and Mexico in particular because we
believe that the confusion and misunderstanding about the
proposed ruling is having a particular effect on these
significantly important sectors of Arizona's and the west's
international tourism market.
Just as a quick aside, in our state of Arizona, according
to the Arizona Travel Parks Association, during the seven month
winter season of October through April Canadians occupy up to
25 percent of the sites in many parks, and in some parks the
figure approaches 50 percent of Canadian occupancy, so it is
obvious that the impact on Canadian and potentially Mexican
visitors of the confusion that prevails right now is already
beginning to take place.
While the WSTPC respects and appreciates the good
intentions and the national security focused good intentions of
those who have drafted this proposed rule and that the aim is
not to stifle international tourism, we are concerned that it
is in fact doing just that. It will do more harm than good.
The proposed rule as stated in general terms and the
implementation and enforcement procedures and requirements are
undefined and unclear, causing uncertainty and endangerment of
confidence on the part of potential international travelers
and, perhaps even more importantly, on the part of tour
operators planning tourism programs for these international
travelers.
We believe the proposal is seriously flawed for the
following principal reasons. Implementation of the proposed
rule will result in congestion and delay at ports of entry,
which will discourage international visitors to the U.S.
The proposed rule will seriously jeopardize tourism
business in the U.S. from Canadians. I will speak to that for a
moment here. Since Canadians entering the U.S. are not required
to have visas now and would not be so required under the
proposed rule, it is unclear how they would be handled. We do
not know what documents will be required from them to prove the
purpose or the duration of their visit, and we are concerned
that a strenuous and precise enforcement of this rule will have
a debilitating effect on Canadian travel, which will have a
severely negative impact throughout the west.
The proposed rule could potentially seriously jeopardize
cross border travel by Mexicans into the U.S. for many of the
same reasons having to do with uncertainty, and the conditions
for granting extensions of stay fail to include residential
leasing or renting as reasonable justifications. They pertain,
as we understand them to be written right now, only to home
ownership, as opposed to rental or leasing of vacation homes.
To avoid negative impact on the proposed rule, WSTPC
supports the reasonable alternative that has been proposed by
the Travel Industry Association of America. TIA urges that a 90
day default be granted to all B visitors and that it be
extended upon request and review.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we believe that this proposed
rule will unjustifiably jeopardize the economies of states and
communities in the west and throughout the nation, and we
respectfully suggest that it is a classic example of the costs
of regulation far exceeding the benefits. In fact, we suggest
it should be withdrawn.
If not withdrawn, we respectfully urge that the rule as
proposed be substantially modified in at least three respects.
One, instead of a variable, unpredictable length of stay for B
visa visitors, the final rule should adopt a fixed period of 90
days as described earlier, allowing extensions up to 12 months.
Canada and Mexico should be explicitly exempted from the final
rule, and it should be clearly stated that the rule makes no
changes in how Canadians and Mexicans are treated and processed
as they enter the U.S.
Three, lease and real properties should be regarded as
equivalent to ownership when considering extensions of the
length of stay.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. WSTPC will be happy to
provide any additional information that may be relevant and
important to the Committee. This concludes my remarks.
[Mr. McDermott's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. You will have set the record for saying
the most in the least amount of time.
Mr. McDermott. Evelyn Wood served me well.
Chairman Manzullo. Is that what it is? That is great.
I do not know when the bells are going to come up, and I
want to keep the continuity going here. I am going to go down
to the end of the table to John Lewis.
Mark, can you hand the mike over to Mr. Lewis?
In your testimony, Mr. Lewis, could you briefly give your
background? We look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOHN LEWIS, RETIRED, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, NATIONAL SECURITY DIVISION
Mr. Lewis. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Manzullo. You have to pull it a lot closer than
that.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee.
I know the first thing when you look at the witness list
you might ask what in the world is this guy doing here, but,
quite frankly, I was asked by the Chairman to come and add some
different perspectives, a counterintelligence and counter-
terrorism perspective.
Given my own background, I retired from the FBI, as
indicated on the witness list, in September, 1998, as Assistant
Director in Charge of Counterintelligence and Counter-Terrorism
Programs. In that capacity, I also served as chairman of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police Committee on
Terrorism and chairman of the National Counterintelligence
Policy Board. When I retired, I took a job in New York as
global security director for a major financial institution,
retiring two months ago.
Now, given the fact that clearly there are a lot of
misunderstandings about this particular proposal, as
Commissioner Ziglar pointed out and others, I am not an INS
expert, but I am simply going to ask, as the Chairman has asked
me to do, some different perspectives to maybe think about.
First of all, aside from the fact that in my judgement, and
this is based on my experience with the Bureau, and I also
should mention I served a tour abroad, INS is clearly
understaffed and, in my judgement, in a very poor position to
make any kind of meaningful judgement regarding people seeking
entry into the U.S.
Secondly, it is difficult to talk about entry into the U.S.
without considering the visa approvals process conducted by
Consular Affairs officers around the world. With all due
respect, I am aware of many one to two minute interviews as to
whether or not a person is granted a visa. The usual focus is
sufficient ties, that he or she will return and also have
financial means to travel and return from the U.S.
Given the fact that virtually every type of immigration has
been exploited by terrorists, to focus on a minimum admission
policy alone, quite frankly, makes little sense to me,
especially putting the burden on the alien in effect to
establish his or her bona fides to enter and stay in the U.S.
Since this proposal is post September 11, I fail to see how
this would make us more secure. To me, it does not focus on
keeping out the most dangerous terrorists and criminals, but
would have a chilling effect to more law abiding, poor or
middle class potential visitors rather than the terrorist
criminal individuals and groups or groups who, quite frankly,
have no qualms to get past our controls. Ultimately, the whole
issue of immigration to include visa issues and entry into the
U.S. rests on proper screening and tracking.
These observations, and I will only make a few; that is why
I am only going to talk for a couple of minutes here, and they
are not all inclusive, nor are they in any particular priority,
but these are some of the things I would ask that maybe you
congressmen and women and look into.
Consular Affairs must be upgraded and better integrated
with INS to ensure visa applicants are properly checked.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, page 7, 41 of
48 terrorists were approved for a visa by an American consulate
overseas.
The screening process should include access to all
suspected criminals and terrorists across the federally held
databases. I know a lot of strides have been made in that
regard, but Consulate Affairs has to get involved, too, and not
just with a cable back to the States.
Next, better our ability through liaison and technical
means to detect fraudulent passports with our visa waiver
program countries. I will not go into all the issues regarding
certain countries where most of these terrorists came from and,
quite frankly, how many of them got a visa without even
appearing before an American.
Next, fund and institute a computerized entry/exit system.
The fact of the matter is our current system is neither timely
nor totally adequate to track visitors to the United States. I
know we have the I-94 program, but, to the best of my
knowledge, this is all still done by hand and not computerized.
Next, to fully support the fingerprinting of visa
applicants from high profile countries supporting terrorism. A
photograph is obtained already through the visa application
process.
Lastly, and I know again there have been some strides made
in this regard, but, in my own mind, having dealt with a lot of
police over the years, it is inadequate. I am sorry. I missed
out of turn here. It should be ensured that all other federal
agencies, as well as state and local law enforcement
authorities--by that I mean the cop on the street--has access
related to any information placed in federally held law
enforcement databases related to visitors to the U.S.
To make a phone call to check on somebody and have to wait
for a response I do not think is adequate. I recognize that
this might be very controversial, but the fact of the matter is
the guy who makes the stop, the speeding stop or whatever, it
would really be nice if he or she had some access to this
information if something is there.
Lastly, and probably the main reason I offered to come
here, is that in any organization that petitions or sponsors a
person to come to the U.S. either as a student or on a work
permit, thatorganization should be responsible to report
whether he or she is still in the U.S.
I understand the schools have now been tasked with this
requirement. I do not know how that is operating, but how about
businesses? I know that when you petition or sponsor someone to
come in if they leave your employ it is supposed to be up to
them to notify INS. Well, to my way of thinking that is
whistling in the wind.
That is the extent of my remarks, Mr. Chairman.
[Mr. Lewis's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. We appreciate that. Thank you very much.
Our next witness is Neil is it----
Mr. Amrine. Amrine.
Chairman Manzullo. Amrine. Okay. Neil is the president of
Guide Service of Washington, Inc., on behalf of his company and
also on behalf of the Travel Industry Association of America.
We look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF NEIL AMRINE, PRESIDENT, GUIDE SERVICE OF
WASHINGTON, ON BEHALF OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF
AMERICA
Mr. Amrine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Manzullo. Could you pull your mike up a little bit
closer there? Thank you.
Mr. Amrine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member Velazquez and Members of the Committee, I appreciate the
opportunity to testify before you regarding INS' new proposed
rule on the minimum admission period for B-2 visa holders.
I am Neil Amrine, president of Guide Service of Washington,
and I am testifying today on behalf of the Travel Industry
Association of America or TIA. Guide Service provides tours and
other travel services for the D.C. area and its attractions for
both domestic and international travelers. We have about 100
tour guides working in 20 different languages.
T.I.A. is the national non-profit organization representing
all components of the $545 billion U.S. travel and tourism
industry. TIA's mission is to represent the whole of the travel
industry, to promote and to facilitate increased travel to and
within the United States.
Guide Service of Washington and the entire travel industry
believes that INS' proposal to change the admission period for
travelers from six months to a shorter and poorly defined
reasonable period will deter international travel to the U.S.
It is entirely possible inspectors could assign admission
periods for less than the length of a visitor's tour package.
This new proposed rule will not increase security, but it will
drive travelers to other international destinations.
Based on my years of experience, I can foresee many reasons
why the INS as a result of the proposed rule would fail to
assign the correct admission period to each international
visitor. Some typical situations the rule does not take into
consideration are optional add on tours. Most tour operators
offer optional add ons for their tours; for example, a two day
trip to Las Vegas in addition to a week long tour of Los
Angeles.
It is not unusual for visitors to want to see additional
sights and destinations after they have arrived in the United
States. The new proposed rule would prevent tourists from
purchasing these additional services and will restrict the
ability of American business to sell their product.
Family. International visitors will often spend additional
time with family that live in the U.S. after their tour has
concluded. This means that the tourists will not leave the
country when the rest of the tour group leaves. These tourists
do not always know exactly what their family member has planned
for them when they first arrive in the United States.
