[Senate Hearing 108-536]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-536
SECURING OUR BORDERS UNDER A TEMPORARY GUEST WORKER PROPOSAL
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY AND CITIZENSHIP
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 1, 2004
__________
Serial No. J-108-63
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
JON KYL, Arizona JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
JOHN CORNYN, Texas JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
Bruce Artim, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Bruce A. Cohen, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia, Chairman
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
JON KYL, Arizona PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
JOHN CORNYN, Texas JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
Joe Jacquot, Majority Chief Counsel
James Flug, Democratic Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Chambliss, Hon. Saxby, a U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia.. 1
Cornyn, Hon. John, a U.S. Senator from the State of Texas........ 3
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 2
Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Massachusetts.................................................. 4
prepared statement........................................... 53
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont,
prepared statement............................................. 57
WITNESSES
Bonner, Robert C., Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C... 5
Bucella, Donna A., Director, Terrorist Screening Center, Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 9
Griswold, Daniel, Associate Director for Trade Policy Studies,
Cato Institute, Washington, D.C................................ 33
Stock, Margaret D., Assistant Professor of Law, U.S. Military
Academy, West Point, New York on Behalf of the American
Immigration Lawyers Association................................ 34
Verdery, C. Stewart, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Border and
Transportation Security Policy and Planning, Department of
Homeland Security, Washington, D.C............................. 6
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Bonner, Robert C., Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C.,
prepared statement............................................. 43
Bucella, Donna A., Director, Terrorist Screening Center, Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, Washington,
D.C., prepared statement....................................... 48
Griswold, Daniel, Associate Director for Trade Policy Studies,
Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., prepared statement........... 59
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Vibiana
Andrade, Acting President, Washington, D.C., letter............ 62
Stock, Margaret D., Assistant Professor of Law, U.S. Military
Academy, West Point, New York on Behalf of the American
Immigration Lawyers Association, prepared statement and
attachment..................................................... 65
Verdery, C. Stewart, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Border and
Transportation Security Policy and Planning, Department of
Homeland Security, Washington, D.C., prepared statement........ 96
Wenski, Thomas G., Coadjutor Bishop of Orlando, Chairman, U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, Orlando, Florida, prepared
statement...................................................... 106
SECURING OUR BORDERS UNDER A TEMPORARY GUEST WORKER PROPOSAL
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THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2004
United States Senate,
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and
Citizenship, Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Saxby
Chambliss, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Chambliss, Sessions, Cornyn, Kennedy,
Feinstein and Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF GEORGIA
Chairman Chambliss. This hearing will come to order.
Senator Kennedy is on his way. We will let him make an opening
statement when he gets here.
To everybody, let me say welcome. This is the second in our
series of guest worker hearings to lay the groundwork for
reform. President Bush began this process by announcing his
temporary guest worker principles on January 7 of this year. In
the President's comments, he said the first priority is that
America must control its borders, which includes improving
information-sharing; identifying terrorists, criminals and
immigration violators; and working with the Canadian and
Mexican governments to increase border security. This is what
we are here today to discuss.
Since 9/11, the administration has taken great strides to
strengthen our homeland security. The President has created the
Terrorist Screening Center to improve information-sharing. Over
1,000 new Border Patrol agents have been added to enhance our
border security. The entry-exit system, US VISIT, is up and
running and now collecting information on aliens traveling to
the United States on a visa.
Even with our best efforts, illegal immigration is a huge
problem. Of the 8 to 10 million, or more, illegal aliens in the
United States, it is estimated that 60 percent entered the
United States without inspection, which is a criminal offense.
Such a large number of illegal aliens created a financial drain
due to non-reimbursed medical and educational services, burdens
on our judicial system, and allows criminal acts to go
unchecked.
Since a temporary guest worker proposal will increase the
flow of people into and out of the United States on a visa, we
must be confident in our border security. News articles have
reported that Al-Qaeda is expanding operations in Latin America
and the false document trade is increasing there.
To stop terrorists, I have advocated for a single,
consolidated watchlist that can be accessed by the various
agencies in order to connect the dots. I encourage the
administration's efforts for better intelligence-sharing, but
we are not there yet.
Under a guest worker system, stopping criminals at the
border will remain a mighty challenge. The Department of
Justice Inspector General recently issued a report calling on
the Border Patrol and the FBI to improve their information-
sharing efforts in order to access criminal records of people
caught illegally at the border. This demonstrates how we must
have the necessary policies and procedures in place to get the
right information out of the right people.
If a guest worker system is to provide a legal way for
workers to enter the United States, illegal entry must be
deterred. We know the security concerns and adverse economic
impact that illegal aliens cause. We have also heard too many
tragic stories of human trafficking and desert crossing. The US
VISIT entry-exit system is part of the answer, but any legal
system to come and work in the United States must, in return,
help to strengthen our border security efforts and effectuate
disincentives to illegal entry.
As Congress begins the legislative process toward reform, I
believe national security, as well as U.S. economic interests,
should shape our policies. This starts with controlling our
borders.
I appreciate our witnesses being here today to cover a
fairly broad range of critical issues. On this first panel, we
have Commissioner Robert Bonner, of U.S. Customs and Border
Protection--Mr. Bonner, we are glad to have you back with us--
Director Donna Bucella, of the Terrorist Screening Center, and
Assistant Secretary Stewart Verdery, of the Border and
Transportation Security Directorate at the Department of
Homeland Security. We look forward to your testimony.
At this time, I will call on my colleague, Senator
Feinstein, for any opening statement she might have.
STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I
must say I agree with your opening statement. I thank you for
making it. I have served on this Subcommittee now for 12 years,
even since I have been on the Judiciary Committee, and I agree
with the concept that security must be of paramount concern.
There are five different variations of guest worker
programs before this Committee. I believe we should go slowly.
I do not believe our borders are in the shape they should be,
and I say that from the perspective of somebody who also serves
on the Intelligence Committee.
I want to just put into the record of this Subcommittee
that total non-immigrant admissions to the United States,
according to the Department of Homeland Security, in 2002 were
27.9 million people. Those are non-immigrant admissions to the
United States. Of that number, 655,949 were admitted as
temporary workers and training; in H-1Bs that year, for
specialty occupations, 370,490; for H-2A, for agricultural
workers, 15,628; H-2B, for non-ag workers, 86,987; O-1 visas
for workers with extraordinary ability, 25,008; P-1 for
internationally-recognized athletes or entertainers, 41,453;
for TN visas for professional workers under NAFTA, 73,699; and
for L-1 visas for intra-company transferees, 313,699.
Again, 27.9 million people come in and out in the non-
immigrant portions of our program, and this doesn't account for
the thousands of spouses and children who join these guest
workers.
So I guess the point I want to make is that we already have
a huge guest worker program going on in this Nation in a host
of visa categories. I have real concerns about because 40 to 50
percent of the newcomers in any program come to my State,
California. It is a huge problem in terms of being able to have
the infrastructure that enables you to cope with the new
population. I think it is 15 to 20 percent of our State prison
population is illegal immigrants, at a cost of $682 million. So
this is a huge item, and my view very strongly is let's go slow
right now. Security should be our main concern.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Cornyn.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN CORNYN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
TEXAS
Senator Cornyn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
having this hearing, another hearing, on what I consider to be
one of the most important subjects that Congress could possibly
deal with in certainly a post-9/11 environment. But as Senator
Feinstein has pointed out, we have had serious, longstanding
problems with our immigration system and the status quo is
simply not acceptable.
I think if there is one thing that we can all agree upon,
it is that our current system is broken. In addition to the
problems that Senator Feinstein mentioned, we have between 8
and 10 million people living in this country illegally now,
about 6 million of them part of our workforce. We don't know
for sure who they are, we don't know for sure what they are
doing, and that is simply unacceptable in a post-9/11 world and
inconsistent with our demands for homeland security.
I share with my colleagues and my constituents concerns
about our current failure to enforce our immigration laws. I
have said many times that I think the failure to enforce the
law breeds disrespect for the law generally. We are a country
founded on the rule of law, and the status quo in the area of
immigration obviously cannot continue.
I am convinced that a temporary worker program will help us
enforce our immigration laws by separating those who are in the
country work from those who are coming here to try to harm us.
As a former State attorney general charged with the
responsibility of enforcing Texas law, I know that law
enforcement is about setting priorities and making the best use
of limited resources. In my view, a temporary worker program is
a tool that would allow immigration authorities to focus their
limited resources on those who are here to harm us--the
smugglers, the drug dealers and the terrorists.
I am confident we can, if we put our minds to it and if we
work long and hard enough--and it will be hard work--devise a
temporary worker program that includes tough anti-fraud
measures so we are able to confirm that temporary workers are
who they say they are. It is crucially important that we
prevent and deter fraud in any new temporary worker program
that we devise and I am committed to doing that.
Additionally, I think US VISIT will be an extremely
important tool to help authorities monitor entry and exit of
temporary workers so they can return to their home country when
their period of work expires.
Mr. Chairman, while I understand that we are principally
concerned with enforcement of our laws at this hearing, I think
we always need to keep in mind that we are bound by
international treaties with, for example, Mexico and Canada,
from which this country, I believe, benefits enormously in
terms of trade and the stimulus to our economy.
At the same time we deal with border security, we need to
keep in mind that we need to not impair the free flow of legal
commerce across our borders. So I hope that we will focus not
only on security, but also on the proper balance between
security and our economy.
With that, thank you very much.
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you, Senator Cornyn.
I now turn to the ranking member, who has certainly
maintained a very cooperative spirit in this process, and we
have had a good relationship on this issue.
Senator Kennedy.
STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS
Senator Kennedy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The
hour has moved along. I will put my statement in the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Kennedy appears as a
submission for the record.]
Senator Kennedy. I want to welcome this panel. I am
particularly interested in how we are implementing our border
security legislation that we passed some time ago with strong
bipartisan support. There were certainly provisions in that
legislation that we thought were very important in terms of
ensuring that those agencies that should have information would
get that information, so that we are going to be able to make
sure that we give focus and attention to the problem of
terrorists rather than just the question of immigrants.
So I will look forward to questioning our witnesses. I
thank them all very much and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
having this hearing.
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you.
We will start with you, Mr. Bonner. I will tell all of you
we have your written statements, but we look forward to you
summarizing those statements. We thank you again for being
here.
Mr. Bonner.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT C. BONNER, COMMISSIONER, U.S. CUSTOMS
AND BORDER PROTECTION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Bonner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Kennedy,
Senator Cornyn and Senator Feinstein. I am pleased to have this
opportunity to testify today about our efforts to secure the
borders of the United States and how the temporary worker
program that has been proposed by the President earlier this
year, I believe, will contribute to that effort.
Mr. Chairman, this is actually the first time I have had
the honor to appear before this Subcommittee. I have been
honored by the full Judiciary Committee of being confirmed
three times to various offices, but this is the first time I
have had a chance to appear before this Committee as the
Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and I look
forward to working closely with you and this Committee.
Let me just begin my testimony by just a very brief
statement about U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This is a
new agency that was created as part of the homeland security
reorganization and it was just over 1 year ago, on March 1,
2003, that for the first time in the history of our country our
Nation established a single agency responsible for managing and
securing our borders and all of our ports of entry into the
United States.
I think this was a very important part of the Department of
Homeland Security reorganization. This new agency, Customs and
Border Protection, brings together all of the border inspectors
from the legacy United States Customs Service, the former INS,
the agriculture inspectors at our borders, as well as the
entire U.S. Border Patrol into one new agency, one single
agency for our borders that is squarely focused upon the
priority mission of the Department of Homeland Security, and
that is nothing less than preventing terrorists and terrorist
weapons from entering our country.
I believe that our current immigration system is broken and
I believe that the President's proposal, which I believe is a
bold and courageous proposal by the President, if enacted, will
allow us to gain greater control over our borders. This will
allow the Department of Homeland Security, and more
particularly Customs and Border Protection, to be much more
effective in carrying out its mission of preventing terrorists,
terrorist weapons and other criminals and contraband from
entering the United States and harming the American people.
Some simple data points illustrate, I believe, why this is
true. Last year, the Border Patrol, which is now part of for
the last year, 13 months, Customs and Border Protection, made
931,310 apprehensions of aliens illegally entering or
attempting to enter the United States between our ports of
entry.
The vast majority of these apprehensions took place on our
southwest border with Mexico, and the vast majority of the
individuals arrested presented no terrorist or criminal threat
to this country. Most were economic migrants that were coming
here to work.
Over the past decade or more, the U.S. Government has
responded to this phenomenon by significantly strengthening the
U.S. Border Patrol. Indeed, I can tell this Subcommittee that
since September 11 of 2001, the Border Patrol has increased its
staffing by almost 1,500 Border Patrol agents.
In the years since the Immigration Reform and Control Act
of 1986, and particularly since the mid-1990's, the Border
Patrol has literally tripled its staffing. We have also
significantly increased our technological resources, such as
sensors, cameras and aircraft, as well as strengthened our
infrastructure, such as better fencing, lighting, and so forth,
along some significant segments of the border, including down
near the San Diego and southern California border with Mexico.
But I will tell you that the number of apprehensions,
931,000, should give us all pause. With all of the effort of
the last decade, and even with the very real success that we
have had in better controlling major segments of our border,
including the southwest border, the Border Patrol is still
dealing with a literal flood of people on a daily basis, again
most of whom are attempting to enter this country in order to
work. I am concerned, and I think we all should be concerned
that terrorists or other criminals will seek to enter the
United States essentially by hiding in this flood.
I believe we also need to be concerned about how lucrative
now the alien smuggling business is. Most of the migrants
illegally entering our country across the southwest border
employ alien smuggling organizations. Those alien smuggling
organizations are primarily used by aliens seeking to illegally
enter to work in the United States, but they clearly could also
be used by terrorists seeking to enter our country to do us
harm.
If enacted into law, the President's temporary worker
proposal would, I believe, go along way toward driving a stake
through the heart of this black-market smuggling enterprise and
reduce, and I believe potentially substantially reduce the
flood of illegal migrants that the Border Patrol must sift
through and apprehend in order to protect our borders against
terrorist penetration.
So let me just say I believe the temporary worker proposal
is perhaps in some ways what we need to create a smarter
border, which is something that we have been trying to do at
our ports of entry and elsewhere since 9/11. The temporary
worker program is a natural extension, certainly, of a smarter
border philosophy, one in which we identify those who are
simply coming here for purposes of work, but where we increase
our prospects, which I believe we must do, to interdict and be
able to apprehend terrorists or criminals or others that are
coming into our country to do us harm.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify, Mr. Chairman, and
I will be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bonner appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you.
Mr. Verdery.
STATEMENT OF HON. C. STEWART VERDERY, JR., ASSISTANT SECRETARY
FOR BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY POLICY AND PLANNING,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Verdery. Chairman Chambliss, Ranking Member Kennedy and
members of the Subcommittee, it is a privilege to be here today
on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security to give you
our perspective on how the temporary worker program will
enhance border security.
I won't repeat Commissioner Bonner's remarks, but the
Border and Transportation Security Directorate, where I run the
policy office, oversees the activities of customs and border
protection, as well as our Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Bureau and the TSA. So we try to bring a macro perspective to
border and transportation security issues. I know that my boss,
Under Secretary Hutchinson, was here at your prior hearing to
testify on these same issues.
It is especially an honor for me, having been a counsel for
a Senator Hatch on this Committee several years ago, to return
today to talk about the administration's working relationship
with the Congress, and with this Committee in particular, on
this most important issue.
The written testimony submitted for this hearing by
Commissioner Bonner and I, and for the prior hearing by Under
Secretary Hutchinson and Director Aguirre, describe in great
detail the principles which the President has espoused as
crucial elements of a temporary worker program. Let me speak
briefly to just some of the key points related to border
security here today.
As was mentioned, the first principle in the President's
proposal is protecting the homeland by controlling our borders.
When you talk about land borders, there are ports of entry in
the areas between the ports. Commissioner Bonner has discussed
the Border Patrol, obviously a key component of our border
security. I would like to discuss in a little bit of detail the
US VISIT program.
As US VISIT implements a biometric entry-exit system at our
land ports of entry over the next 2 years, border security as
we know it will significantly change. We have never had a
reliable exit system, and as a result have never known when or
how many foreign visitors have overstayed the terms of their
visa or have entered the country illegally. But, soon, we will.
Through the deployment of advanced technology in travel
documents and at our ports of entry, we will be developing this
capability to enforce our immigration and visa laws, and thus
provide the integrity that Congress and the American people
should rightly insist be a part of a new worker program.
US VISIT has proved extremely effective at air and seaports
in finding the needles, the criminals or those with immigration
violations, in the haystack of travelers. Not quite 3 months
old, US VISIT has successfully and efficiently recorded the
entry of over 2.5 million passengers and the exit of over 8,000
travelers without causing delays at ports of entry or hindering
trade.
The program to date has resulted in 231 watchlist hits,
including serious criminals, because of the biometric
collection from non-immigrant visa-holders. Aliens who have
repeatedly entered the U.S. with aliases or stolen or altered
travel documents are now being detected solely by the biometric
component of the system.
The administration's enhanced information-sharing efforts,
including those utilized at the Terrorist Screening Center and
the National Targeting Center, and between our Department and
the Department of State, are essential to providing the
inspectors at our ports and in the field with the information
that they require.
The capability of US VISIT will provide a key role in
encouraging potential workers to utilize the President's
temporary worker program because they will know what the
system's capabilities are. On one hand, we will know whether
aliens are complying with the terms of the worker program or
have otherwise violated our immigration laws as they enter and
exit through ports of entry.
On the other hand, these workers will be able to easily
travel home to see family or friends and generally maintain the
ties that will make their eventual return home more attractive.
This eventual return home is the second immigration enforcement
principle that the President set out in his proposal.
Participants in the program would be required to return to
their home country after their period of work has concluded. As
proposed by the President, the legal status granted by this
program would last 3 years, and while it would be renewable, it
would not be permanent. This proposal does not provide an
automatic path to citizenship. Those who have broken the law
and remain illegally in our country should not receive an
unfair advantage over those who have followed the law.
We do recognize that some temporary workers will want to
pursue citizenship, and they will be able to apply for green
card status through the existing process behind those already
in line. We also look forward to working with Congress on the
numbers of those green cards.
The third immigration enforcement principle in the
President's proposal is workplace enforcement of our
immigration laws. The fiscal year 2005 budget requests an
increase of $23 million for this, more than doubling our funds.
This illustrates the President's commitment to serious
immigration enforcement and the rule of law as part of our
temporary worker program.
Temporary workers will be able to establish identities by
obtaining legal documents under the program. It is critically
important, as Senator Cornyn mentioned, to create a system that
prevents the fraud that was so prevalent under the 1986 Act. It
is also important that these documents be as compatible as
possible with the US VISIT system, and we are working on those
issues.
I believe that passing a temporary worker program that
works to benefit the American economy, while bringing integrity
to our immigration system, is a goal consistent with our
homeland security responsibilities. I recognize that this
issue, like many immigration issues, is extremely complicated,
and that members of Congress have a variety of viewpoints on
the President's proposal and many proposals of their own.
However, the complexity of this issue only means that we
should continue our efforts, working together to build on those
principles and make the temporary worker program a reality. The
administration and our department stand ready to make the
effort necessary to move forward in achieving this important
goal.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Verdery appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you very much.
Ms. Bucella.
STATEMENT OF DONNA A. BUCELLA, DIRECTOR, TERRORIST SCREENING
CENTER, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Bucella. Good afternoon, Chairman Chambliss, members of
the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the
missions and objectives of the new Terrorist Screening Center.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, issued on
September 16, 2003, ordered the creation of the Terrorist
Screening Center, directing its operations to begin on December
1, and we met that goal. The Terrorist Screening Center was
created to ensure that Government investigators, screeners,
Federal agents and State and local law enforcement officers
have ready access to the information and expertise they need to
respond quickly when a known or suspected terrorist is
encountered here in the United States, at our borders or
overseas.
Today, I will tell you about our daily operations as they
relate to the United States Customs and Border Protection's
National Targeting Center and our role in preventing terrorists
and suspected terrorists from crossing our borders. I will
provide as much information as I can in this open forum.
However, I would be happy to provide additional, classified
details in a closed setting at your request.
We are a multi-agency center, including participants from
the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, State and
Treasury. Our goal is to consolidate the Government's approach
to terrorist screening and provide for the appropriate and
lawful use of terrorist information in screening processes.
Being a diverse center, manned by personnel from both law
enforcement and homeland security entities, we communicate and
coordinate terrorist screening efforts across the full spectrum
of Federal, State and local government agencies. Since December
1, we have been providing key resources for screeners and law
enforcement personnel.
These include a single coordination point for terrorist
screening data; a consolidated 24/7 call center for encounter
identification assistance; access to a coordinated law
enforcement response; a full process for tracking encounters;
providing feedback to the appropriate entities; and a process
to address misidentification issues.
There are three fundamental types of inquiries: within the
United States, at our ports of entry and outside our borders.
Interior inquiries will normally be made by local law
enforcement. Border inquiries are made by United States Customs
and Border Protection, or in some instances Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents. Exterior inquiries are conducted by
the State Department. Today, I am just going to highlight the
border inquiries.
We receive a high volume of calls that originate with CBP
inspectors stationed at our Nation's borders. In a typical
case, a person attempts to enter into the United States. A CBP
inspector queries the name electronically through their
Interagency Border Inspection System, IBIS, and receives a
response within seconds indicating that that person may be a
suspected terrorist or an associate of terrorists.
The CBP inspector contacts the National Targeting Center,
where the record will be analyzed, then passed over to our
center. We examine the record to determine whether the
individual encountered is identical to the person in our
database. The TSC then appropriately passes any derogatory
information to the NTC and the CBP makes a determination as to
whether the individual will be allowed to enter into the United
States.
Simultaneously, we contact our operational component at the
FBI Counterterrorism Watch, CT Watch. CT Watch provides for the
local joint terrorism task force response, which often includes
an ICE agent to go to the border. This consolidation between
TSC, CBP and ICE has already achieved results. One instance
involves a foreign national traveling to the United States. He
was inspected by CBP and found to have dangerous substances in
his luggage. He was arrested and later removed from the United
States and returned to his country of origin. However, less
than a month later, that same individual applied for a new
visa, and because of his previous encounter with my center, CBP
and ICE, his application was denied.
Our cooperation with CBP and ICE has also facilitated the
sharing of information related to ongoing investigations. In
one case, for example, the TSC-CBP connection provided the FBI
with information about someone traveling with a suspected
terrorist and led to the initiation of an investigation of the
previously unsuspected associate.
We are a multi-agency organization that is contributing to
nationwide efforts to keep terrorists out of the United States
and locate those who may already be in our country. We work
closely with CBP inspectors, ICE agents and the National
Targeting Center.
We look forward to working with the Committee in its
efforts to secure our Nation's borders. For this unclassified
hearing, I have only give you a few of our successes. We have
screened over 2,000 calls in the last 4 months since our
inception, and assisted in positively identifying a number of
known or suspected terrorists encountered during Government
screening processes. I appreciate the Committee's interest in
our activities and I will be happy to answer any questions you
may have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bucella appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Chambliss. Thanks very much to each of you.
Mr. Verdery, the day after the President announced his
seven principles on immigration reform, the byline in the New
York Times underneath the headline said that the President has
proposed a plan that includes amnesty.
Now, would you tell me what your understanding is of the
President's principles as it relates to any form of amnesty for
illegal aliens?
Mr. Verdery. Well, thank you for the question. The proposal
is not amnesty. As I understand amnesty, that means a
forgiveness that would lead to citizenship. As I mentioned in
my opening remarks, this proposal requires people to seek
citizenship through existing processes. There is no credited
time that would lead to citizenship, and I think that is the
distinction that the President has made in presenting these
principles.