Unforeseen events. Trips to the United States do not always
go as planned. I have seen many instances where thunderstorms
have shut down international flights out of Dulles or JFK, and
the tour has to spend an additional night here. I am also aware
of times when the tour bus breaks down, stranding travelers
long enough that they miss their flight. Without the
flexibility of a set admission period, INS could be swamped
with requests for extensions. What will the INS do to travelers
that only overstay a day or two in these situations?
The primary problem with the INS' new proposed rule is the
lack of certainty created by eliminating the minimum admission
period. If the INS rule is implemented as written, it will be
extraordinarily damaging to the U.S. tour market. Without the
certainty of a minimum admission period, neither the tour
company nor the traveler can afford the risk of a trip cut
short in the United States.
T.I.A. believes a reasonable alternative would be to reduce
the minimum admission period for B-2 visa holders to three
months or 90 days. This fixed time period would allow
international tour operators and individual travelers to plan
their trips to the United States with certainty while meeting
INS' goal of significantly reducing the minimum admission
period granted to B-2 visitors.
I would like to thank the House Small Business Committee
and the SBA for their leadership in assisting small businesses
after September 11. My company received one of the new Small
Business Administration economic disaster loans that became
available for companies in the travel and tourism industry last
fall, but I am baffled and frustrated that my government would
turn around and propose a rule so harmful to my industry. As I
see it, the federal government is providing me with a loan, but
making it harder for me to pay it back.
I urge the Members of this Committee to work with the INS,
the Justice Department and the White House to stop this rule
from being implemented as written. The travel industry proposal
of a 90 day admission period is a reasonable alternative.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today,
and I look forward to answering any questions that you might
have.
[Mr. Amrine's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you for your testimony.
Our next witness is Del Highfield, owner of the Camping
Resort of the Palm Beaches, West Palm Beach, Florida. Perhaps
in January we should consider a field hearing.
Mr. Highfield. I think that would be an excellent idea. You
all come on down now, you hear?
Chairman Manzullo. I think that Commissioner Ziglar might
be interested in coming there also on the same topic. That is
correct.
Mr. Del Highfield is the owner of his own business
testifying on behalf of that business and also on behalf of the
National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds. We look
forward to your testimony.
Mr. Highfield. We will leave the light on for you.
Chairman Manzullo. All right.
STATEMENT OF DEL HIGHFIELD, OWNER, CAMPING RESORT OF THE PALM
BEACHES, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RV PARKS AND
CAMPGROUNDS
Mr. Highfield. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, my
name is Del Highfield, owner of Camping Resort of the Palm
Beaches located in Palm Beach County, Florida. I am honored to
be here this morning as a small businessman representing more
than 8,000 commercial RV parks and campgrounds across the U.S.
I am here to speak on behalf of my 3,800 colleagues who are
members of the National Association of RV Parks and
Campgrounds, known as ARVC. ARVC is the national trade
association that represents the commercial RV park and
campground industry in the U.S. The industry employs more than
120,000 full-time and seasonal employees and serves some 40
million avid RVers and campers. It is the strong position of
ARVC that this proposed INS rule must not be adopted in its
current form.
Allow me to take a moment to tell you about my business and
its relationship to the issue before you this morning. My park
just happens to be the exact size of the national average of
commercial parks within ARVC, just 133 campsites. We are a
modest small business with gross annual sales of around
$800,000.
We are the quintessential mom and pop operation. We have a
paid staff of only two full-time and six part-time employees,
and each year we have an annual occupancy of 87 percent with
over 42,000 site nights rented. Due to the high cost of
business in south Florida, however, our profit margin is
minimal, and high occupancy is the only way we stay in
business.
Canadian visitors represent 25 percent of my total revenues
or over $200,000 a year. According to the Palm Beach County
Tourist Development Council, these visitors at our park alone
place another $250,000 into our local economy. Without their
ability to stay long periods of time, our ability to continue
to operate would be in serious question.
We are the rule in the Florida tourism market, not the
exception. Our camping, tourism and hospitality industries
heavily depend on Canadians. Regulatory changes that would
shorten the length of stay for Canadians or other international
visitors or any new rule that discourages long winter stays in
the U.S. for foreign visitors will have a severe impact on our
RV industry, as well as our economy, taxes and employment.
According to the Florida Association of RV Parks and
Campgrounds, the number one source of out-of-state campers in
Florida is Canada. Most Canadians travel to Florida in the
winter months. They stay longer, and they stay longer than non-
campers. They average 45 days and spend approximately $1,400
per trip.
In all, Canadian campers and RVers contribute approximately
$280 million to the Florida economy each year. This large group
of vacationers is vitally important to the Florida camping
industry and the state as a whole. Other Sun Belt states would
suffer similar losses, we are sure.
Loss of Canadian RV business in the southern tier will be
felt by all states along routes from Canada to the south. This
will be especially true in such tourism dependent areas as
Branson, Nashville, Smokey Mountains, Myrtle Beach,
Williamsburg, Las Vegas and other areas as Canadians travel to
Sun Belt states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico,
Nevada, Alabama, Mississippi and California.
The proposed rule will create delays, confusion and
frustration at all international ports of entry. Detailed
questions will be necessary to determine the purpose of an
international visitor's trip. Challenges are likely to the
validity of documents. INS inspectors will either be given
extraordinary latitude or will have to follow extremely
detailed guidelines. Either course is unattractive. The outcome
will be frustrated international visitors who will not want to
repeat this experience in the future.
Canadians are not required to have visas, but they are
subject to the B visa provisions. Presumably, they will be
questioned about the purpose of their visit in the same manner
as overseas folks. Like all B visa visitors, they will have to
obtain official documents verifying legal entry and approved
length of stay, clearly a major and unsettling change for our
Canadian friends.
One anomaly in the proposed rule would be particularly
damaging to RV parks. While home ownership is declared to be a
valid basis for getting an extension of stay, leasing or
renting a residence or an RV site is apparently not. Canadian
RVers often spend long periods in the United States and may
lease or rent an RV park site for up to six months. We strongly
urge that leasing or renting property be treated equally with
ownership as a valid reason for extending a visit.
We also support the proposal of the TIA that a 90 day
admission be granted to all B visa holders, which could be
extended to six months. This seems to be fair, reasonable and
avoids many of the problems in the proposed rule.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, ARVC believes that the proposed
rule must be substantially modified to ensure minimum negative
impact on tourism and that extensions of stay should be granted
for leased or rented property in the same manner as owned
property.
We believe prompt action is critical so this issue is
resolved no later than late summer so the Canadians and
southern tourism businesses can adequately prepare for a
prosperous and successful winter 2002-2003.
Thank you once again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to
appear here today. I would be happy to respond to any
questions.
[Mr. Highfield's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you very much.
Our next witness is Ellen White, who is president of the
Canadian Snowbird Association. I did not know there was such an
association. I see you are wearing your Canadian whites in
anticipation of the heavy snows coming this winter and then you
all coming down south to spend lots of tourism dollars.
I notice that part of your resume is that you are an
amateur artist and writer, and I imagine you will be have
something else to write about after your experience here
testifying before the U.S. Congress. We look forward to your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF ELLEN WHITE, PRESIDENT, CANADIAN SNOWBIRD
ASSOCIATION
Ms. White. Thank you very much, Chairman Manzullo and
honored Committee Members. I am Ellen White. I am president of
the Canadian Snowbird Association, and I am an active snowbird.
Actually, I am a winter Texan. We are not called snowbirds in
Texas.
I am honored to appear before the House Small Business
Committee on behalf of the almost 100,000 members of the
Canadian Snowbird Association and all of the 447,800 Canadians
who enjoyed the United States' hospitality for 31 days or more
each year.
We fully understand and support the need to control the
alien population within the United States. The events of
September 11 changed the world forever, and greater security is
now a way of life.
The Canadian Snowbird Association is extremely concerned
with the INS' proposed changes to the B-2 visitors visa
regulations. The uncertainty of snowbirds' access to their
winter homes and destinations in the United States and
particularly the length of that access has already caused
upset, confusion and, in our opinion, will result in a
substantial reduction in tourism to the United States.
We respect the fact that Canadian retirees are subject to
inspection, as are any other visitors to your country, but we
have proposed to the INS an amendment to the regulation.
Snowbirds vacation for up to six months of the year, primarily
in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California. Governor Jeb Bush
estimates the dollars left in Florida alone by foreign
travelers at $5.5 billion, generating $500 million in state
sales tax revenue.
While a great many of our members own property in the
United States and live in their second homes for six months of
the year, as we have already heard, a large number are retired
and do not own property. Rather, they rent or they travel by
recreational vehicles.
Regardless of the accommodation, Canadian snowbirds pay all
fees and utilities that are required and applicable United
States taxes that are requested. We support local restaurants,
grocery stores and the entertainment industry. As the majority
of snowbirds drive, we purchase gasoline in the United States.
We use American garages for maintenance. Should the regulation
pass unchanged, the loss of snowbird activity will reverberate
through the United States as the enroute states and tourist
attractions will also be affected by the loss of these
visitors.
Mr. Chairman, last year Canadians spent more than $7
billion while here on vacation. Fifteen million Canadians
crossed our border, ten million of those trips for pleasure.
Additionally, while taking into account the influx of short-
term visits to snowbirds by friends and family each year, the
dollar amount rises considerably.
Although technically a Canadian does not need a visa to
enter the United States, the border inspector must have some
standard to apply. The standard that has been applied to date
is the same as that applied to a B visitor visa. A person must
have a residence in Canada which he has no intention of
abandoning and visits the United States temporarily for
pleasure and has the finances to provide for the duration of
the stay.
Our concern is that the criteria as enumerated in the
proposed regulation, 214.2(b)(1), as applied to Canadians will
have a devastating effect. It seems logical in determining
whether a longer stay than 30 days would be fair and reasonable
reference would be made to the proposed subsection which
enumerates the only circumstances which an extension would be
granted.
It does not seem reasonable that one could be granted a
longer period in the initial inspection for a reason which
would not permit an extension. There is no criteria for one who
simply wants to stay longer than 30 days to enjoy the warmth
and hospitality of the southern state.
Your southern weather makes us feel better, and it often
keeps us healthier. At the impulse of an inspecting officer, a
snowbird, one who contributes to the United States economy, may
have their winter plans completely destroyed.
Just yesterday, we received a call from a member who was
most upset. The gentleman's neighbor attempted to cross the
Ambassador Bridge on Monday, June 17, at approximately 6:00
a.m. He was denied entry and told it was because he did not
have the deed to his Florida residence with him. When handed a
form, no written reason was given.
Our member called to ask if there was any official document
list issued by the INS for snowbirds to follow to ensure that
they could travel. As far as we know, there is none. I do know,
however, that we have another frightened snowbird, and the
regulation has not even gone into effect.
On Monday, Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge assured
our Deputy Prime Minister John Manley that Canadians would not
be affected by those proposed regulations. Chairman Manzullo,
we were thrilled by the announcement. Now all we ask is that
his promise be followed through and written into the
regulation.
To that end, we will submit into the record a copy of our
letter sent to Mr. Ziglar of the INS with our proposed wording
to clarify the status of Canadians.
[Ms. White's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. That letter will be admitted as part of
the record and as part of your testimony. Thank you very much.
Ms. White. Thank you.
Chairman Manzullo. Our next witness and last witness is
Mark Hjelle, vice-president and general counsel, The Brickman
Group, from Langhorne, Pennsylvania, speaking on behalf of the
American Nursery & Landscape Association. It is not really
related to this hearing, but----
Mr. Hjelle. I will try to tie it in.
Chairman Manzullo [continuing]. You are invited to comment,
and we look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MARK HJELLE, VICE-PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL,
THE BRICKMAN GROUP, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN NURSERY &
LANDSCAPE ASSOCIATION
Mr. Hjelle. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Chairman
Manzullo, Representative Velazquez and Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my concerns
on the impact of the recent INS proposal to limit the period of
admission for B-2 non-immigrant alien tourist visas.
My name is Mark Hjelle, and I am vice-president and general
counsel of The Brickman Group headquartered in Langhorne,
Pennsylvania. Brickman is a privately held and family owned
company that has been in business since 1939. Brickman employs
approximately 2,000 full-time employees and another 5,000
seasonal workers. Brickman generates over $300 million in
annual revenues from businesses in 28 states.
My comments also reflect the concerns of the American
Nursery & Landscape Association and the Associated Landscape
Contractors of America, our industry's two national trade
associations. At first glance, it may seem as if the nursery
and landscape industry does not have an interest in the INS
proposal to limit the duration of B-2 tourist visas. This
proposal would not affect the H-2B non-immigrant work visas
that Brickman and other green industry companies utilize in
order to make up shortfalls in their seasonal work forces or
any other business visa category, as far as I can tell.
In addition, it is not entirely clear to me that the
proposed INS requirement would have a chilling effect on
tourism. Persons who plan to come to America as a tourist for
more than 30 days certainly should have a plan for how they are
going to spend that time. I do not have a particular problem
with requiring someone who is going to be here that long as a
tourist to present a plan of their activities while in this
country.
On the other hand, I do not believe that reducing the
default period is going to result in better INS control of
aliens. The Committee is quite right that an individual can
overstay a 30 day visa as easily as any other visa. The real
question is what the INS proposes to do in 30, 60 or 90 days
that they currently are not doing for those overstaying six
month visas.
However, considering the magnitude of this country's
economic dependence on foreign travelers for business, as well
as tourism, it is valuable that we are having this discussion.
The nursery and landscape industry is extremely sensitive to
issues involving immigration policy as our businesses are
highly dependent on alien labor.
The reliance of the green industry on foreign labor is
primarily borne out of the historic reluctance of U.S. domestic
workers to pursue the employment opportunities offered in this
rapidly growing industry with estimated annual revenues of $14
billion. Many jobs in the green industry are low skilled,
physically demanding, seasonal and must be performed in a
variety of inclement weather conditions.
Therefore, while our industry is exceedingly security
conscious, we strongly urge this Committee and Congress as a
whole to be very careful not to unduly restrict alien movements
or create well intended administrative remedies that quickly
turn into roadblocks that negatively impact the flow of legal
and essential workers into this country.
As an example of this well intentioned but poorly executed
administrative remedy I am talking about is an INS recent
policy requiring security checks on all named beneficiaries for
H-2B non-immigrant work visas. It is completely understandable
why the INS would want to check the backgrounds of these
individuals. However, the reality of the situation is that the
processing of these applications is already severely
backlogged.
With no additional resources being provided to the INS for
implementation of this new security check, current backlogs, as
much as 75 days in some offices, will undoubtedly grow longer,
forcing many employers to either miss their dates of need or
pay a per petition fee of $1,000 for so-called premium
processing.
The surge of anti-immigrant fervor after the 9-11
tragedies, coupled with difficult and time consuming border
crossings, has greatly impacted many foreign workers legally
employed in the green industry. Many were afraid to return to
their native countries and are now working with fraudulent work
authorization documents. Others were too scared to return to
America regardless of the fact they had good paying jobs with
long-term security waiting for them here.
As a result, many employers in our industry lost valuable
and trusted workers. Consequently, we are greatly concerned
with the ramifications limiting tourist visits will ultimately
have on other visa programs for those aliens seeking to gain
lawful entry into the U.S. for non-tourist purposes like
employment.
When all is said and done, I do not believe reducing the
default period on B-2 tourist visas is a major problem. I do
see that there could be potential benefits, but I strongly
encourage Congress to continue to fight on behalf of small
businesses everywhere to ensure a continued safe and smooth
flow of lawful aliens into and out of America.
This is essential for the purposes of travel and tourism,
as well as employment opportunities offered by guest worker
programs by industries unable to attract sufficient U.S.
domestic workers.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this
discussion.
[Mr. Hjelle's statement may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you very much. I understand the
relevance because you are perceiving a pattern that could
directly impact your industry, and I appreciate your tying that
in.
I have several questions here. Mr. Ziglar, it must be ten
to one against you on the witness table, including the
President's brother. This is not an easy situation for you to
be in, but I guess you asked for it by becoming the Director of
the INS. We appreciate the hard work that you are putting in
and certainly appreciate your heart and wanting to do what is
best for the nation.
I do have some questions. I have the proposed rule in front
of me. Do you have that in front of you, Commissioner? I want
to make particular reference to it. It is on page 18,068. Not
that many are directed to this. It is about six pages on this
particular regulation.
Mr. Ziglar. I have it right here.
Chairman Manzullo. Page 18,068. That is correct.
Mr. Ziglar. I have it. I just have to find it.
Chairman Manzullo. It is the area that talks about the
Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act. It is in
the upper left-hand corner. Do you see that, Commissioner?
This was what Mr. Sullivan had testified to. He said the
rule is not a major rule as defined by Section 804 of the Small
Business Regulatory Enforcement Act. The statement here says,
``This rule will not result in an annual effect on the economy
of $100 million or more, a major increase in cost or prices or
significant adverse effects on competition, employment,
investment, productivity, innovation or on the ability of the
U.S. based companies to compete . . .''
Could you tell me what documentation and what study and
what econometric designs were used to come to that conclusion?
Mr. Ziglar. Being outnumbered ten to one, I grew up in
Mississippi. I know how it is to be outnumbered ten to one.
Let me make a comment. I did not ask for this job. I was
recruited for it.
Mr. Chairman, the analysis, as I understand it, that was
undertaken here was based upon the statistics that we had in
front of us with respect to the average median length of stay
of individuals who are coming into the country.
Keeping in mind, of course, that anyone coming in under the
visa waiver program, which has about 28 countries, major
countries, which the major portion of our tourism comes in
from, they are not affected by this because the visa waiver
program has its own set of rules unimpacted on this.
The Canadians, for example, there is again this
misperception issue with respect to Canadians, and that is
that, as you know, Canadians come in without any requirement of
an I-94 being processed. In fact, up until September 11, we did
not even basically require Canadians to document that they were
Canadian citizens. Maybe some ID. No passport. Now we at least
ask for some kind of ID to establish some prima facie case that
they are Canadians, but they are not asked for I-94s.
The I-94 is the vehicle by which the fair and reasonable
time will be documented on that. There is nothing in these
regulations that will require the I-94 to be processed, and so
the Canadians will automatically by virtue of the way it is
structured fall under a six month period, which is the maximum
period of stay under the regulations as it was the default
period before. That is, a fair reading of the regulations would
suggest to you that is the way now.
Going back to your question, based upon the statistics that
we had in front of us and us even assuming that you had some
kind of 30 day maximum limit, which it is not, and I keep
saying that. It is not. It would have not a material impact on
the economy unless everyone who stayed over 30 days just
refused to give us any information about the purpose of the
intended length of their stay.
If you look at it from a common sense point of view, and on
the statistics it would suggest to you that the way the
regulations are structured would not have that impact.
I must repeat again that all that we are asking for is that
somebody who comes here on----
Chairman Manzullo. I understand, but, I mean, when you made
this statement, prior to making the statement had you talked to
any of these industry groups here?
Mr. Ziglar. I did not personally, but our----
Chairman Manzullo. Was anybody here talked to by INS to
quantify this statement?
Mr. Ziglar. Well, I did not personally, but I know that our
people were talking to individuals in the industries.
Chairman Manzullo. These people here represent the
industries. Is there anybody here from INS that talked to
anybody in the industry? Do you want to raise your hand?
I would submit, Commissioner, that what has happened here
is somebody took a guess at this. When you look at the State of
Florida alone, which is it three billion or five billion, Ms.
Dana? Five billion?
Ms. Dana. Yes.
Chairman Manzullo. The total amount.
Ms. Dana. Of international visitors?
Chairman Manzullo. Yes.
Ms. Dana. We have eight million that come in.
Chairman Manzullo. Could you put the mike up to you,
please?
Ms. Dana. Annually, we have eight million international
visitors, and that is of the 70 million that come in.
Chairman Manzullo. And how much do they spend?
Ms. Dana. We estimate $8 billion.
Chairman Manzullo. $8 billion. Did anybody from INS confer
with you or the State of Florida prior to the promulgation of
this proposed regulation as to the economic impact?
Ms. Dana. No, sir, not on this issue. We have worked well
with the INS, but not on this issue have we been consulted.
Chairman Manzullo. Commissioner Ziglar, I guess what I am
looking at here and the reason I am asking this question is I
think that this is conjecture that appears in these
regulations.
The Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act is
critical to the small business industry. That is one of the
reasons this Committee exists. What we see here is, and I will
be quite frank with you, a lack of scholarship that went into
this statement.
Mr. Sullivan talked about it. The people in the various
industries talked about it. If you are going to even consider
going ahead with this rule, I would suggest you withdraw it and
then comply with SBREFA before you put out a new proposed
regulation.
That is a tremendous concern to us because I think somebody
here just guessed at it. When you look at the misunderstanding
coming from this proposed rule to the fact that somebody from
INS has already not allowed a Canadian resident to come in
without their deed, I do not know what you looked at, but it is
obvious the industry was not consulted.