Chairman Chambliss. You concur with your boss, then. I just
want you to know that.
Mr. Verdery. I do.
Chairman Chambliss. Ms. Bucella, I am curious about this
one example that you gave us. I want to know how quickly you
had a turnaround time in determining who this individual was
that sought reentry into the United States after he had been
returned to his country.
Ms. Bucella. I will have to get back to you with the exact
time, but it was probably within less than 20 minutes.
Chairman Chambliss. Okay, so it is a pretty immediate time.
What if that individual uses another name?
Ms. Bucella. Well, if he uses another name that we have
been able to previously identify as an alias that they have
used, then we would pick him up. But if not, if he had false
identification that had never been used before, we might not
have gotten him.
Chairman Chambliss. What are we doing in that respect to
try to make sure that an individual who says he is John Doe is,
in fact, John Doe?
Ms. Bucella. At the Terrorist Screening Center, we have a
terrorist database. Our database has the names and identifiers
of the individuals which have been previously identified by
other Government agencies. In our database at the Terrorist
Screening Center, we just have the names, the date of birth,
the passport number and country of origin. But we also have
accessibility to the classified databases or case management
files of many government agencies within the United States.
Each of our members at the call center are able to take a
look at those databases. So, for example, we do a little bit
more than just name-match. What we do is we elicit from the
person at the NTC in communications, please give us some
descriptors, not just the name, but how tall is the individual,
you know, eye color, hair color.
Those are the types of information that, even if they are
classified, we are able to take a look in our classified case
management systems and we are able to assist in the identities
match with the individual that is currently being encountered
at the border. So it is not just a name. We need to have a body
in front of the CBP inspector or the ICE agent.
Mr. Verdery. Senator, if I could just jump in on this, it
is one of the beauties of the VISIT system that CBP is
operating that we are finding people. They may claim to be one
person, but the fingerprint is what is catching them. We had
one case of identical twins. The pictures looked exactly the
same, the story was the same. The fingerprints were not the
same. This person had traveled repeatedly back and forth
unimpeded, and the fingerprint is what alerted the inspector
and they were returned.
Chairman Chambliss. You anticipated my next question to
you. In addition to fingerprints, do we have any other
biometric devices that are either in place or that we are
contemplating using?
Mr. Verdery. Well, the system is basically fingerprint-
based at this time. We are also taking photographs at the ports
of entry that enable the inspector to compare the photograph to
the photograph that is taken at the time of visa issuance for
those people who have visas. So there is a sense of that. We
are working on the facial recognition technology in terms of
the visa waiver countries and we can get into that issue a
little bit. But, essentially, US VISIT now is a fingerprint-
based system.
Chairman Chambliss. Commissioner Bonner, on this same line
I am sure you are familiar with the Department of Justice
Inspector General's report criticizing the information-sharing
between the Border Patrol's IDENT system and the FBI IAFIS
database. The report demonstrates that the Border Patrol cannot
reliably obtain a hit when they search for possible criminal
offenders who have been detained at the border.
Most responses from the agency seem to focus on the lack of
technology to integrate the two different systems, one based on
two fingerprints and one based on ten fingerprints. However,
the IG report specifically calls for a memorandum of
understanding between the agencies to establish policies and
procedures for sharing information, regardless of the current
systems.
Do you agree with the IG's recommendations, and if so, what
steps are you taking and what are the time lines for
implementation?
Mr. Bonner. Well, first of all, I think that that
recommendation actually probably does not fully understand
where we are at in terms of the integration of the IDENT and
the IAFIS systems for purposes of the Border Patrol because,
number one, we have an integrated system that can be used by
the Border Patrol to essentially query both the IDENT system,
which has a record of people that have been illegally deported
or denied entry, and so forth, as well as the IAFIS system,
which is the FBI's huge fingerprint database of people with
criminal records.
So we have an integrated system. The question is how do we
get it out to all of the Border Patrol stations. Right now, we
have this integrated IDENT-IAFIS system at 31 of the Border
Patrol stations; it is about 90 units. We need to expand it and
get it out to all 151 Border Patrol processing stations along
our border.
We have a plan for doing that. We have identified funding
for doing that. I expect some of that funding, by the way,
coming from the US VISIT program, about $1.8 million of it, and
about $400,000 that we will fund out of our own budget,
unfunded money. But we will have the integrated system at all
of the Border Patrol processing stations within about 7 or 8
months.
By the way, this is a tribute to the Department of Homeland
Security in the fact that this is something that has been
talked about for years and years and years when the INS
existed. We are doing it and we are getting it done. That will
give the Border Patrol, then, the capability when we have it at
all of these stations in 7 or 8 months to be able to run people
both against the IDENT system and the IAFIS system, and to
better identify illegal aliens that have criminal records and
ought to be treated as aggravated criminals and prosecuted
through our system.
Chairman Chambliss. Mr. Verdery, in Secretary Hutchinson's
February 12 testimony before the Subcommittee he stated, and I
quote, ``The President's plan provides a disincentive to
emigrate illegally to the United States when the potential
temporary worker aliens know in advance that the legal status
granted under this type of program is the beginning or a path
to return home and not a path to permanent residency or
citizenship,'' close quote. That is an important point because
it really goes to the question of what does the foreign worker
really want.
In your deliberations on a guest worker plan, what are the
primary incentives for a worker to use the legal system?
Mr. Verdery. Well, for individuals who are here currently,
there are several. Obviously, it would take away the threat of
being deported, and we understand that if you are an individual
working today, it is a nerve-racking experience knowing that at
any minute you might fall into the hands of law enforcement.
That puts a tremendous type of stress on family relationships
and on just day-to-day living. So that is obviously the primary
thing.
But in addition to that, the principles outlined would
allow portability of retirement benefits. They would allow the
travel that I mentioned in my opening statement. As we know,
with the increased number of Border Patrol agents and the
heightened security, it is harder for people to sneak back and
forth, and that is cutting off the ties that would otherwise
lead people to be able to return home. If they can come back
and forth through our ports of entry, subject to US VISIT or
other processing, that travel is so important.
But as you mentioned, the key point is signing up for this
program is a first step to an eventual return home. The
principles of that are things we need to work out, but that is
a very key point that Under Secretary Hutchinson made, as well
you made in your comments, that it is a first step to a return
home.
Chairman Chambliss. Ms. Bucella, in news reports Homeland
Security officials have questioned the utility of the Terrorist
Screening Center, questioning the possible duplicity of
resources.
What is the distinct mission of the Terrorist Screening
Center in comparison to TTIC and with any intelligence
functions at the Department of Homeland Security?
Ms. Bucella. Senator, the Terrorist Screening Center is
there to consolidate the Government's approach to watchlisting.
We do not at the Terrorist Screening Center maintain the
underlying derogatory information on known or suspected
terrorists. That stays with each of the individual agencies.
The TTIC is one of the two feeds of information into the
Terrorist Screening Center. The TTIC, the Terrorist Threat
Integration Center, is run by the CIA. All known terrorist
information on international terrorists comes through the TTIC.
So whether it is the intelligence community or the law
enforcement community, if there is information about known or
suspected international terrorists, the feed of information
comes from the TTIC to us. The FBI maintains all of the
information on known or suspected domestic terrorists. It is at
our center where the names become merged, the domestic
terrorist names and the international terrorist names. So it is
two different feeds of information.
More importantly, I have seen firsthand at my center--we
have about 87 people that work there now. We have right now
agents from the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security
Administration, the State Department, the Coast Guard and the
Office of Foreign Asset Control, and we are just beginning.
This is a wonderful place for true partnership, where each
agency brings in their expertise based on whatever mission they
have been doing to assist us in helping to identify known or
suspected terrorists.
Chairman Chambliss. What is the operational status of that
system today?
Ms. Bucella. Early on when I started in October, we had to
go from concept to operation by December 1. With the help of
Homeland Security and setting up a number of FBI agents being
brought in from around the country, we were physically
operational by December 1.
I thought at the time that we would be able to have a
database just with the names of known and suspected terrorists
and the other four identities--the name, the date of birth, the
passport number and the country of origin. I thought we would
be able to have that set up by this summer. Fortunately, with
the assistance of my staff, I was able to move that date up to
March 12. So we now currently have a consolidated database of
known and suspected terrorists.
What we did was we went to a number of different agencies
to figure out not only from their watchlists, but also to
figure out from their case management systems who they had that
were identified by the agencies as known or suspected
terrorists.
Obviously, the State Department had one of the largest
consolidated lists through TIPOFF. But there were some other
lists through the State Department--the Consular Lookout and
Support System. The Department of Homeland Security had the
IBIS system, also the TECS system. TSA had their no-fly
selectee list. The FBI had the violent gang and terrorist
organization file. Interpol had their terrorist watchlist. The
Air Force had their top ten fugitives list. The Marshals
Service had warrant information.
So what we did was we went to these different agencies and
we went with information that we needed to gather, just the
terrorist information. That is what our charter tells us. We
are only there to assist in the positive identity match or
assistance in terrorism. So we had to go to the FBI and have
the FBI not include in our database those individuals that were
involved in gangs. Rather, we just wanted terrorists.
We have now consolidated the CLASS system, the TIPOFF, as
far as the names and identities, and the IBIS, no-fly selectee,
NAILS, the U.S. Marshals Service's warrant information if it
related to terrorists only, and the violent gang and terrorist
organization file as it relates to terrorists only. The
Interpol terrorist watchlist is something that is still ongoing
because there are some governments that define a terrorist as
someone who committed a crime. It might not rise to the level
of the U.S. Government's definition. So we are making sure that
those names on our list are truly known or suspected
terrorists.
This is not over yet. I mean, this process is very, very
complex. It is trying to understand what government agencies
within the United States are actually doing and what
information they have. It might not be in a watchlist version.
It may actually just be a part of their case management system
where they have identified individuals who are of suspicion to
that agency.
So this is a tremendous process where, for the very first
time, both the intel community and law enforcement community
are joining, and also talking to government agencies that are
not involved in law enforcement to figure out what processes or
procedures or entitlements they give to people, rights or
entitlements, that if they gave that right or entitlement to a
terrorist here in the United States it would cause them some
very serious concerns. So it is a huge education process and a
huge outreach process that we have only just begun.
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you.
Senator Kennedy. Thank you. I thank the panel again. What
you have told is impressive certainly with regard to
intelligence-gathering and coordination, because that was
obviously one of the real areas that was a failure in the whole
9/11 situation, the exchange of information to the Central
Intelligence Agency and to the immigration agencies.
In the Border Security Act, we also required the
integration of all the immigration data systems into an
interoperable network. Can you give me some idea about where
that is now?
In immigration, for example, you have probably six or eight
different computers and files in terms of different categories
dealing with immigration issues. One of the things that we
wanted to try and do is to make sure that you were going to
have interoperable information and files on that, as well,
which is enormously important in dealing with law enforcement
and also in terms of keeping track of people, and with regard
to ensuring that people that are innocent are going to be
innocent and those who are violating the immigration laws will
be able to be considered. We had a requirement in this area.
We also had the requirement for the establishment of a
commission in the legislation. What I will do is submit this
and you can go back and take a look at it and respond, if you
would rather do that in writing.
Mr. Bonner. I would appreciate having a chance to do that.
Senator Kennedy. Good, all right.
Mr. Bonner. I will just say preliminarily that the former
INS, which doesn't exist anymore, had more systems than you
could shake a stick at.
Senator Kennedy. That is right.
Mr. Bonner. It had NAILS and IDENT and everything else. The
one I can speak to is we have integrated IDENT and IAFIS. I
have just spoken to that. The IBIS system was an integrated
system that was run by U.S. Customs, and now Customs and Border
Protection, for the lookout list for both terrorist and other
purposes.