Mr. Ziglar. Well, Mr. Chairman, let me say, number one,
about the Canadian that came in. I just asked while this was
going on to find out the name of that person and the name of
the inspector because I find that a bit surprising given the
fact that we do not generally make inquiries of Canadians other
than some basic identification unless there is a reason the
inspector has to question the admissibility of that person. Not
all Canadians are admissible. There are reasons not to.
We put Canadians like everybody else in the secondary from
time to time and raise questions. Now, there may be some
situation here where there is a question that needed to be
raised, and I think in the absence of more facts it is a bit
unfair to use this as an example.
Mr. Chairman, also let me just say this. A fair reading of
the regulation does not suggest that we have a 30 day maximum
period for people coming in. We have a fair and reasonable time
that they will be granted based upon the intent, purpose and
length of the proposed trip.
If you read the regulation, that is what it says. I do not
know how you build an assumption on the economic impact of a
regulation if people either intentionally or unintentionally
misread it for whatever purpose.
Chairman Manzullo. It is not the assumption. The issue is
it is not so much the legal effect. I am sorry. It is not so
much the legal language of a regulation. It is how people
interpret it.
You know, I practiced law for 22 years. I have with me
Carol Weineke, who has been with me since 1971. She has done
immigration law in the office for ten years, and she has been
through probably 5,000 cases. She teaches immigration law to
other congressional offices.
This is extremely confusing. It is so confusing. The
confusion is so paramount that the only way to stop the
confusion is simply to withdraw the regulation and say that
this does not make sense. We do not want to stop tourism
because the best of intentions on the part of INS would not get
around the confusion that could cause the harm to the tourism
industry.
I am not blaming the INS for causing the confusion. I know
that you worked hard with the press in order to get out the
word as to the exact nature of this.
Ms. Velazquez?
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Commissioner, given the testimony that we heard here
from all the witnesses, including the President's brother, what
type of steps are you prepared to undertake? It is the opinion
of everyone here that this indeed will have an economic impact
on small businesses. What will be the type of action that you
will take in order to address these concerns?
Mr. Ziglar. Congresswoman, first let me point out that this
is not a regulation by the INS in the vacuum. This is a
regulation that was fashioned throughout the Administration
with a number of people involved in it. We had a hand in it.
Obviously we are the authority issuing that regulation.
It is also a proposed regulation. It is not in effect. It
is out there. We have gotten a lot of comments. We obviously
will consider those comments. I have read some of them myself.
We will as an Administration--not as the INS alone, but the
Administration. We will consider those comments, as well as the
comments that have been made here today and made by Members of
Congress both publicly and privately.
Ms. Velazquez. I understand. Mr. Commissioner, at the
beginning of your testimony you said that there is
misconception and misinterpretation, and there is so much
confusion. If there has been an industry in our economy that
has been impacted the most after the events of September 11, it
is the tourism industry. Then you add your proposed regulation.
That brings more confusion and, therefore, will have a more
negative impact on these type of businesses.
My question to you is based on what we heard. Are you
prepared today to take the extraordinary step of convening a
panel the same way we do with OSHA and EPA to work on this
issue?
Mr. Ziglar. Well, I am certainly----
Ms. Velazquez. And, yes, SBREFA, and based on the assertion
from the Chief Counsel of SBA, Mr. Tom Sullivan, that indeed
this will have an economic impact on small business.
Mr. Ziglar. Well, I am certainly willing to discuss this
with various components of the industry. Convening a panel runs
into the Federal Advisory Committee Act, so I am not sure that
I would convene a panel, but I am certainly willing to advise
and deal with the industry in the context that it does not
violate the law.
Ms. Velazquez. I would like to hear Mr. Tom Sullivan's
opinion on this. Will that affect SBREFA?
Mr. Sullivan. Commissioner Ziglar may not be as familiar
with this panel process as our colleagues at EPA and OSHA are.
Basically, pre-proposal EPA and OSHA sit down with folks
like the small business owners that are represented around this
table and try to, at one point, put out the agency's intention.
In the case of INS that is to protect our nation's borders,
and, at the same time, flush out how they can do that while
minimizing the economic impact on small business.
This is a formalized panel process with OMB, Dr. John
Graham, who heads their regulatory office there, our office and
the promulgating agency. While INS is not subject to the panel
requirement, what the Congresswoman does bring up is would we
be able, in the time frame that is allowed between proposed and
final rules, to sit down with Office of Advocacy,
representatives from the small business groups, travel and
tourism, and INS to flush out whether there is in fact a less
burdensome alternative that would preserve the security of
small business, but also preserve the security of our nation's
borders.
Mr. Ziglar. I was not aware of this panel process. I am not
skilled in bureaucratic matters. I apologize. I do know about
the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Ms. Velazquez. Well, now that you are part of the federal
government I guess that you have to become more accustomed to
that.
Mr. Ziglar. I sometimes am not surprised why the American
people are so cynical about government with all the bureaucracy
we have sometimes, but I am certainly happy to work with
industry. That is where I spent my career.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Sullivan, I just would like for you to
clarify to the Commissioner that FACA does not apply.
Mr. Sullivan. Actually, I know that FACA, the Federal
Advisory Committee Act, does not apply to the panels convened
by EPA and OSHA.
I would be happy to consult with the Committee subsequent
to this hearing on whether or not there are FACA considerations
that would prevent Commissioner Ziglar from sitting down with
our office, small businesses and really hammering out, in
addition to the 10,000 comments that have been received by INS,
a solution that preserves both the security of small business
and the security of our country.
Ms. Velazquez. Commissioner, would you be prepared to say
that you will convene such a panel?
Mr. Ziglar. Congresswoman, I am more than happy to do
whatever makes sense in the context of getting the right input.
Whether it is FACA or a panel or whatever makes sense, I am
happy to do that.
I just know I ran into this FACA thing on the entry/exit
system, so I am, you know, a little sensitive to trying to
reach out to industry, and now we have all these crazy--we have
all these rules. Excuse me.
Ms. Velazquez. You said it. I did not say it.
Chairman Manzullo. I want to make sure that that remark,
crazy, gets into the record.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Commissioner, is that a yes?
Mr. Ziglar. Yes. I am more than happy to do whatever makes
sense. This panel thing, I know nothing about it other than
what I have just been told.
Ms. Velazquez. I would like for Mr. Sullivan to explain to
the witnesses here and to me what type of recourse the people
and the businesses that will be impacted by this proposed rule
will have if we do not have a panel that really addresses some
of the issues that have been raised this morning.
Mr. Sullivan. I think what we have heard today through the
statements of small business owners and trade associations is
that if the rule is implemented without the degree of certainty
that is necessary as written then there may not be recourse
other than a severe detrimental financial effect to small
businesses.
What we have heard from the Commissioner right now is very
encouraging, and that is to go beyond the letter of the rule
making process, which can be bureaucratic, and sit down with
interested groups so that we can hammer out a less burdensome
solution.
I know that after hearing the Commissioner's personal
commitment to do that and also hearing of that commitment
within the government that his word constitutes a significant
movement in a direction to appease small business concerns.
I am pleased that he is going to be responsive to small
business interests and I am also pleased that he is going to be
responsive and report back regularly to this Committee on how
we have progressed.
Ms. Velazquez. I just want to make it clear that if nothing
happens in terms of putting together a process, a panel review
process, for these businesses to be able to discuss and for the
agency that proposed the rule to understand and to conclude
that indeed there is not going to be an economic impact or not.
We do not know based on the testimony that we heard; if
nothing happened where we put together a vehicle for this to be
clarified that there is indeed a legal recourse for those
businesses that will be impacted.
Mr. Ziglar. Congresswoman, I just want to make it clear
that I am one member of a big Administration. You certainly
have my expression of willingness to deal with this. I cannot
just on my own commit to any particular format, but certainly
whatever powers of persuasion I have, I will attempt to make
sure that that happens.
Ms. Velazquez. Well, I just want to mention here that when
the Administration came out with the prescription drug card,
community pharmacists all over the country raised a red flag,
and they said they would be impacted.
When a vehicle was not proposed for them to be able to
present their case or make their case, they went to Court. Then
there was a judicial decision made to that effect. What we are
following here is the letter of the law regarding SBREFA.
Mr. Sullivan. Congresswoman, I would like to respond to
your original question, because I feel as though I have not
been completely responsive. You asked what the legal recourse
is, and the legal recourse is to challenge a rule in Federal
Court that the agency's decision was made arbitrarily or
capriciously.
Now, I think that what we have heard both from myself and
from the Commissioner is that we would not like for it to get
to that point because, as we know, it is a lengthy and
expensive process when you go through this type of litigation,
which does not necessarily immediately help the purposes of
INS, this rule, and the economic security of small business.
I think what you have heard is the commitment from both of
us to sit down and try to put aside bureaucratic processes and
administrative legal actions and work through this so that we
have a good solution.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you.
Mr. Grucci.
Mr. Grucci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not know if you
can hear me or not, but I will try anyway. First, let me just
thank you for your leadership on this issue and Ranking Member
Velazquez for her leadership on this.
I just need to comment. An 18,068 page document? I guess it
takes the brightest minds inWashington to come up with a
concise document like that.
Chairman Manzullo. If the gentleman would yield? The
proposed regulation I think is four or five pages, but it is
part of an 18,068 page document.
Mr. Grucci. That is correct. The Federal Register. Right.
Thank God for Reagan's Paper Reduction Act, or this thing could
have swelled to 18,070 pages. It could have really gotten out
of control.
Ms. Velazquez. It seems, Mr. Chairman, that it did not
work.
Mr. Grucci. Reclaiming my time, Commissioner, first let me
applaud you for your quick action on behalf of the INS to take
up the issue of who comes into our country very seriously and
try to make our borders safe.
I would like to address this issue from a different
direction if I may, and I hear what this esteemed panel has
been saying. I have been fighting the fight with the travel
agencies on an issue that I believe to be very important to the
small businesses. It is, our five major airlines decided
unilaterally to reduce their commissions to the airlines--to
the travel agencies; I am sorry--and all at the same time
keeping their own on-line travel agent going and paying them
commissions.
I think that is wrong. They received a hell of a wallop,
and the Members of Congress got a sucker punch, I believe. That
being said, the industry has expressed their concerns here
today about being able to continue to go forward.
The issue of the length of stay may have some relevance to
being able to thwart another attack, but I believe, as I heard
one of the speakers say, that to me it would make more sense to
put that effort, that energy, that money and that time into
tracking, detection, research.
Yesterday I attended a technical seminar given by one of
the corporations in my district, Symbol Technology, who is part
of a consortium to come up with a whole new tracking
methodology for visas, for passports, et cetera. It was an eye
opener the technology that sits out there.
We are not talking about having to reinvent the wheel. We
are talking about taking systems that are currently out there
and readapting them for current use. That would seem to make a
lot of sense to me.
The elimination of the length of stay from 60 days down to
30 days. If someone is going to come in there----
Chairman Manzullo. Six months.
Mr. Grucci. I am sorry. Six months down to 30 days. If
somebody is going to come here to do some damage, they are
going to come, and they are going to get in here, and they are
going to do it. Certainly it only took a matter of hours for
our airlines to be used as weapons of mass destruction, and
someone conceivably could have fit in that 30 day window of
opportunity that is now being proposed.
We have situations where our borders are porous, that
people are flowing through undetected without any visas. I have
extended an invitation. I know circumstances have arisen on a
number of occasions that prevented you from visiting the
district that I represent to demonstrate to you firsthand some
of the problems that we have with the illegal immigration, the
amount of people that are in a community that is just
deteriorating the community and tearing it apart.
I would like to extend to you another opportunity for you
or a deputy of yours to come to visit the district. I would
hope that we could arrange a date. I understand the incidences
that happened in the past have got in the way of that, and I do
not fault you for that, but I would like at the conclusion of
this hearing to have a moment of your time to confirm a time
when we can get together. I think it is important that you see
the issue firsthand.
Do you believe that by doing this six months to 30 days is
a better approach than trying to tighten up our borders by
preventing the illegal immigrants from coming in and putting in
a stronger and a more advanced tracking mechanism so that we do
not impact the tourism industry?
There are good people that do come to this country. We do
not want to prevent them from coming. We do not want to stop
them from getting here, and we do not want to impact them to a
point where they say listen, it just does not make any sense.
I do not believe that a great deal of people come
specifically to stay in my district, but they certainly come to
visit New York, and they come and they spend time out in my
district. My area is kind of an afterthought of New York City.
After they go to the city and they see all the great things
there are in the city, they come out and look at the wine
areas. They come to the beaches. They spend several weekends
out in our tourism area.
That is good for our tourism industry. I would hate to see
that evaporate because people feel that they have a limited
amount of time to spend in the United States. And say I will
take my money and my time, and I will go elsewhere in the
world.
I would like to hear your thoughts on addressing the issue
of detection and tracking versus collapsing the time coming
into the country.
Mr. Ziglar. Congressman, let me articulate my vision of how
we ought to be doing this business. I rarely get a chance to do
this in a hearing because it is so specific questions.
My vision of this is that our borders start a long way away
from our physical borders. They start out there in some country
that has a name. There are people there who want to come into
the United States. They go to the consular, unless they are a
visa waiver. They go to the consular office to get a visa.
Now, what we need to have is intelligence information that
is available at that consular office that says that this is
someone that we do not want to give a visa to. That is where it
starts is good intelligence that is shared with all of the
points of contact that these people may have and all the law
enforcement agencies.
Let us take the 19 hijackers. There was at the time they
got their visas no intelligence information on them, so they
got to the port of entry, and they came into the United States.
Fifteen of them came in on B-2s, three of them came on B-1s,
and one came on an F, I believe it was. Fifteen of those
people, including Mohammed Atta and Alshehri, came in here on
B-2s. They were granted automatically six months to stay in the
United States.
Now, we do not have an effective entry/exit tracking
system. We do not have yet and we do not yet have an effective
student tracking system. We are putting both of those in place.
We do have the I-94 process, which is very effective on
counting who is coming in, but we miss 15 percent of them on
the way out. Even though it is fairly paper based, it is in a
database, so we do have a way of figuring out when people are
here and most of whom leave when they leave, but it is slow. It
is getting better.
I am absolutely committed to bringing together all of these
technological resources so that we have information available
at every point that it needs to be available. It is not just
INS information. It is FBI, CIA, Department of State, NSA,
whoever it happens to be, that we have a profile of these
people in terms of I do not mean profiling, but who are these
people that are coming here.
In any situation that you have, there are going to be
people that we do not have any intelligence information about.
They may be young. They may have avoided the law, but they are
here withan intent to do something. Mohammed Atta and those
guys came in here, and they had six months to be in this country. They
did not concoct that conspiracy overnight. That conspiracy was
concocted over a long period of time. They ran under the radar screen.
Under this new proposal, what the intent of it is from a
security point of view is to do several things. Number one is
that when people get here and they want to come to the United
States, our inspectors ask them a question, and that is what is
the purpose of your trip, and how long do you intend to be
here.
Now, legitimate travelers do not have a problem with that,
I do not believe. They say okay, I am coming to see Aunt
Tillie, and I am going to be here six weeks. Well, in the
normal course of things under this new regime we would probably
give them two months. We always try to give a little bit
additional like on business visas than they ask for.
If somebody comes here and says oh, gee, I do not know. I
am just coming to the U.S., and I am going to hang out around
here. I do not have any intention of where I am going or where
I am staying. That is where the 30 day default provision comes
in.
In the case of a guy or people like Mohammed Atta and those
kind of people, I think, frankly, that is a good rule, but from
an enforcement----
Mr. Grucci. If I may, Commissioner? If you are going to ask
that question and you are going to get an answer like that, to
me that would send up a huge red flag. Maybe this person ought
not to be given access at all until we find out exactly what
they are going to do. Why default to 30 days, let the person in
for 30 days and then see what they are going to do?
Mr. Ziglar. Well, Congressman, maybe I was being a hair
facetious. The fact is that a lot of people come to this
country and say I just wanted to come to the U.S. I want to
travel around. I do not really have any particular time frame
that I want to leave, but I know I have six months.
In a case like that, then our inspectors will ask a lot of
additional questions. I mean, our inspectors by virtue of the
500 million people they see every year, they get a second sense
about people, and that is when we put them in a secondary. If
we are not asking them questions, but we are just by default
under the law giving them six months, we have a lot less
eyesight on who these people are. That is part of this.
It also has an enforcement element to it, and that is that
that person who comes in here and gets 30 days, if they stay
past 30 days they are in overstay status. Now, if they have six
months and we have some concern about them--they are here, but
they are in status--it is hard for us to do anything. If they
are going to throw themselves out of status, then we have a
grounds if we have some concerns about them to go pick them up
and send them elsewhere. We have that.
We believe that this new rule--not a 30 day rule, but the
new rule--also will facilitate the beginning of our entry/exit
system implementation. We believe that it is creating the
transition area for us to do the entry/exit.
I think also that if we have regulations that say when you
come here you have to state why you are here and how long you
are going to be here, I think that has a deterrent effect. That
makes people understand that if they are legitimate that is not
a problem, but it is a deterrent effect. It says that the
United States is serious about knowing who is in our country
and the conditions under which they come.
I doubt very seriously that Joe Six Pack out there----
Mr. Grucci. I do not think it is the questions that are
creating the problem, if I may. I do not think it is the
questions of asking who are you, where do you come from, what
are you going to do and how long you are going to stay here
that is the issue.
The issue to me seems to be that we are not doing a good
enough job, and I believe that you will agree. We are not doing
a good enough job in stopping the illegal immigrants from
coming in.
We have taken great steps, I believe some of it at your
direction, to divide the INS into sections and to strengthen up
areas, and I would hope that that would at least give us an
agent that we can get into the New York area that can come out
and do enforcement, instead of being told that we do not have
anybody that could come out and take a look at illegal
immigration.
It just seems to me that the issue, in using your own
example that our borders start in some far off land with a
different name, that we ought to have the intelligence on that
person before they even come to apply for the visas.
If we knew that when someone applied for a visa hey, this
is a bad guy, we better not let this person in if there is some
tracking taking place by the CIA or the FBI or the Coast Guard
or some other agency or even your own agency, then it does not
matter if it is a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day or 120 days that they
are allowed.
If this person is a bad guy and we could capture that bad
guy by just asking a few questions, then it seems like we
should be able to beef up our intelligence network and our
information gathering system to even prevent that person from
getting the opportunity to apply for a visa.
Chairman Manzullo. Mr. Grucci, let me go to Mr. Issa here
to make sure everybody has an opportunity.
Mr. Grucci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Commissioner, I am going to follow up directly on Mr.
Grucci's start and just do a little arithmetic calculation. We
have 8.5 million, according to the U.S. Census, overstays,
illegals, all of them combined, people who are not supposed to
be here that we estimate are here. We did that on a recent
census.
That means we had 19 bad guys who murdered 3,000 Americans,
but for each one of those we have 447,368 people that could be
bad, but we do not know because we do not know where they are.
We just know that that is the estimated amount of undocumented
people in this country, most of whom commit no crimes. That
gives me kind of the whole question.
You know, I very much support the fact that you are taking
action, and I know in this town that if you do not want to be
criticized, do nothing, and you can usually get away with it,
so I do not want to overly criticize you on putting up the
concept of a 30 day default. I do think, during the process, if
you hear the kinds of things you heard here today, you will be
much more in doubt about ``when nobody asks for any more, give
them 30 days''.
Certainly I would agree that if someone says I just want to
come here and spend a week that giving 30 days is reasonable.
The question is if somebody says I want to come here, and I
want to stay for an indeterminative period of time up to six
months. I am going to go see this sight and this sight and this
sight.
Then I happen to support this panel that probably, unless
you have research that has been reasonably done, that you
probably ought to give it to most people because of the 447,000
plus people that you are not even addressing, and the tens of
millions of people who come to this country just to be here on
vacation, snowbirds in not just Florida, but in Arizona and in
California, it would be a problem. They would like to say I am
going to stay here until the weather warms up. Therefore, you
know, I would like more than a month.
Mr. Ziglar. Yes.
Mr. Issa. Having said that, I would like to dovetail
further on this whole question of outside the borders, at the
borders, inside the borders and ask you a question that rises
from thatimmigration reform and is still pending to the breakup
of the INS versus the Border Patrol and I guess now the switch to
Homeland Defense being in your hierarchy.
The secondary checkpoints that are in my district in San
Clemente and Temecula, I believe, are no longer needed or not
effective. We sometimes disagree on some of these points. How
much do they cost to operate with those 270 personnel, at least
one of whom could potentially be looking for criminal aliens in
Mr. Grucci's district?