Obviously, I should say, Senator, as Ms. Bucella has
testified to, we now are integrating at least for terrorist
purposes, for the very important purpose of terrorists or
suspected terrorists, a master watchlist for the entire
Government.
But let me get to you on it because there are so many
systems and I will get something back to you in short order.
Mr. Verdery. Senator, if I can just add on that, that was
part of the deployment package for US VISIT, is having access
to all those databases at the port of entry. That is the
deployment at the port of entry. The VISIT system is the
mechanism to make that happen. As you know, it is at airports
and seaports today. At land ports, it will be deployed at the
end of this year and then the following year.
Senator Kennedy. As you pointed out, Homeland Security
divided the immigration functions into three different bureaus
of the new department. In February of this year, my office was
told that no formal procedures were yet in place to coordinate
immigration policy among the three bureaus.
Is that still the case? Are decisions being made in each of
these agencies? How are they being coordinated and how are we
developing uniformity in terms of the immigration issues?
Mr. Bonner. Let me ask Mr. Verdery to respond to that and
then I might add to it.
Mr. Verdery. We actually have set up a mechanism to
coordinate policy development between the BTS Directorate,
which encompasses Customs and Border Protection and Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, with Citizenship and Immigration
Services. CIS is the acronym, the alphabet soup.
We have a mechanism in place. It is basically a tri-level
system of decisionmaking and policy development at staff level,
at mid-level, and then at a level with Under Secretary
Hutchinson and Director Aguirre to tee up issues that need to
be resolved, because there are quite a number of issues where
we both have equities in play--asylum, immigration caps,
refugee issues, US VISIT issues. On almost anything you can
think of, we do have to coordinate.
Of course, before anything becomes an official departmental
policy, it goes back up through the formal departmental
clearance process. I think we have come up with pretty good
working relationships at the various levels to make sure that
we are on the same page.
Senator Kennedy. Well, I would be interested--and I will
include this in the questions--about how that structure is set
up and how it applies locally, because having all of these
local entry levels and getting a coordinated policy so that
they are doing the same thing in different parts of the country
and have similar kinds of rules is important. I would be
interested in how it coordinates through those agencies and
then how it works in terms of the local communities so we get
the same kind of treatment on this.
Let me just ask you about the whole area of biometrics.
This was quite an issue at the time we were looking at the
legislation. I understand that the U.S. and other countries
will not be able to meet the October 2004 biometric deadline.
Can you explain why the deadline can't be met and what
efforts are being made to reach the deadline, and can you
provide the Committee with any realistic alternative?
Mr. Verdery. Yes, sir. As I am sure you have heard, the
administration has formally gone to the Congress asking for a
2-year extension of the October 26 deadline that will require
that travelers from visa waiver countries with passports issued
after that date would have to have a visa or a biometric
passport, and also that our department deploy the readers to
read those passports.
We have worked very closely with the 27 visa waiver
countries and the overwhelming majority of them, including all
of the big ones--the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany--have told
us they are not going to be able to meet that deadline. It is
not their fault. The standards that were set for the passport
by ICAO, the international standard-setting body, were only set
in May and they are not even really finalized, and so they are
not on schedule to meet this deadline.
We have come to the Congress asking for relief because if
we are required to issue visas, it is going to be very
difficult for us to have the resources overseas to issue the
visas. Travel will be deterred and we are looking at an
overwhelming number of visas that cannot be issued. Moreover,
then it doesn't make any sense for us to be paying money to
deploy readers that have nothing to read.
So we have gone to Congress and asked for this extension,
and we believe that within 2 years those countries will be able
to meet the deadline. The technology will be more mature. It
will make sense to have it in place at that time. So that is
where stand on that.
Again, you asked about the U.S. meeting the deadline. It
does not technically apply to us, but we are going through the
same passport development process as the visa waiver countries
and we are on a similar time frame due to similar reasons.
Senator Kennedy. Let me ask about risk management. Many of
the security experts conclude that the inspection process must
be exercised in risk management. We have 500 million people
moving back and forth across the border and 100 million
vehicles moving across the ports of entry each year. Even if we
had all the resources and time required to conduct the
inspections, it would effectively bring the economy to a halt.
So we have developed systems that assess and look at risks, and
we try and identify and quickly process low-risk travelers so
we can concentrate on the higher-risk targets.
Now, can you describe what kinds of systems exist in DHS
that you have already put in place with regard to risk
management policy?
Mr. Bonner. We, of course, have been pioneering an
approach, Senator Kennedy, starting with customs, in terms of
risk management for all cargo that is coming into the United
States on containers or otherwise. We are also using risk
management principles with respect to the, as you say, huge
number of people that travel into the United States annually.
It is about 70 million, for example, that arrive on
international commercial aircraft annually.
First of all, you have to have information about goods or
people before they arrive at our borders, and we have done
that. Congress has enacted some legislation back in November in
2001 that gave Customs and Border Protection advance passenger
information on everybody that is flying into the United States.
So we have it ahead of time, hours before people arrive at our
ports of entry--JFK, LAX and the like. Similarly, in the cargo
area we have done this.
So, number one, we get advance information, get it
electronically, and then use risk management criteria as to
what or who to look at, whether you are going to ask a few more
questions or whether you are going to, in the case of cargo,
set it aside and do some sort of an inspection.
So we use targeting systems that have been developed, the
automated targeting system and, through the Customs and Border
Protection National Targeting Center, have developed criteria
to take a look at both goods, primarily, but also an attempt to
risk-manage for people who are entering the United States. So
that has been in place.
We are trying to do that on a number of bases, and I don't
want to go into a lot of detail in an opening hearing, but one
is using not just tactical intelligence, but strategic
intelligence about who and what the threat is to the United
States in terms of that kind of a risk management system, and
then using also anomaly analysis based upon the large amount of
information that we have about goods and cargo and trade and
the way people travel to try to exercise our authority in terms
of making decisions as to what to look at and what to
scrutinize.
So, essentially, that is a broad overview of essentially an
approach we have been attempting to take to more meaningfully
use our limited resources to identify particularly someone who
might pose a terrorist threat to the United States.
Senator Kennedy. Well, I think this is enormously important
and obviously I am interested in it. We saw the criteria, for
example, you had prior to the time of the terrorists. People
had Social Security return addresses that weren't obvious,
although some of these terrorists had phone numbers where they
could call. So we set up these criteria in terms of this and,
of course, all of them were able to circumvent it because we
had the wrong criteria. So it constantly has to be reviewed and
has to be upgraded, and we are in an entirely different
situation. I am interested in this and we might pursue it at a
later time.
Just finally, Mr. Chairman, we find that many of the
experienced people that have been involved in immigration are
leaving the service in detectable numbers now and going into
these other agencies. I guess the pay and other kinds of
benefits are different and so there are a lot of people who
have been experienced agents, border personnel and others, who
are leaving.
I don't know whether you are aware of that, concerned about
it, or have thought about it at all, or have noticed much of a
problem or have any ideas about how to deal with it. I don't
know if there is anything you need from us to try and help.
Mr. Bonner. Well, certainly, it would be a matter of
concern, but let me just say with the Border Patrol, for
example, where you were seeing under the INS literally
attrition rates of 18 to 20 percent just 2 years ago, the
attrition rate right now as part of Customs and Border
Protection--I would like to think it is a lot of good
management on my part, but for whatever reason the attrition
rate at the Border Patrol is going to annualize out at about
5.5 percent this year. So that is a tremendous improvement over
the last 2 years.
Similarly, with respect to the inspector workforce, Senator
Kennedy--and I am talking about legacy customs inspectors,
legacy immigration inspectors--the attrition rate there is
running right now, this year, at about 5.4 percent, which is
pretty good. When these immigration inspectors were with the
INS, it was running last year and the year before we began this
merger at about 8 percent.
So it is an improvement, but obviously I am not satisfied
with those numbers because we are always hurt when we lose
experienced and good people, but the trend rate right now is
pretty good with respect to attrition.
Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chambliss. Senator Cornyn.
Senator Cornyn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to ask a few questions about US VISIT and how
it interacts with the various databases that are used either
through the Terrorist Screening Center or NCIC and otherwise.
If I understood your testimony, Mr. Verdery, you indicated
that one of the principal purposes of US VISIT is to track
people when they come into the country and when they leave the
country, and then permit the immigration officials and the DHS
officials to then match those against various lists.
Is that correct?
Mr. Verdery. Well, I wouldn't want to oversell the exit
part of it just yet. As you know, that is going to be deployed
over the next couple of years. I can't get into that if you
want, but I wouldn't want to oversell what we have in place
today on exit. It is at two pilots, one airport and one
seaport, and we will be deploying it later. But on the entry
side, sure, we want to check against the watchlists and the
criminal databases as people come in.
Senator Cornyn. Well, I want to ask you a little bit more
about that, but perhaps, Ms. Bucella, let me ask you this. As I
understand it, the number of names on the watchlist that your
center employs is relatively modest, isn't it, compared to the
number of people, for example, in the NCIC database?
The purpose of your organization is not necessarily to
check people who are coming into the country with criminal
backgrounds and otherwise, but mainly to focus on suspected
terrorists. Is that correct?
Ms. Bucella. Yes. We are purely terrorism only, and
suspected terrorists. If the individual has a name and that
name is checked through the NTC and they do have the prints
from US VISIT, we are able still--with the identification of
the name, if that name is in our database, we are still able to
assist even with the prints. But, currently, at our database,
while we are consolidated, we are not fully automated yet. That
will be done by the end of this calendar year.
Senator Cornyn. I raise that issue because I want to make
sure that we understand the magnitude of the challenge ahead of
you, and indeed ahead of us, and I think it is even bigger than
perhaps those of us up here might imagine. Certainly, that is
the case for me.
What we are talking about, from the last testimony we had
before this Committee, is we have between 300,000 and 400,000
people under final orders of deportation that have melted into
the landscape of this country. We simply don't know where they
are. We have about 80,000 people who are criminal absconders,
who have been convicted of a crime, and we don't know where
they are.
So I just want to make clear just so I understand and your
testimony is clear, Ms. Bucella, that the scope of your center
is not to try to identify either of those groups. Is that
right?
Ms. Bucella. Yes, sir, terrorists only.
Senator Cornyn. Mr. Verdery, ultimately is it the goal of
the US VISIT program to be able to do that, to identify those
people so that they can be deported or denied reentry into the
United States or reported to the appropriate law enforcement
authorities?
Mr. Verdery. Yes, of course. The integration of the
immigration databases will allow an inspector to know if
somebody has been deported or is under a deportation order. Of
course, as you mentioned, the problem we have now is that there
are a large number of people who are in the country who are not
trying to leave; they are here. And we obviously have
initiatives in place to try to reduce that number, with a
priority toward the criminal aliens, as you mentioned, who are
under deportation orders.
But, yes, the integration of the databases will make it
possible so that if somebody were to leave, having had a
deportation order and then tried to come back in, we will know
about it and they won't be admitted entry. It happens today.
Mr. Bonner. Let me just sort of parse this out a little
bit. If you are coming internationally into the United States,
we have advance passenger information, the passport number, the
name, the biographic and that sort of thing. Every one of those
people are run through NCIC. We have already arrested about
5,000 people coming in through our ports of entry, our
airports, because they are wanted in the United States. So they
are run through NCIC based upon name and biographic. There is a
hit; we know it before they arrive.
Now, what US VISIT does is it gives us a biometric
capability. It gives us two things. One, it tells us if the
person that was issued the visa at the State Department is, in
fact, the person who is presenting himself to our inspectors at
the ports of entry, because we have matched them biometrically.
Then, secondly, there is a database, and this is the IDENT
database, basically, that those two inkless prints are scanned
through. When somebody presents themselves at JFK or LAX or
Atlanta or wherever it is, those are run against that database,
and that database does have anybody who has entered illegally
and subject to a deportation order because INS did take those
two prints.
I don't want to say it has everything in the world in it,
but it also does have the wants and warrants that the U.S.
Marshal uses in terms of people that are criminally wanted.