Mr. Ziglar. Congressman, I am sorry. I do not have the
budget figures on that particularly. I did not anticipate this
sort of question in preparing for those kind of numbers, but I
will be glad to get it to you.
Mr. Issa. Well, I am going to give you just the
opportunity. My staff has been requesting that for more than
two months and has not been able to get it.
This afternoon at 2:00 p.m., INS witness Joseph Green will
testify in front of the Immigration Border Security and Claims
Subcommittee, of which I am on. I would appreciate it if the
information could be there at that time after several months of
official requests and not getting it.
I support Mr. Grucci's very statement and I think some of
the other statements that yes, we will go along with you I am
sure on reasonable changes that include perhaps some form of
shortening for people who say I am only coming for a week. Give
him 30 days.
I do not think in the end, after your evaluation of
comments and criticisms, that there will not be a tendency by
all of us here, all of us in the small business community, to
try to accommodate this initiative of yours because in fact we
should not just punish people who try to have solutions that
may help.
At the same time, to believe that with 8.5 million
undocumented people in this country that we do not know where
they are, many of whom came in and overstayed months or years
ago, that 270 people waving 200,000 people a day through a
checkpoint knowing that one in 20 of those is an undocumented
worker and only catching ten per checkpoint per day is the
solution.
I hope that just as we are working with you, and the small
business community wants to be supportive as much as possible,
that you also will look at these other areas and give us the
safety we could get if we removed thousands of criminal aliens
every year instead of necessarily concentrating on the same old
game of well, this being a deterrent.
As someone who is a border region congressman, to say it is
a deterrent to put 270 people 70 miles inside our country and
say that is deterring when there are 8.5 million people north
and east of them, I have to ask you to please re-evaluate that,
and I would very much appreciate getting the cost figures so we
can begin evaluating the cost effectiveness of that.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time, Mr.
Chairman.
Ms. Velazquez. I just would like to ask the Commissioner.
Out of the 19 hijackers, how many were illegal or undocumented?
Mr. Ziglar. Well, they all came in legally. At the time
that it happened, I believe three of them were out of status. I
believe that is correct. Three of them were out of status,
overstays.
Mr. Issa. And one was incarcerated.
Mr. Ziglar. Well, then you have to go with 20. Yes. Right.
Chairman Manzullo. Mr. Commissioner----
Mr. Ziglar. By the way, could I add one thing?
Chairman Manzullo. Of course.
Mr. Ziglar. Of that 8.5 million estimate, and there are
various estimates, of course, out there, approximately----
Mr. Issa. I only took the census from the United States
Census. I do not have a better one. I happen to think it is a
lot higher, but my opinion is more subjective.
Mr. Ziglar. Well, I am just saying there are a lot of
estimates. That is one that you recited.
Our estimate is that about 40 percent of that 8.5 million
are people who came here in overstay status, as opposed to
people who came across the border illegally, so they came here,
were inspected and then put themselves in overstay status.
I think one of the reasons that we suggested this
regulation was that we believe it does have a deterrent effect
on the overstay part of that component.
Mr. Issa. If I could have the indulgence of the Chair? I
want to support that concept because I do believe that when
someone is encouraged to just kind of hang around for six
months when they came in just saying they wanted to stay a week
and see Auntie that you may very well be right. At the end of a
month they begin working. They begin working somewhere for
cash. They begin transitioning into being more of an overstay.
That is where I want to be very supportive, of not
announcing any initiative as dead on arrival until we look at
the tradeoffs, but I think, having gotten the governor before I
left, the point is that there are large groups of people who
regularly ask for, have valid reasons and should be granted far
more than 30 days, and we recognize that there is a middle
ground that I very much hope when you are looking at the
proposed rule versus the final rule that you would make those
adjustments.
At the same time, you have a huge job on your plate in
other areas, and I think this Committee and the small business
community and the American people want to be supportive to find
out how we can help you with the 8.5 million, which may rise or
fall, based on your initiatives, a few million, but will still
always be a lot bigger than 19 or 20.
Mr. Ziglar. Congressman, the intent of this regulation is
not to stick everybody with 30 days, as I have said a hundred
times. That person that comes in on a visa and says, you know,
I want to tour the United States and I may be here two or three
months, the next question is okay, give us an idea of where you
want to tour.
You know, based upon the questioning they will give them a
three month admission period or whatever happens to be fair and
reasonable for the purpose of the trip. That is the whole
purpose of the regulation.
Chairman Manzullo. Mr. Highfield is shaking his head. Would
you respond to that question and answer?
Mr. Highfield. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too,
represent a little, tiny business person, and I can tell you
that I grew up in Pontiac. The questions that they asked when I
would go across to go drinking in Windsor, okay, when it was 18
years old across the way----
Chairman Manzullo. Are you talking about the rib place just
over the border?
Mr. Highfield. Right.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay.
Mr. Issa. What did they ask when you came back is the
question.
Mr. Highfield. We knew the great questions and the great
answers to give. Quite frankly, from a practical standpoint for
those that have been doing it, these type of question things
are, quite frankly, a crock.
If you are going to allow people to come in, just give them
a defined reason. We are renting a campsite for five months in
Corpus Christi. Okay. Here it is. Okay. Give us six months.
This 30 day thing is just impractical. I used to go back
and forth across the border hearing all that stuff all the
time. This kind of stuff will have absolutely no effect except
to slow it down, and once in a while if you get a person who is
a little grouchy and the INS inspector or theCustoms person
does not like it, boom. He is going to give him the shaft. That is the
only way it works.
I am sorry about speaking English, but that is the bottom
line. Let us be practical.
Chairman Manzullo. I did not mean to get into your
fraternity days.
I have a couple more questions, and that is just for
clarification. Am I correct in saying that the requests for
extensions do not apply to Canadians? Is that correct?
Mr. Ziglar. The way it works is because of the special
status that Canadians have----
Chairman Manzullo. Right.
Mr. Ziglar [continuing]. They would come in without an I-
94, which means that they would in effect default to six months
so that if they wanted to stay additional beyond that six month
period then they would have to seek an extension, but that is
the way it is now, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Manzullo. The cost of travel is in the thousands.
We did some research. A tourist class airfare from Warsaw to
Chicago is around $2,000. From Bombay is about the same. I say
that because we have a lot of Poles and a lot of Indians in our
congressional district.
Let me just give the experience of Carol Weineke again who
has been through this hundreds, if not thousands, of times. She
is the person in my office who does the actual immigration work
that is the expert as far as I am concerned.
Her question, which is mine, is with the cost of travel in
the thousands of dollars, individuals when they arrive soon
discover there is much to see and at that point realize more
time is needed. This is Mr. Amrine's statement and Mr.
Highfield's. To file an extension today takes 60 to 125 days to
adjudicate with a cost of over $100 to make the application to
extend.
Coming from a person who actually assists my constituents
in the extension process, what we are submitting to you today
is the extension requests that you will have if this proposed
regulation goes into effect, there will not be enough federal
employees in the United States at every single agency to begin
to handle those adjudications when today a lot of people are
out of status between the time when their six months ends and
they are waiting for an additional amount of time.
My question goes to the statement that was made by Mr.
McDermott that there really is not enough INS personnel. There
could never be enough personnel in order to enforce this
regulation.
Mr. Ziglar. Mr. Chairman, let me make a couple of points.
Part of it is good news, and that is that at two of our service
centers we are down to 30 days for processing I-539s, which
include extensions and other things.
Chairman Manzullo. Does that include Chicago Service
Center?
Mr. Ziglar. The other two of them are at 60 days, and we
hope to have them at 30 days, which would cover the entire
country, within the next couple of months, so we are making
some real progress on that.
Now, on the question of extensions I have no quarrel, which
has not really been talked about here, but I have no quarrel
with a lot of the comments that have been made that the grounds
for extension under the new regulation are far more difficult
than they have been in the past, and I think that is something
we clearly have to look at as an Administration.
It is absolutely incumbent upon us at the INS that if we
are going to have tighter rules that we have the processing
ability to create those extensions or exceptions that are
allowed by law. That is clearly a high priority issue for us at
the INS.
I believe that we will get this right. If it is not right
now, we will get it right, and the burden on the INS will be
minimal in the long term in terms of trying to reach those
goals of processing.
I am not quite sure if that answers your question.
Chairman Manzullo. Well, it does except I think you are
overly confident of the fact that there is going to be a
tremendous amount of requests for extensions. There already is
now. Carol has handled hundreds of these where people come for
the very purpose of visiting the United States, and then they
just want to stick around longer and spend their dollars.
I have some other questions, but I want to yield to Ms.
Velazquez.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Chairman, just to follow on your line of
questioning. Mr. Commissioner, what did we do in the 1980s? Did
we not extend to six months precisely because of what the
Chairman is describing here today?
Mr. Ziglar. That is correct. Well, that is what they tell
me. I was not around in the 1980s for this job, but I am told
it was because of the backlogs that we have.
Now, the other side of this is that we are trying to fix
our system so that it is much more automated so that we can
handle these kinds of requests at a much faster pace.
Ms. Velazquez. I would like to have your optimism. You
know, if in the 1980s we extended----
Mr. Ziglar. In this job you have to be optimistic or you
jump out the window.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Commissioner, if in the 1980s we went to
six months because we could not handle the backlog, how do you
expect now that we are going to be able to have the resources?
Mr. Ziglar. Congresswoman, I do not believe that if this is
properly fashioned that we are going to have that much of a
problem in terms of additional I-539s being filed with us.
Chairman Manzullo. I wanted to ask a question. Mr. Issa, I
will recognize you.
Mr. Lewis, I would want to have your input on this. This is
where I have problems. When you look at this proposed
regulation, the whole purpose of it is aimed at fighting
tourism. Tourism? Boy, is that Freudian. Fighting terrorism.
You can tell where the heart of this Chairman is. That is
correct. Fighting terrorism.
I read on page 18,066 in the first paragraph it says, ``Why
is the Service proposing to reduce the maximum admission period
for B-1 and B-2 visitors from one year to six months?'' The
answer, and I just cannot accept this answer. The answer says:
``As previously noted, Service regulations at . . .'' and it
gives the numbers, ``. . . currently provide that a B-1 visitor
for business or B-2 visitor for pleasure may be admitted for a
period of up to one year. As the attacks of September 11, 2001,
demonstrated, this generous period of stay is susceptible to
abuse by aliens who seek to plan and execute acts of
terrorism.''