Senator Cornyn. Let me ask you a little bit about what you
just said because my time is limited. You make a good point
that where US VISIT has already been implemented at airports,
there is a possibility to cross-check the various databases,
assuming the name is on the database, with the entry of that
person into the country.
I guess what I was thinking about primarily is places where
US VISIT has not yet been implemented, but is mandated for the
end of this year, for example, at 50 of the busiest land-based
ports in America, a number of which happen to be in my State on
the 1,200-mile border between Texas and Mexico.
Is it fair to say just sort of in summary that we still
have a lot of work to do to get all these names on the
databases so that then the biometric entry and exit program can
identify those people as they are coming in and going out?
Mr. Bonner. A lot of work, yes.
Mr. Verdery. And a lot of deployment of equipment, of
course, too.
Senator Cornyn. Well, let me just make a little bit of a
plug here, and I know, as I mentioned in my opening statement,
that we are principally concerned about the security of our
Nation. That is job number one, no doubt about it. But at the
same time, we have got to recognize that we have important
economic relationships with other countries.
For example, across all of the major ports in my State of
Texas--Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo and El Paso--a 1-percent
decline in border crossings costs that region $76 million in
sales and about 1,500 jobs, and a decrease in gross State
product of $1.2 billion. That is a 1-percent decrease in border
crossings.
I hear a lot, and I suspect Senator Feinstein and other
border State Senators hear from their constituents their
concern that while we improve our security efforts, which is a
goal they share, that we not ignore the economic impact and
that somehow we find a way to marry these two objectives
together to keep a strong economy in these areas and to protect
our Nation against terrorism and those who want to do us harm.
I worry a little bit because, of course, the next deadline
for implementation of the US VISIT program is December of this
year. Can you tell me--perhaps, Mr. Verdery, we will start with
you--how you are going to do that by December 31?
Mr. Verdery. It is going to be a lot of work, but we have a
very good team in place to do it and we have set the structures
in place that make it manageable. One of those, as you know, is
our decision as an initial matter to exempt border crossing
cardholders from processing in US VISIT on a routine basis, and
that is the overwhelming bulk of repeat travelers for--
Senator Cornyn. I don't want to interrupt you, but my
understanding is you don't have a contractor in place yet.
Mr. Verdery. No. The RFP is on the street. There are
bidders in place and the award is due, I believe, in about
three weeks or four.
Senator Cornyn. And that contractor is going to get it done
by the deadline of December 31?
Mr. Verdery. Well, working with us. It is an umbrella
contract and they will be taking direction from Under Secretary
Hutchinson and the program office and CBP for specific ports.
They will be able to get in place the infrastructure, the RF
technology we need, and also the enhanced processing in
secondary. We will have a US VISIT capability in secondary for
visa-holders or for others such as BCC-holders who are referred
to secondary for some reason.
Senator Cornyn. Please understand I am not being critical,
but I do think it is important for us to understand the
magnitude of what is in front of us here so we can provide you
the resources that you need in order to be successful. But we
also need to be realistic about this and make sure it is an
approach that takes into account the entire context.
One thing I have learned in Washington, D.C., is people
don't necessarily, just because they haven't been there,
understand what life is like along our border between Mexico
and the United States, where people cross back and forth on a
daily basis; they have family members on both sides of the
border. And there is an enormous amount of economic benefit on
both sides of the border from being able to go back and forth
relatively easily, and we are talking about legal travel back
and forth, not terrorists. So I just want to make sure we
understand the challenge that lies ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you.
Senator Feinstein.
Senator Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Cornyn is much newer to the Senate than I am, and
he was very nice, Mr. Bonner. I am not sure I am going to be as
nice on the integration of the IDENT and the IAFIS system. Let
me quote from the Inspector General report of March, this past
month. ``The integration of the IDENT and IAFIS automatic
fingerprint systems continues to proceed slowly. Since our last
report, the integration project has fallen another year behind
schedule and will be delayed further because of JMD's lack of
planning for the INS' transfer to the Department of Homeland
Security. The slow progress is even more troublesome because
the interim enhancements to IDENT resulted in the positive
identification of approximately 4,820 apprehended individual
aliens with those of suspects wanted for criminal offenses.''
It goes on to say that this is a significant risk to public
safety and national security, and I agree a hundred percent. If
I could ever put any heat on you, I would put heat on you to
get this program done. The IG doesn't even think it will be
operational by 2007, and this I find unacceptable. I mean, we
have been at this thing year after year after year.
Mr. Bonner, I greatly respect you. Show some real oomph.
Mr. Bonner. Senator Feinstein, let me say I have been at it
in terms of this immigration issue because of the
reorganization for 13 months. But I will say this, and I will
correct this if I am wrong, but if the IG is saying it is
taking several years to do an integrated IDENT and IAFIS
system, he must be talking about making it available to State
and local law enforcement or something.
Senator Feinstein. Have you not seen the report?
Ms. Bonner. I have seen the report, and I am telling you,
Senator Feinstein, that with respect to the Border Patrol, I
have told you that we have identified funding. We have a
system; it is an integrated IAFIS-IDENT system. We have already
put it in place in some Border Patrol stations, but every
Border Patrol station--
Senator Feinstein. Okay, so a Batras or a Resendez case can
never happen again. Is that what you are telling me?
Mr. Bonner. I would like to say they would never happen
again, but it is true that with an IDENT-IAFIS system, it is
much, much less likely that it could happen again, I mean short
of Border Patrol agents not following procedures or something
like that. The system will be there within 7 or 8 months.
By the way, part of this requires the Appropriations
subcommittees of the Congress to approve the spending plan for
US VISIT, which I hope they will do. Within 7 months of that, I
am telling you I will have the integrated IAFIS-IDENT system at
all 150, more or less, Border Patrol stations that do
processing.
Now, that will, I think, take us a very, very long way to
making sure something like the Batras case, which did not occur
on my watch, by the way--this was in 2002, absolutely
deplorable, and so was the Resendez case back in 1999.
Senator Feinstein. If people don't know, these are major
murderers. If you read it, it just chills you how this thing
got botched up.
Mr. Bonner. Batras raped two nuns and murdered one of them.
So we have got to do everything we possibly can to see that
that cannot happen and that it does not happen. And we are, I
will assure you, moving forward aggressively to get this
integrated IAFIS-IDENT system to every Border Patrol station in
this country. And subject to getting the spending plan
approved, which I hope would be done, I think we will get it
done within 7 months.
Senator Feinstein. Can you give us a date which I can write
down?
Mr. Bonner. Within 7 months of that, and I would hope that
that will be done certainly this month that that spending plan
will be approved.
Senator Feinstein. Within 7 months of when?
Mr. Bonner. Within 7 months of the approval of the spending
plan for the US VISIT program that sets aside $1.8 million to
deploy the integrated IDENT-IAFIS system for the Border Patrol.
I have got a roll-out plan for it within 7 months to have it in
place.
Senator Feinstein. As they say, you are on the record.
Mr. Bonner. I am on the record on that, and I will be back
here explaining it if it isn't done, but I want our people to
know.
Senator Feinstein. All right, that is good and I appreciate
it. You gave me an answer and I appreciate that. Thank you.
I wanted to mention the visa waiver program. It is my view
that this is our soft underbelly. The visa waiver program has
been used by terrorists and it will again be used by
terrorists. I just looked at the numbers in 2002; they are way
down. It is 13,230,000 in 2002. I remember before 9/11, we were
talking about upwards in the 20 millions of people that came in
under a visa waiver program.
So I don't accept that we can't get the fraud-proof
passports in place. The other nations may not want to do it. My
view is then they should go through the regular passport, you
know, through all that has to be done. There are 28 countries
involved in this now, and 13 million people in 2002. It is low,
comparably, to what it was in the 1990's and in 2000. I have a
hard time seeing why we can't get it done. I mean, if somebody
wants to drop out of the program, they should drop out of the
program.
Mr. Bonner. I am going to refer that to Assistant Secretary
Verdery, if you don't mind, Senator.
Mr. Verdery. Senator, as I mentioned earlier, we believe
that the overwhelming majority of countries cannot and will not
meet the deadline for reasons largely out of their control.
Senator Feinstein. What would that be?
Mr. Verdery. The technical standards that would cover what
the biometric passports look like are not sufficiently in
place. They were just issued by ICAO earlier this year and are
not sufficiently detailed to allow people to have the lag time
to get the chips in place, to have the programs in place to
meet the deadline. We couldn't meet the deadline ourselves if
it applied to us, which it doesn't.
Moreover, if we force people to rapidly try to meet the
deadline, we are going to get inferior technology that is going
to be much more difficult for us to make useful at the ports of
entry.
Senator Feinstein. Refresh my memory. When did we do this,
and didn't we have it staged? I am trying to remember.
Mr. Verdery. There were two deadlines maybe which you are
remembering. There was a deadline for a machine-readable
passport.
Senator Feinstein. That is right.
Mr. Verdery. Last October was that deadline. The countries
couldn't meet that either, and that provision had a waiver in
it which Secretary Powell exercised, a 1-year waiver, which
will now coincide with October 26 of this year. We understand
that the countries will meet that deadline. That does not cover
the biometric part of the passport, though, and they will not
meet it, with very few exceptions.
If they don't and we have to begin issuing visas, as one
example, right now in Japan we issue about 100,000 visas. We
have the personnel over there to do 100,000. We would have to
do 1.5 million, and it is just not possible to ramp up our
resources in those countries to do that kind of workload.
In addition, we believe lots of those travelers will decide
not to come to the United States. They will say I don't want to
pay the money, I don't want to have to wait for an interview, I
don't want to wait in line; I will go to some other country
that doesn't require a visa. So it is a difficult problem for
sure.
Senator Feinstein. But, respectfully, you are not the
chamber of commerce. I know you know that, but I think one of
the reasons that Mr. Bonner is so good is that the border has
long wanted a law enforcement person, not a trade expediter. We
get into this all the time, and if 9/11 didn't teach us that
security has to come before everything else, I don't know what
will. That is why it is really depressing to hear that
Mr. Verdery. We actually have a briefing scheduled tomorrow
for the bipartisan staff on this issue on our mitigation plan
for this issue, which I think you would find interesting. So
perhaps we could double back with you after that.
Senator Feinstein. Yes. I think you ought to brief the
Senators because I think this is a huge vulnerability.
Mr. Verdery. We, of course, would be willing to do that.
Senator Feinstein. And it is going to be taken hold of by
somebody who is going to do something terrible with it.
Now, let me ask you about another problem. When I last
looked at through flights--and I can't remember whether it was
2001 or 2002--there were two 2,000 people who had absconded
from through flights; in other words, when passengers are
isolated, planes are refueling and moving through the United
States.
Do you have a figure for 2003 of the number?
Mr. Bonner. I don't know that I have the number, but I can
tell you we canceled the TWOV program, the transit without visa
program. I know that there is some discussion as to whether and
in what circumstances it should be reinstated.
Senator Feinstein. So that is out now?
Mr. Bonner. It has been out now since--wasn't it August of
last year? We considered it to be a security threat. This is
through the Department of Homeland Security and the Secretary.
So we terminated the program, and that was a program where
people landed and there wasn't adequate security. They were
moving not to the U.S., but from some country, landing in the
U.S. and then flying out from the U.S. to another country.
Now, we are looking at it, I know, to see whether, with
significantly higher security, it could be reinstated in some
way or another. I don't believe a decision has been made on
that subject.
Senator Feinstein. Don't you think we are doing pretty well
without it?
Mr. Bonner. Well, we have done okay without it so far, but
the question is--well, I think there is a question as to
whether or not for certain kinds of flights--you know, I am
thinking of the flight that comes up from Brazil to Japan that
comes through LAX and that sort of thing. If you had enough
security controls, you might be able to reinstate it. I am not
going to state one way or the other what my view is because I
don't think the Department has decided where we are going to go
on that.
Senator Feinstein. Mr. Chairman, I see the red light. Will
you allow me one more question?
Chairman Chambliss. Sure.