I do not know who wrote this, but this is saying that if
you stay another 90 days, you are going to devise your
terrorism intent after you get here. The article in today's
Post talked about these clowns on September 11th. They really
started planning that stuff after the bombing of the embassies
in Africa.
[The information may be found in the appendix.]
They are very sophisticated. They are very smart; so smart
to the effect that even if the most sophisticated computers had
been in effect only two of those guys would have been caught at
the issuance of the visa stage because their backgrounds were
clean.
As I read this, somebody is going to do an act of terrorism
that comes into the United States. He is still going to remain
legal whether he asks for 30 days or whether he asks for six
months because if he does not want to come under scrutiny he is
going to play the game.
I would like your comment on that and Mr. Lewis' comment on
that.
Mr. Ziglar. Mr. Chairman, I will go first. The regulation
here goes much beyond terrorism.That reference obviously is a
core reference, but the whole issue here of people coming to the United
States under our very generous system and overstaying their stay or
coming here and creating connections, being illegally employed and then
overstaying, coming here and engaging in marriage fraud or document
fraud. I mean, we have a problem that Congressman Issa mentioned, and
that is that we have a lot of people here who are illegally here.
This regulation is just one part of a lot of other things
that we are attempting to do both at the INS and throughout the
Administration not to deter people from coming here
legitimately, but to have better eyesight on who is here and
who comes, who stays and who leaves.
I am not confused. I have come up to this body more times I
think than any other Administration witness now, and it has
been made pretty clear to me that people are not happy about
the things that go on with respect to people coming into this
country and overstaying their welcome and engaging in fraud and
all of those sorts of things.
This is just one of a holistic approach to trying to not
deter tourists and not deter legitimate immigrants or any of
that sort of thing, but to do things that most other countries
do, and that is they have better eyesight on the people who are
in their country for whatever reason they are here, whether it
is tourism or whatever. It is a part of a long-term plan that
it has been made clear to me by the Congress and particularly
on the House side that that is what they expect, and they
expect it yesterday.
You know, if you are looking for a miracle in this area,
you are going to have to look a whole lot higher up than where
I am on the seventh floor of the INS, but I have to tell you.
We are trying to do our best. You know, we do not always hit it
just right on the nail on the head. Given the resources that we
have or do not have and how strained we are and what we are
trying to do, we are doing our best with what we have.
Mr. Lewis. Yes, sir. Thank you. First of all, when you look
at al-Qaeda, and I do not know that these documents have been
publicly made available, but I know it has been stated that in
the training manual that the al-Qaeda has there is a section on
how you handle being interviewed for not only entry to a
country, but also law enforcement stops, how you handle
everyone else that might have cause or reason to interview.
That is my concern about the interviews at the entry point once
they have been given a visa.
Secondly, you know, my heart goes out to INS. They have an
enormous job to do. I keep going back to the screening process
and the tracking once they are here. These individuals are
trained in how to avoid detection. Again I go back to what this
regulation will do, which I see many reasons for it, but it is
in my mind not related to stopping terrorists.
As far as planning goes, yes, it has been publicly stated
now I guess in hearings yesterday that this al-Qaeda or the
skyjackings and suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, the planning process started in 1998 and in
Germany for the most part.
If you get into the local areas of what they might do here,
yes, they do go out, and they look at different facilities.
They photograph it, draw up schemes or schematics, and
ultimately they look for some kind of blessing to attack that
target. There could be as many as 30 ongoing sites that they
are looking at or organizations, businesses, federal
facilities, but they might only end up selecting one or two.
I think that might be what the Commissioner, when he is
talking about or when others are talking about what al-Qaeda
does or terrorists--Hezbollah does the same thing--in a
particular country. I hope that answers the question.
Chairman Manzullo. Let us take two more short questions.
We have some other responses. I am sorry. Go ahead. Ms.
White?
Ms. White. Not if you are still talking on terrorism.
Chairman Manzullo. Hang on just a second. Let us get the
mike in front of you so we can hear you.
Ms. White. I was not really thinking about terrorism as
such at this time. I am sorry. Maybe my question is out of
place.
I just feel that I am not getting an answer for my people.
Our phone lines in our offices are ringing sometimes 25, 35
times a day from Canadian people. I mean, a lot of these people
are 50, 60, 70, 80, and they are worried.
All they are seeing is what has been put out on the
documents so far, and they are worried. They are scared. This
is June. They will be planning whether they are traveling as
tourists or not.
It is nice to say that Canadians are not part of this, but
there is nothing that we can really tell them. There is nothing
in writing. There is nothing that we can really tell our
people.
They are scared to go to the border. If you are scared to
do something and you are 75 or 80 years old, we have to buy
insurance. We have to buy insurance for five or six months
before we go. If we have to plan two months before we get to
the border, then get there and are scared that somebody is
going to say no, you cannot go for six months. We will only let
you go for four.
Chairman Manzullo. Ms. White, if I recall, the Commissioner
said that this regulation does not apply to the Canadians to
the extent of the extension. Is that correct, Commissioner? Did
I hear that right?
Mr. Ziglar. For Canadians, given the arrangement we have
with them, they are not subject to the so-called I-94 process,
which means that they come in for inspection and they have a
date stamped on their I-94.
In this case, they are not coming in being asked how long
are you going to stay. It will fall back to the six month
default period. After six months--I am sorry. The six month
maximum stay period. After six months, if they want to stay
they can file for an extension on the grounds that are in the
regs.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay. The request for the extension as
to the Canadians would be the same as everybody else. It is
only unexpected events, such as an event that occurs that is
outside the alien's control and prevents the alien from
departing the U.S., compelling humanitarian reasons, such as
emergency continuing medical treatment.
The fact that a Canadian may want to stay more than six
months just to visit more or sun more, they would be ineligible
under this proposed language. They would need to go back home.
Mr. Ziglar. Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, I share some
concerns about the restrictive nature of the extension process.
It is something that I feel like needs to be looked at very
carefully.
Chairman Manzullo. I appreciate your candor. Thank you.
Mr. McDermott, you had a comment?
Mr. McDermott. Just a particular comment, Mr. Chairman,
with regard to----
Chairman Manzullo. Could you pull the mike closer to you?
Mr. McDermott. With regard to the issue that it is our
opinion, my opinion from the perspective of the tourism
industry and our western states group in particular, that the
particular confusion with regard to the language having to do
with fair and reasonable, as well as the 30 days, is where the
real problem is centered around.
In other words, visitors who are intending to be here for
anything more than 30 days, and even those intending to be here
for less and are not certain about what is going on, are
fearful, as you heard Mrs. White say, that they are going to
arrive at the border, they are going to arrive at theirentry
point and then be interrogated, and then some INS agent is going to
determine for them how long they can stay regardless of how long they
wish to stay, intend to stay or whatever. Their plans could be
terrifically disrupted.
Now, it is that kind of fear on the parts of potential
travelers and the parts of businesses such as tour operators
and travel agents and so forth that are planning tours for
folks that has the propensity to deter the visitation that,
therefore, could so severely impact the tourism industry in a
country that, by the way, has already been losing international
tourism market share for the past several years since closing
down our United States Travel and Tourism Administration. We
are further exacerbating our situation because of the lack of
clarity and the problems of communication that have already
permeated this particular issue.
We need to get clarification in the language as it pertains
to Canadians in particular out there post haste, and then we
need to get clarification as to exactly what does fair and
reasonable mean in terms of what is going to happen to a person
in terms of their interrogation at a border, at an entry point,
and then, furthermore, what exactly would constitute necessity
to be defaulted to 30 days.
Chairman Manzullo. Let me make a suggestion. Mr.
Commissioner, do you have it within your authority to give a
simple letter to Ms. White that she could put up on the
internet and send to all of her members that just states matter
of fact that this regulation does not apply to them, and it may
apply at the six month extension, but that six month extension
would be a year off even thinking about it?
Would that satisfy you, Ms. White, just something very
simple?
Ms. White. It would be very good.
Chairman Manzullo. Is that possible? Could you work with
her on that?
Mr. Ziglar. Mr. Chairman, I cannot send that letter
without--I mean, I cannot go to the restroom without getting
OMB's approval, so I would have to go through them to clear the
letter, but I certainly would try to do that.
Chairman Manzullo. Let me make a suggestion. I am going to
get very serious here.
I would like a commitment to start those talks with a
deadline to have that letter out in two weeks. If it is not out
in two weeks, I may entertain a further hearing to bring you in
and ask you to bring in your sleeping bags and your toothbrush.
I am serious. We had to do this once before in order to effect
a change for travel agents.
I am not going to have our good friends in Canada, our
number one trading partner discouraged from visiting America. I
have been a member of the American-Canadian Inter-Parliamentary
Exchange for ten years. I was the chairman for one year. The
Canadians are so upset with this rule--I was just with them
four weeks ago at our Inter-Parliamentary Exchange--that they
have formed a task force among the Canadian MPs to figure out
what they have done to offend the United States. That is how
serious this is with our Canadian friends.
I had to bring in Dr. Graham and the head of the SBA with
the same threat. I am serious. This has to be taken care of
immediately with the Canadians. I would ask that there be a
letter that would be drawn and approved within two weeks or I
can guarantee you I will take everything I can do here to
compel the appearance and get that letter out. We cannot
sacrifice hundreds of millions of billions of dollars because
of bureaucratic change.
If you need help with Dr. Graham and he will not talk to
you, I will have both of you here at the same time, and you can
discuss it in open court in order to get the thing done.
Mr. Ziglar. I did not mean to suggest that OMB is a
problem. I just said that I----
Chairman Manzullo. They are a problem. They move slowly.
Mr. Ziglar. I just said I cannot unilaterally with respect
to something like this issue a letter.
Chairman Manzullo. No. I understand, but what we have here
on the table, and, as I said before, the purpose of this
Committee is solutions oriented. The Canadians cannot wait for
the rules to be promulgated.
Ms. White is here testifying. We had a member of the
Canadian Parliament who was going to testify, but because of
technicalities Senator Grafstein could not come. That would
have been the first time that a Member of the Canadian
Parliament would have testified before a Committee of the
United States Congress on how impacted and how offended the
Canadians are over this particular proposal.
I would suggest, and I am going to follow up on it, that
Ms. White have within her hands some type of a directive. I do
not care if it is an internal memo that you send to Mike behind
you that somehow finds its way into my hands that I can send to
her that has your initials on it. I am serious. We have to get
creative here. People from Canada are there. These rules do not
apply to the Canadians. I just hope we got that message out.
Even something that simple that finds its way into my hands
that I can give her, that will save a lot of angst and also
create a lot of money that could be here in the United States.