Senator Feinstein. A USA Today article--``catch and
release'' is the program. Eighty-six percent of notices to
appear do not appear. In 2003, Border Patrol agents caught
905,000 people on the southern border.
What percent were given a notice to appear and what percent
did not appear?
Mr. Bonner. First of all, if you take that 900,000 more or
less, Senator, about 40,000-some of those were non-Mexicans. It
is a term of art, but I will use it because the Border Patrol
uses it. It is ``other than Mexican,'' OTMs. So it is really
that population that is subject to--well, I am not sure I want
to use the ``catch and release'' policy, but what is happening
with respect--
Senator Feinstein. I think that is a mistake. I mean, why
shouldn't everybody be treated the same?
Mr. Bonner. Senator, in an ideal world all of them would be
detained and then they would be removed back to their home
countries. As I understand it, the detention part of this issue
is being handled not by Customs and Border Protection, but by
ICE. And we are looking at, through the Department and through
the Border and Transportation Security Directorate, trying to
find the funding to permit us, the Border Patrol, to detain a
hundred percent.
That is the way it should be, and we are trying to identify
funding to permit us to do that so that they can be detained
and then removed. But right now, about a third of the other-
than-Mexicans are apprehended by the Border Patrol and because
there isn't funding to detain them on the detention end of
this, they are being given notices to appear. By the way, these
are also sometimes called notices to disappear because very few
illegal aliens that are apprehended respond to them.
But I can tell you this: We are working on this issue very
hard with the Department and through the Border and
Transportation Security Directorate to identify money so that
we can terminate this practice so that all ``other than
Mexicans'' are detained and removed from the United States,
because it is, in my judgment, invitational, where you have
notices to appear.
Throughout Central America and Brazil and other areas of
the world, they know that we are doing this and it simply
invites more illegal aliens, which increases the problem of
border control for the Border Patrol. So we are looking at it
and I think we are going to hopefully make some progress.
Senator Feinstein. I also think that from the point of view
of national security, the non-Mexicans offer more of a threat
to our country. Yet, they have the lax rule of a notice to
appear, and if this 86-percent figure in USA Today is correct,
you are right; most don't bother, so they disappear. So that is
a whole other area where people are coming in.
Mr. Verdery. Senator, if I could just add, as the
Commissioner mentioned, the responsibility for the detention
and removal falls within ICE, not within CBP. There are
significant requests for new resources for ICE for detention
and removal. We are also working on some innovative programs to
try to find alternatives to detention that will have security
alternative monitoring techniques and the like.
Perhaps most crucially, we are working with the government
of Mexico on an interior repatriation strategy so that the
Mexicans that are picked up can be transported back to the part
of Mexico from which they came, as opposed to being just dumped
across the border and are able to come back the next day or the
next hour.
Senator Feinstein. Are you telling me that the wristband
rumor is correct?
Mr. Verdery. It is a little more stringent than a
wristband, trust me. Electronic monitoring that many States use
is an idea. It is, in our view, better than the run letter, as
the Commissioner mentioned. But, again, this interior
repatriation is absolutely critical so that we break the cycle
of people returning time and time again.
We are close to an agreement with the government of Mexico.
We are working with them. A member of my staff was down there
with a team just this past week to try to negotiate the final
touches on an agreement that Secretary Ridge and Secretary
Creel agreed to, in principle, during their recent trip to
Mexico. It is absolutely crucial.
On the TWOV, I would be happy to brief you about where that
program stands, the transit without visa program, and where
that stands.
Senator Feinstein. You are good on acronyms.
Mr. Verdery. It is a job hazard.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Chambliss. I hope you all can understand the level
of frustration that we all share with Senator Feinstein here.
We may have to extend these deadlines. From a practical
standpoint, they are not going to be complied with, and I think
that message has gotten through. But by the same token, these
deadlines were either asked for by the administration or
certainly put in place with the concurrence of the
administration.
If there are real reasons why we should do it, then
obviously we are going to have to do it. The passports, I
think, are a good example why, but some of these other
deadlines I really do question the extension on. So we will
look forward to continuing the dialogue, but I hope you will
carry the message back that there is a high level of
frustration on the Hill relative to these extensions.
Senator Sessions.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly
agree with that, and I thank Senator Feinstein for her
knowledgeable presentation of many of the issues that are out
here.
Mr. Bonner, it is good to see you. We had an opportunity to
serve together as United States Attorneys. Mr. Verdery, your
boss was also in that group and was here not long ago.
Let me just say fundamentally that I have no confidence--
and I hate to say this--I have no confidence that there is a
serious commitment by this Congress or this administration to
get our immigration system straight. The American people simply
want that. They are not for dramatically reducing the number of
people that come into America. They believe America is a nation
of immigrants just like I do, but they expect our Government to
be able to enforce the law and they still haven't understood
how pathetic the situation is.
When you have 900,000 arrests and 86 percent released that
abscond, it is just a mockery of law. I mean, surely you know
this. So what I am saying is I am not supportive of plans to
deal with the failure. I believe it is time for us to confront
our failed system.
I would expect, Mr. Verdery, that if you don't have the
money to do what needs to be done, you would be here demanding
the money and asking why not and blaming this Congress if you
can't get the job done, with a clear presentation of how, if
you had a certain amount of money, you could change this failed
system. So that is frustrating.
Now, Mr. Verdery, I asked your predecessor who was here
before, Mr. Hutchinson, about document fraud. Mr. Bonner was a
United States Attorney. I have prosecuted document fraud cases.
We are told that one of the reasons we can't do anything about
immigration is because everybody has illegal documents. So my
question to you is how many cases have been prosecuted in the
last year for document fraud.
Mr. Verdery. I don't have the numbers in front of me here
today. I can tell you from seeing our operations reports
everyday, almost every single day our Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents are taking cases on illegal documents,
whether they are fake passports, fake immigration documents,
fake visas and the like.
I would have to get back to you on the specifics, but as
you know from the conversations with Under Secretary
Hutchinson, this issue of document fraud and document integrity
is a huge priority for him and for our directorate, and that
has filtered down to Customs and Border Protection and
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His inspectors are out
there everyday seizing these documents as they come in, but
clearly there is work to be done. That is one of the beauties,
again, of the VISIT program is it can see through these phony
documents.
Senator Sessions. Well, my question is, to which we don't
have the answer--somehow we have just been told it is going to
be May. So I can call the Department of Justice, because they
have an annual report of convictions in various categories. So
I suspect I can get it from the Department of Justice if your
agency doesn't know.
A person with a false document, Mr. Verdery, represents one
of many. In other words, if he has a false document, then
somebody has probably made many, and what you should do is
investigate the matter and find out who is making them and
prosecute that person. If that is done systematically and with
attention and aggressiveness, you can begin to make a dent in
that.
Mr. Bonner, do you find that Assistant U.S. Attorneys are
prosecuting aggressively document cases that you bring to them?
Mr. Bonner. Every case where somebody presents to Customs
and Border Protection, because all the immigration inspectors
on the front line are part of CBP, a false or fraudulent
document, whether that is a false or phony passport,
counterfeit visa or other fraudulent document, each and every
one of those cases are presented to a U.S. Attorney's office
for prosecution.
No, I am not satisfied because I know from cases that I
have been looking at that very frequently we do not get
criminal prosecution through the Justice Department and the
U.S. Attorneys' office, and we ought to.
Senator Sessions. I am sure they get a little jaded, and it
is not as exciting as prosecuting some public corruption case
that is on the TV news every night. But I think you have a
right to insist that the Department of Justice prosecute your
cases, and I think you need to be making those cases and taking
them to them. And if they are not getting prosecuted, I would
like to know.
Mr. Verdery. Senator, we can get you the statistics. You
don't have to go to Justice. We can get them for you. I can get
them tomorrow.
Senator Sessions. I have been asking for them a month ago,
and now I am told you can get them in May. I mean, you should
be able to get them in two hours.
Mr. Verdery. We will do better than that.
Senator Sessions. You know, you have the situation with
employers, and I had the numbers here. I believe that the
President's budget request includes an increase of $23 million
for worksite enforcement. It would more than double the number
of worksite enforcement investigations, I am told.
I don't know what I did with my numbers here, but as I
recall, last year there were 13 cases. Is that about right to
you? How many cases did you do last year on worksite
enforcement?
Mr. Verdery. Thirteen does not sound right to me. I know
alone on Operation Tarmac, which was the investigation about
illegal workers on airport sites, there were over 1,000 people
arrested and convicted in that initiative alone.
Senator Sessions. What kind of prosecution was that, or
enforcement action was that?
Mr. Verdery. These were people who were illegally working
at airport facilities and were either deported or incarcerated,
depending on their particular record.
Senator Sessions. All right. Well, this is what I have been
told with regard to employer sanctions. We heard about Wal-
Mart, and you deserve credit for stepping up on that. I am not
surprised at the hive that exists to defend this illegality in
immigration that attacks you for it, but you are doing the
right thing in pursuing those issues.
In 2002, notices of intent to fine were sent to only 42
employers, and only 66 employers actually paid fines in 2002.
Some of those were notices obviously issued the year before. In
2003, the number of fines to employers dropped to 21, and the
unconfirmed number of notices of intent to fine I have been
given is a mere 13. So that is there. So with $23 million as an
increase, we ought to be able to get more than 13 notices sent
out, shouldn't we?
Mr. Verdery. I agree, and I would not sit here today and
argue that over the last, say, half dozen years that workplace
enforcement of immigration laws has been what it should be.
Most of that obviously pre-dates our Department, but I think
you are seeing an increased willingness to enforce the laws.
There is no hesitation here to do that, especially if the
Congress were to pass a temporary worker program. Effective
enforcement has to come with that. Otherwise, there is no
incentive for people to use it. So we need to enforce the
existing laws and we need to enforce the laws that you might
pass.
Senator Sessions. Well, you have said that well. My
experience as a prosecutor has been that if you don't prosecute
investigators' cases, they become demoralized. If the guys out
there on the border arrest 900,000 people and 86 percent of
them don't show up for a hearing, they wonder what they are
doing. It is a cycle that breeds on itself.
Mr. Bonner. Senator Sessions, could I just make a comment?
Senator Sessions. Yes, sir, Mr. Bonner.
Mr. Bonner. First of all, the INS, which no longer exists,
criminal investigators are part of ICE. So they have that
interior immigration enforcement function, including workplace
enforcement. But let us not repeat the mistake of the
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. I think the
President has a good proposal here.
You and I know that the employer sanctions of that law were
watered down to almost nothing, where you had to have two
administrative warnings for knowingly hiring illegals, and only
the third one could result in a criminal prosecution and that
was a misdemeanor. So we are going to have some sort of a more
serious mechanism for--at least I think we ought to be
considering a more serious mechanism than that.
Of course, the document fraud, and you have been referring
to that--in terms of being able to present to the employer two
documents, which can be bought on the streets of Los Angeles
for under--counterfeit, fraudulent drivers' licenses and Social
Security cards, which is all you need to prove that you can be
legally employed in the United States, can be bought for under
$50 on the streets of Los Angeles, and probably on the streets
of Mobile for all I know.
Anyway, that is one of the things that we certainly are
going to have to look at and make sure that we have got some
meaningful sanctions here, if we are going to have a good
temporary worker program, as the President is proposing, that
has some real enforcement parts to it. That is what the
President wants. I mean, he wants something that does have a
strong enforcement component, and one that will assure us that
at the end of the day we are going to be able to better control
and secure our borders against criminals and potential
terrorists.
Senator Sessions. Well, Mr. Bonner, you are saying that
well and all of that is true, but I think we have been so
overwhelmed so long that we have just gotten kind of stunned
and nobody is really looking at the overall picture and saying
unless we do ``x'' number of things, maybe ten different
things--if we do those ten things, though, like you said, I
think all of a sudden numbers change. If it is effective at the
border, maybe you don't have to make 900,000 arrests. And if
they removed from the country promptly and effectively, maybe
they don't come back as often. So there are a lot of things
that can be done.
Briefly, Mr. Bonner, do you know what percentage of
documents that get presented are fraudulent? Do you have any
numbers on that?
Mr. Bonner. Do you mean of the percentage of overall
documents that we are presented with?
Senator Sessions. Yes.
Mr. Bonner. That would be infinitesimally small, but I
think the total number would be--you know, it is not
insignificant and I will get it for you. I don't have it at my
fingertips, but we will get it to you in the next day or two.
Senator Sessions. This will be the last question.
On the NCIC, Ms. Bucella, John Muhammad was potentially
identified in Alabama, the sniper here. The way local law
enforcement operates is that they are tied directly to the
National Crime Information Center. They utilize that on a daily
basis. To me, it is absolutely critical that every individual
who has any connection to violence or terrorism be immediately
put in the NCIC.
In addition to that, every absconder, in my view, who has
been ordered by a court to appear in court and absconds should
immediately be put in there. We know that we are not close to
putting the absconders in there. Therefore, if somebody
absconds in El Paso, Texas, and comes to Alabama and he is
picked up for burglary or speeding, the local police will not
get a hit when they access the NCIC.
I guess my question to you first is what is the status of
being able to enter into the NCIC promptly anyone that may have
violated immigration laws and has any connection to terrorism
or violence?
Ms. Bucella. Senator, I can't speak to NCIC as to all the
other categories that are entered in there because the
Terrorist Screening Center is only concerned with known or
suspected terrorists. What I can tell you is there have been a
number of names that have been entered into the NCIC, so that
the State or local law enforcement officer puts the name in,
and it could be someone that they pulled over for a traffic
violation.
Now, they actually have immediate, ready access. The NCIC
comes back and identifies that they are to call our Terrorist
Screening Center, and for the very first time the local law
enforcement officer actually responds to the person that they
have pulled over. If they have actually pulled over a known or
suspected terrorist, there is immediate action from the joint
terrorism task force that reaches out to the State or local law
enforcement officer. This has been happening since we opened up
our center on December 1, and we are really working hard with
the State and locals to get the message out there to run
everybody through the NCIC.
Senator Sessions. Well, I think that is just a critical
component of modern law enforcement. If a person is released on
bail and they skip for one joint of marijuana, it goes into
NCIC. If there are stopped somewhere else in the United States,
there is a hit and that person is detained.
Again, my question is are you certain right now that the
system is working with regard to those who may have connections
to violence or terrorism? Are those getting in the system
promptly?
Ms. Bucella. I cannot speak to anything other than
terrorism. Our only function at the Terrorist Screening Center
is to put names of known or suspected terrorists into the NCIC.
As to all those other crimes, that would be a question better
directed to the FBI.
Senator Sessions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Verdery. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I actually have an
answer to the question about document fraud. In fiscal year
2003, 105 defendants prosecuted, 83 convicted by ICE.
Senator Sessions. I would say that is a very, very low
number, in my opinion. If you prosecuted at the level of
several thousand a year, you could break the back of that
system. At 100 a year, that is not touching it. That is just my
best judgment.
And it wouldn't be impossible. Those cases are not that
hard to prosecute for the prosecutor. They may be a little hard
to investigate, but not that hard to prosecute. If the Attorney
General tells his U.S. Attorneys he expects them to prosecute
those cases and you bring those cases to them without any new
money, you could easily have 1,000, 2,000 prosecutions, in my
view. Most people will plead guilty before going to trial on a
case like that.
Thank you.
Chairman Chambliss. I want to thank you all for the great
job you all are doing. Getting our arms around this immigration
issue is a huge, huge problem. It appears to me just from what
we have said today and what came out of our previous hearing
that our concentration has been in the area of trying to make
sure that from a terrorist threat perspective we have committed
the resources and concentrated on doing a pretty good job, at
least at this point in time, in getting that system up.
I am pretty encouraged by what you said, Ms. Bucella. And
the numbers, Mr. Bonner and Mr. Verdery, that you have to deal
with are obviously far greater. We are going to move toward
implementation of some sort of H-2A reform, would be guess,
hopefully between now and the end of the year as the first step
in the immigration reform process.
A number of us have bills out there, but we can't think
about that kind of reform without having confidence that our
borders are going to be secure, because if we make reforms and
we continue to have the flood of illegal immigrants coming in,
whether it is for agricultural purposes or other purposes, it
is not going to work. So I hope that we are giving you the
resources that you need to do the job. If we are not, Senator
Sessions is right; you all need to be up here telling us you
need the resources.
Ms. Bucella, one other comment I would make on your end is
that while this information is plugged into the system and we
have the names, and I guess any other number of aliases that
these folks have used over the years, we have got to move
toward some sort of recognition of really who these people are
before they hit our borders.
Again, if it is resources, we have got to commit the
resources. Congress has got to make a commitment. If this
immigration is going to work and if stopping the terrorists
before they get here is going to work, we have got to commit
the resources to it, and I think this Committee is prepared to
make recommendations along that line.
I commend you on the work you are doing and I just ask you
to move ahead with even greater speed than what you have moved
thus far. As we move toward the issue of these deadlines, we
have got to be kept informed of exactly what is going on out
there with respect to your agencies, so I would ask you to do
that.
With that, we thank you for being here today and we are
going to move to our second panel.
Our next panel is Mr. Daniel Griswold, Associate Director
for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute here in
Washington, D.C.
Mr. Griswold, welcome. We are glad to have you.
Ms. Margaret D. Stock is an assistant professor at the
United States Military Academy, in West Point, New York.
Ms. Stock, thank you very much for being here.
We have your written statements, and again we would ask
that you summarize those statements and we look forward to
hearing from you.
Mr. Griswold.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL GRISWOLD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR TRADE
POLICY STUDIES, CATO INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Griswold. Thank you, Chairman Chambliss and members of
the Subcommittee, for allowing the Cato Institute to testify on
the pressing issue of border security and immigration reform.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress
and the administration and this Subcommittee have labored to
balance the need to secure our borders with our need to remain
a free society open to the world. Long-time opponents of
immigration seized on the attacks to argue against legalization
of Mexican migration and in favor of drastic cuts in existing
levels of legal immigration.
But any connection between terrorism and illegal
immigration from Mexico is tenuous. None of the 19 hijackers
entered the country illegally or as immigrants. They all
arrived in the United States with valid temporary non-immigrant
visas. None of them arrived via Mexico. None of them were
Mexican. Sealing our southwestern border with a three-tiered,
2,000-mile wall, patrolled by a division of U.S. troops, would
not have kept a single one of those terrorists out of the
United States.
The problem, Mr. Chairman, is not too many immigrants, but
insufficient control over who enters the country. Immigrants
who come to the United States to work and settle are but a
small subset of the tens of millions of foreign-born people who
enter the United States every year. In fact, on a typical day,
as you know, more than 1 million people enter the United States
legally by air, land and sea, through more than 300 ports of
entry. In a typical year, more than 30 million individual
foreign nationals enter the United States as tourists, business
travelers, students, diplomats and temporary workers.
Now, of those, about 1.3 million will eventually settle
here as permanent immigrant residents, some of them illegally.
In other words, less than 5 percent of the foreigners who enter
the United States each year intend to emigrate in any sense of
the word. We could reduce immigration to zero and still not be
safe from terrorists who might enter on temporary non-immigrant
visas.
Our focus, one might say our obsession in recent years with
stifling the migration of Mexicans across our southwest border
has not served our National security interests. It has diverted
resources and attention away from efforts to identify and keep
out people who truly mean to do us harm.
While we were guarding the back door in 2001 to make sure
no Mexican immigrants entered our country illegally to work, we
were neglecting the far larger barn door of temporary non-
immigrant visas, through which all the September 11th hijackers
entered.
Most members of Congress understand that willing workers
from Mexico are not a threat to America's national security. In
May 2002, Congress overwhelmingly approved and the President
signed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act.
We don't get to say this very often at Cato, but that was a
good piece of legislation. The law was aimed at the right
target: keeping terrorists out of the United States.
It mandates the timely sharing of intelligence with the
State Department and border control agencies, and use of
machine-readable and tamper-resistant entry documents, among
other common-sense reform. Notably absent from the bill were
any provisions rolling back levels of legal immigration or
bolstering efforts to curb illegal migration from Mexico.
Indeed, legalizing and regularizing the movement of workers
across the U.S.-Mexican border would enhance our National
security by bringing much of the underground labor market into
the open, encouraging newly-documented workers to fully
cooperate with law enforcement officials and freeing resources
for border security and the war on terrorism.
Real immigration reform would drain a large part of the
underground swamp of smuggling and document fraud that
facilitates illegal immigration. It would reduce the demand for
fraudulent documents, which in turn would reduce the supply
available for terrorists trying to operate surreptitiously
inside the United States. It would eliminate most of the human
smuggling operations, I believe, overnight. The vast majority
of Mexican workers who enter the United States have no criminal
records or intentions. They would obviously prefer to enter the
country in a safe, orderly, legal way through the standard
ports of entry rather than putting their lives in the hands of
unscrupulous smugglers.
Just as importantly, legalization would encourage millions
of currently undocumented workers to make themselves known to
authorities by registering with the Government, reducing cover
for terrorists who manage to enter the country and overstay
their visas. Workers with legal documents would be more
inclined to cooperate with law enforcement because they
wouldn't fear deportation.
Immigration reform would free up enforcement and border
control resources to focus on protecting the American homeland
from terrorist attack. Our Department of Homeland Security,
which I believe has a hiring freeze on right now, should
concentrate its limited resources and personnel on tracking and
hunting down terrorists instead of raiding chicken processing
plants and busting janitors at discount stores.
Congress should respond to the leadership shown by
President Bush and reform our dysfunctional immigration system.
Immigration reform would help our economy grow, it would reduce
illegal immigration and it would enhance the Federal
Government's ability to wage war on terrorism.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Griswold appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Chambliss. Thank you.
Professor Stock.
STATEMENT OF MARGARET D. STOCK, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAW,
U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT, NEW YORK, ON BEHALF OF THE
AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION
Ms. Stock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am honored to be here
in two capacities. First, I am a member of the American
Immigration Lawyers Association and I have been practicing in
the field of immigration law as an attorney for more than 10
years. I am also here as an expert in the area of
constitutional, military, national security and comparative
law, areas in which I teach.
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Law at the
United States Military Academy, at West Point, New York, and I
am also a lieutenant colonel in the Military Police Corps, in
the United States Army Reserve. But I need to emphasize that
the statements, opinions and views I am expressing today are my
own opinions and not the opinions of the United States Military
Academy, the Department of the Army or the Department of
Defense.
With that said, you have my written testimony and I only
want to make three key points which are summarized as follows.
First, we secure our borders best by enhancing our
intelligence capacity, and national security is most
effectively enhanced by improving the mechanisms for
identifying actual terrorists, not by implementing harsher
immigration laws that blindly label all foreigners are
potential terrorists. In fact, that can hurt our intelligence
collection capability if it causes people in immigrant
communities to be unwilling to come forward and provide us with
the information that we need in order to locate the real
terrorists.
Any policies and practices that fail to distinguish between
terrorists and legitimate foreign visitors or foreign travelers
are ineffective security tools that waste our valuable
resources, damage the U.S. economy and alienate those groups
that we need to cooperate with in the war on terrorism. They
also promote a false sense of security by promoting the
illusion that we are reducing the threat of terrorism when, in
fact, in many cases we are not actually doing that.
Part of security is economic security. We need to stop
thinking about security as simply a matter of keeping people
out of the country and also think about the fact that security
has other dimensions. We can't fight a global war on terrorism
with an economy that has been hampered by the fact that we
can't get businesses in the country. If American workers are
out of jobs because the Japanese investors can't come into the
country, for example, that is going to hurt our security. We
need to think broadly about security and not limit that
concept.
Reforming our immigration laws is critical if we do it in a
way that will help us identify those who want to hurt us and
distinguish them from those that are no national security
threat to us and are already here, already residing here,
paying taxes, part of our family networks, even in some cases
part of our military.