Would that help you out?
Ms. White. Yes, certainly. We will not only put it on our
website. We will make certain that all our Canadian press gets
it as well.
[The information may be found in the appendix.]
Chairman Manzullo. Okay. There we are.
Mr. Issa.
Mr. Issa. Mr. Chairman, I might suggest that I think we in
the hearing have a clear understanding from the Commissioner,
based on hearing testimony, that in fact Canadians do have an
automatic six month entry.
I might suggest that we pose that understanding in the form
of a letter which we can, of course, make available to all the
panel members at this time, and then subject them to permission
from Mitch Daniels, or whoever it has to be, a response that
would come back in a timely fashion.
I think today we could publish something for the record in
the form of an understanding which we send as a letter that
already says what we believe we heard here. I think that would
go a long way with Members of Congress clearly understanding
that. To be honest, if it comes back incorrect, we are the body
that could make changes necessary to make it correct.
Mr. Ziglar. Mr. Chairman, could I respond to that?
Chairman Manzullo. Of course.
Mr. Ziglar. I do not mean to sound bureaucratic, but I also
am a lawyer.
Mr. Issa. We forgive you.
Mr. Ziglar. I have been recovering for 22 years. The word
automatic is not a right word. That is assuming. The
regulations are this way now. That is assuming that a Canadian
is otherwise admissible to the United States.
The way it would be now is they would go to the six months.
I just want to make that clear that we are not all of a sudden
saying everybody from Canada, even if they are not admissible,
can come in.
Mr. Issa. So the letter or the memo really should say that
nothing has changed under U.S. law with regard to the
Canadians?
Chairman Manzullo. That would be the easiest thing for the
Canadians with the exception of that request for an extension.
Mr. Ziglar. Yes. Well, the six month total--in effect, that
is right.
Chairman Manzullo. At least the first six months.
Mr. Ziglar. You would have to explain it carefully.
Chairman Manzullo. The first six months.
Mr. Ziglar. Right. Yes.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay. I mean, I would be willing to work
with you on a one sentence thing like that, or perhaps there is
something.
Mr. Issa. Our lawyers and your lawyers can get together----
Chairman Manzullo. Yes.
Mr. Issa [continuing]. And create the letter necessary to
be clear and concise.
Mr. Ziglar. No, no, no. We will keep lawyers out of this so
it will be understandable.
Chairman Manzullo. Then I have to get out of it. If we
could work with your assistant, Mike, who was in our office
yesterday, on drafting something very simple that perhaps could
fly by the OMB that we could get, then we have your assurance
that you would work closely with us on that?
Mr. Ziglar. Sure.
Chairman Manzullo. Thank you.
Mr. Issa. Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Manzullo. Do you have a question?
Mr. Issa. I actually have a question.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay.
Mr. Issa. That part was helping with yours. Now this is
mine.
Chairman Manzullo. Okay. You have a question and Mr. Grucci
had a final question. Is that it? Okay.
Mr. Issa. Yes. I think we will be quick. Sort of as a wrap
up question, Mr. Commissioner. If I understand correctly, you
are now very aware, at least as a result of this hearing, of
the balance between the revenue that we receive and the huge
amounts of taxes that are gleaned from tourism. And I am going
to assume it is far greater than the amount of money necessary
for you to improve your office in other ways that would not
stifle tourism, with the knowledge that Congress supports you
and can give you alternatives that keep that revenue coming in,
thus paying for the programs of interior enforcement that you
need. Hopefully that will be considered in your rule making in
this process.
The other one is purely a concern, and that is that I hope,
and I hope I will get a response here today, that those other
things which are being floated around that affect your
department that basically say if you are Saudi, if you are
this, if you are that, we are going to put you in a special
category of high risk and, therefore, we are going to say we do
not want this group of tourists or this group of tourists, this
group of investors, this group of investors.
I would hope that in light of what we did to Americans of
Japanese descent in World War II, you would recognize that,
notwithstanding our special relationship with certain countries
that are longstanding and unrelated to anything other than
large traffic and other relations, but with those who are
generally in the pot of all other nations I would hope be color
blind, religious blind, nationality blind, and that in all of
your rule making, that would be made extremely clear.
I must admit that there have been a few ideas floated, and
they have been all over the paper, that essentially say 1.1
billion Muslims need not apply and that they will somehow be
further scrutinized. Currently the Syria limitations, basically
shutting them off, indicate a direction that way.
I would hope I would hear today that that is an anomaly and
certainly not the direction you plan on going.
Mr. Ziglar. Congressman, as you know, I have made the
statement several times, and I will expand it a little bit,
that it was evil, not immigrants, and I will expand it to say
it was evil, not immigrants and tourists, that caused September
11.
As you also know, I am the resident libertarian around
here, so I am a free trader, and I am all of those things that
I always felt was a classic Republican, as opposed to
otherwise, so I struggle with these kinds of things every day
probably way too much for my own emotional health at times, but
I understand where you are coming from, and I share that view.
Chairman Manzullo. Mr. Grucci.
Mr. Grucci. Thank you. Commissioner, I just want to ask a
quick question on your intentions now with hopefully the
restructuring of the INS taking place.
Mr. Ziglar. Which one, Congressman?
Mr. Grucci. Well, hopefully it is somewhere in those 18,068
pages.
In all seriousness, the enforcement side of the INS. What
are we doing at, A, the borders and, B, once someone does
penetrate our borders? In my region on Long Island, for
example, I have been grappling with this issue, and I might get
a little parochial now if I may.
For a number of years, when I was the town supervisor there
I tried to get an INS representative to come out and discuss
the issue with me. You know, the person chuckled on the other
end of the phone and said you want me to come out to your town?
I am one person, and I have this entire region. They explained
the entire region that they have to cover. There was absolutely
no way that one person could deal with all of that.
Are we sending more inspectors out onto the streets? Can I
get inspectors to come out to my District to take a look at the
problem to see if indeed we could round up some illegal
immigrants and send them back home? Those that are legal that
belong here and deserve to be here, leave them alone. The
situation is just boiling to the point where there may not be
lynchings today. I cannot guarantee that going forward.
Mr. Ziglar. Congressman, let me give you some statistics,
some facts, so you will understand the dimension of the problem
that we face.
I currently have roughly 1,920 investigators worldwide. We
are authorized around 2,100, as I recall. We are having a huge
attrition problem throughout INS just like everybody else is
primarily because of the Transportation Security
Administration's ability to pay more money, but I have 1,922.
Roughly half of those are now still committed to working
exclusively with the FBI on the terrorist investigations, so
that gives me down to let us say roughly 1,000. I then have
about 300 that are by prescription of the Congress dedicated to
certain things like quick response teams and some other things,
so I am down to 700 special investigators worldwide.
Our priorities, and obviously with terrorism we have the
1,000 over there already. Our priorities are, number one,
rounding up criminal aliens, and there are a lot of them out
there, then breaking up smuggling rings, then doing
investigations on fraud and other kinds of things, and then
after that we get down to the enforcement, if you will, of
situations like you describe where there is not a criminal
alien or smuggling and that sort of thing.
We have run out of investigators a long time before we ever
got down to that priority. It is really a matter of resources
as to where we can put our people at this point. I hate to poor
mouth, and I always used to say yes, you know, I have heard
that before, but then I look at the numbers, and I realize if I
am going to meet the priorities.
Now, I will say this in defense of the INS. Way before I
got there they had asked for a substantial increase in
investigators, special agents, to do this kind of work. They
have uniformly not gotten it.
I mean, INS, by the time it gets through the process, we
get, you know, maybe 20 percent of what we really think we need
over the history. I have studied the history. I mean, we are up
against the wall in terms of having resources to do the kinds
of things that are regarded as interior enforcement.
Mr. Grucci. I do appreciate your problem, but it does not
help me with the problem that I have.
Mr. Ziglar. I understand.
Mr. Grucci. Out of those 700 people, if you could just send
two my way for a couple of weeks and just let them do a sweep
of the area, I think that that would go a long way in helping
relieve a major problem.
Chairman Manzullo. Perhaps you could work out an earmark
for the INS.
Ms. Velazquez. Yes. On Long Island we have beautiful
landscape. You might run into the risk of not knowing who is
going to cut your lawn or wash the dishes in the restaurant.
Mr. Grucci. Reclaiming my time, I will tell you who cuts my
lawn, and it is not an illegal immigrant. I can assure you of
that.
Ms. Velazquez. It was a joke. Mr. Commissioner, before we
adjourn I just would like to know. I know that you said to me
when I asked you in terms of addressing the serious concerns
about the economic impact that the proposed regulation is going
to have on the tourism industry you said that whatever it
takes, and I took that as a way to say to us that you are
committed yourself to convene a meeting with those
representatives and your office. What would be the time frame
for such a meeting?
Mr. Ziglar. Well, soon. I do not have my schedule in front
of me, but I would suggest that we can do that in the next week
or two.
Ms. Velazquez. Okay. If you can inform this Committee, I
would ask, you know, that he submit to us a report of such an
effort.
Chairman Manzullo. I just want to thank all the witnesses
here for a really good hearing. As I said at the beginning of
our hearing here in Small Business, the reason we have one
panel is to have interaction among the people who propose the
regulations and those who are impacted by it.
Commissioner Ziglar, you have done a marvelous job, an
exemplary job, of defending a very difficult regulation; not
that I accept all of your answers on it, but they are given
with a good heart, with a good spirit, with an honest mind,
with a person who has a sincere desire to serve this country,
from a person who has obvious integrity and a person who, in my
opinion, is probably the best person for the job under these
very difficult circumstances.
You have a full understanding of the business impact on
this. You have a compassion for people. You have the right
attitude. You took a job that is very difficult, coming into it
knowing you would have to appear before Congressional
Committees.
I just want to commend you for your statesmanship and the
way you have answered these questions and for your candor and
for your dedication to public service.
As to the rest of the members of the panel, I think you
share with me the insights that we have learned about the every
day life of a commissioner and also his openness and
willingness to work with the business community, especially
with the tourism industry.
I also appreciate the long range view as to what INS needs
to do. I am glad that we provided a forum for you. I wish that
C-SPAN were here because that message has to get out.
I trust that within the next week or so that we can work
together very diligently to quell as much misinformation as
possible and to work towards a very quick amelioration of the
misinformation so that the tourists can come to our country and
spend lots and lots of money.
This Committee is adjourned.
Mr. Ziglar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m. the Committee was adjourned.]
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