Second, we need to make our borders our last line of
defense, not our first line of defense. The physical borders of
the United States should be our last line of defense because
terrorism does not spring up at our borders. We need to
reconceptualize how we think about our borders because in the
modern world they really start overseas and they start at our
consulates overseas.
When people refer to our borders, they usually think of the
geographic boundaries between us and Canada and Mexico. But to
enhance our security, that has to be the last place, not the
first place that we look to defend against terrorism. So we
have to pursue initiatives such as the North American Perimeter
Safety Zone, increase the use of pre-clearance procedures, pre-
inspection programs overseas, and provide U.S. officials the
opportunity to check people before they even get on a plane and
come to America, before they even try to approach the border.
Third, comprehensive immigration reform is an essential
component of any effort to enhance our National security. Right
now, our current immigration system, as other people have said,
is dysfunctional. I agree with that entirely. We currently
allocate massive resources in a futile attempt to enhance a
system and enforce a system that does not work.
Our enforcement efforts could be far more effective if our
laws made sense. We have laws that simply do not make sense,
and I think that is best exemplified by the quote from Karen
Croshare in 2001, an INS spokesperson, who said that
immigration law is a mystery and a mastery of obfuscation. I
think she was right about that.
A new break-the-mold guest worker program is an essential
component to sensible reform that would help enhance our
security and secure our borders because it would legalize the
flow of people that is happening anyway. It is insufficient by
itself, however. We also need to offer to those who are
residing here, working here, paying taxes and otherwise
contributing--some of them have sons and daughters in the
military, for example--the opportunity to earn their permanent
legal status. We need to recognize that blood is thicker than
borders. We need to deal squarely with the issue of family
reunification and the backlogs in the family program so that
families are not separated 20 years or more, sometimes, by our
dysfunctional laws.
I want to put in a small plug, in closing, for the DREAm
Act. Just from my personal experience in the military, I know
that we have thousands of young people living in America today
who came to the United States when they were very small who
would like to serve in the military, but they can't because
they can't get legal papers.
They speak English and are in great physical condition.
They have graduated from our high schools, and yet they cannot
serve in the military unless they somehow get in by using fake
documents. We should pass a law like the DREAM Act to allow
some of those people not only the opportunity to work at
janitors at Wal-Mart and things like that, but also the
opportunity to volunteer to serve this great country.
In closing, I would say our Nation has no choice but to
move ahead with comprehensive immigration reform. We need to
think that immigration reform is national security reform, but
we need to think about it in a new and creative way if we are
going to enhance our security at the border, and we need to do
this immediately. We can't wait.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stock appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Chambliss. Well, I thank both of you for those
comments. I will have to say I agree with most everything that
both of you said.
Professor Stock, I really have been supportive of the
President's approach to this because he is the first President
we have had who has been willing to say, hey, look, we have got
a problem and we had better face it now. You highlight a real
reason why the leadership in this country needs to face this
problem, and that is these kids coming along.
They didn't ask for this. They came with their parents who
may have come here illegally, and obviously did come here
illegally. Yet, they are having to pay really a higher price
than what their parents have had to pay. We need to think about
the overall issue and those young people who are qualified to
be educated, qualified to go into the armed forces, qualified
to go into the workforce. Yet, they are going to have this
handicap hanging over their head.
I don't pretend to have all of the answers to the question,
and I have talked with the President any number of times about
this and he doesn't have all of the answers. But the fact of
the matter is I applaud him for being willing to face this.
I want to make sure that the next generation--and I have
got children and grandchildren--don't have to look at this 30
years from now. If we don't look at it today, then the problem
is only going to get more complicated. I don't know that it can
get any worse, but it is certainly going to get more
complicated by the number of people. So both of you are right
in your comments relative to these young folks coming along
and, Mr. Griswold, particularly your comment about building a
wall. That is simply not going to work.
Ms. Stock, in your written testimony you address border
security by describing the issue as terrorist versus legitimate
entrants. But we hear about false documentation that is
presented at the border, and under a guest worker program we
will have hundreds of thousands of people presenting documents
at the border.
How would you propose that we address what is sure to be a
growing problem of people attempting to enter the United States
through our ports of entry in an illegal manner? In other
words, how can we be confident in our border security against
people illegally entering our country even if they are just
seeking a job?
Ms. Stock. Well, I think part of the guest worker proposal
is the idea that we are going to have a drop in the number of
people who are trying to come in, and I believe that is the
case based on my experience dealing with immigrants.
I know that the vast majority of people coming particularly
from Mexico are coming here to work or to be part of a family,
and they come in illegally because there isn't a way for them
to come legally. If there were a way, these immigrants would
love to be legal. I have had so many people over the years come
into my office and say, is there any way that I can get legal?
They are just dying to do it legally, but the current system is
broken and they can't do it.
There is a myth out there among many people that it is easy
to emigrate to America. In fact, it is not. It is extremely
difficult today. We call ourselves a nation of immigrants. It
is not really true today; it hasn't been true for decades. It
is extraordinarily difficult for the average person out there
in the world to emigrate to America even if they have relatives
who are here already and even if they have a job here that
nobody wants.
Much of the illegal immigration is driven by the fact that
people can't get here legally. I expect if a guest worker
program is designed properly and has an earned adjustment or
regularization program with it that we will see a significant
drop in the flow of people trying to come in illegally with
false documents. There won't be any need for them to do that if
they can come legally. Why would they run the risk of dying in
the Arizona desert when they could simply walk through the San
Ysidro port of entry with the correct documents?
Mr. Griswold. Senator, could I just add to that quickly?
Chairman Chambliss. Certainly.
Mr. Griswold. I agree with everything Margaret says.
Besides just the common-sense reasons why Mexicans, in
particular, would prefer to come in legally, we do have some
historical experience. We had the bracero program in the 1950's
and into the 1960's, and that program had some flaws. It is not
a good model point by point, but President Eisenhower
dramatically increased the number of visas available during the
1950's and the apprehensions of people coming in illegally at
the border dropped dramatically by 95 percent. I think we have
every reason to expect that to happen here.
Wouldn't the job of Mr. Bonner and other people trying to
protect our borders be easier if 95 percent of the people
coming in illegally now were basically taken off the table and
coming in through an orderly process through ports of entry?
Then we would know, if somebody was sneaking in, they were
probably up to no good.
Chairman Chambliss. You make a good point.
Mr. Griswold, you have written that if President Bush's
guest worker plan is put into action, we would eliminate most
of the smuggling operations overnight and drain the underground
channels by which terrorists might try to enter the United
States.
Can you elaborate on that, and particularly in contrast to
our border protection agents' ability to control illegal
immigration, as recent figures of illegal immigrant arrests
seem to demonstrate?
Mr. Griswold. Yes, that is a good point. Well, part of the
reason why I think that is true is just the point I made about
the historical record of the bracero program. If people can
come in illegally, they will choose to come in--if they can
come in legally, they will not come in illegally. I think what
you do is you reduce the demand for these documents and you
will see the supply shrink. Now, there will always be illegal
activity, people for one reason or another wanting to come in
illegally, but it is more of a manageable problem.
There is some historical analogy with Prohibition, as well.
One of the unintended consequences of Prohibition was we
created a lot of underground crime. Once Prohibition went away,
a lot of that underground crime and organized crime went away
as well, and I think we could expect that with this program.
Let's get the vast majority, 99 percent or whatever, of people
coming across the southwest border who are just coming here to
work--let's get them off the table through a legal, orderly
process. Then we can focus the full force of our law
enforcement and border enforcement on that 1 percent or less
whom we have reason to believe are up to no good.
Chairman Chambliss. Ms. Stock, you alluded to this a little
bit earlier and you have also written that passing new and more
complicated laws will not cure our security problems, but our
focus should be on simplifying and implementing existing laws.
Does a massive guest worker program help or hurt this
objective to achieve better border security?
Ms. Stock. Well, I think it is very important to simplify
our laws. Right now, it is impossible for the average person to
understand our immigration laws. Even the average lawyer
doesn't underhand our immigration laws, and I run into that
everyday when I try to explain to somebody who comes into my
office and says, I have a simple immigration question, and two
hours later we are still talking about it.
In fact, our laws are extraordinarily complicated. A guest
worker can address that if, in conjunction with the program, we
perhaps repeal some of the provisions of the immigration law
that tie up or resources, but do nothing to enhance our
security.
For example, Section 212(a)(9) of the immigration law
currently contains 3-year bars, 10-year bars, permanent bars
that essentially divide families up. There are plenty of
provisions in the law that keep out terrorists. We have had
provisions in the law to keep out terrorists for years. The
problem we have is the terrorists don't come up to the border
and say, hi, I am a terrorist, can I come in.
What we are doing with a lot of complicated provisions of
the law, though, is we are keeping out people that are
breadwinners in the family, that are married to Americans, that
overstayed a visa for too long or has some problem with
paperwork that may not even be their fault. And we are telling
them that you need to leave the United States and in 10 years
or 20 years you can come back to be here with your family. That
makes no sense from a national security perspective.
The average person--as I said, blood is thicker than
borders--they are going to try to sneak back in to be with
their family members, or we force the American to move to a
foreign country to live with their family members. In a lot of
cases I have seen, we force the American family to go on
welfare because the Mexican worker, for example, who is being
deported is the breadwinner in the family. He is married to an
American woman and they have a bunch of children. Once he is
deported, the family has no income. They then have to go on
welfare.
When they are faced with a 3-year bar, a 10-year bar, a 20-
year bar, he is not coming back, at least not legally, and the
family ends up essentially relying on the taxpayers to support
them. These kinds of situations are far too common today
because of our immigration laws. Some of the laws, while well-
intentioned, don't address national security at all.
I would like to mention just for the record that I did
coauthor a report called ``The Lessons of 9/11: A Failure of
Intelligence, Not Immigration Law,'' and I would like to submit
this report for the record.
Chairman Chambliss. Sure, we will be glad to add that.
Let me give both of you a hypothetical as to how I envision
long-term the principles of the President and the general
understanding of the ideas that a number of us have thought
about relative to the illegals who are here today and how we
are going to deal with them.
We are not going to give these folks a green card. I think
the President has correctly stated that they have got to be
identified as being here illegally today. They didn't comply
with the law and we don't want to recognize them as being here
legally.
But by the same token, if they are here and they are
gainfully employed, they are providing a better quality of life
for them and their families, and they are not displacing
American workers, then the idea is that we allow them to stay
here as a temporary employee, with the understanding that they
will have to renew that right of staying here every 3 years or
whatever the period may be. Those people, I envision, are going
to be what we refer to as blue card-holders. We are going to
give them a document that is a non-counterfeitable document
that allows them to stay here so long as they are gainfully
employed.
Now, if we do that and if we put some sanctions on
employers to hire only people who have that blue card or who
otherwise are here legally under a green card or a visa or
whatever, and that we begin removing or deporting those people
who are not here legally under one of those scenarios, do you
think that an incentive will be there on those people who are
here, gainfully employed, to come forward and make application
for that blue card?
Mr. Griswold. Senator, I do think there would be an
incentive, and I think you have outlined the issue very
clearly. One, they could have portability moving from one job
to another. A broader range of jobs would open up. They could
move across the border multiple times instead of paying a
coyote, a smuggler, every time they come across and risking
their lives; you know, all the reasons that were in the
previous panel.
I think it is important, as the President outlines, that we
not duplicate the mistakes of the 1986 law. That was an
amnesty. You have been here 4 years, here is your green card.
We didn't do anything to fix the flow of people coming in
illegally.
So I think the way the President has outlined it would give
an incentive for people to come forward, which has all sorts of
positive national security implications if people come forward.
It would not allow them to jump the queue and get an extra
advantage in getting citizenship or permanent residency.
So for all these reasons, I think the way the President has
outlined it offers--of course, Congress will put its stamp on
it and there needs to be compromise, but I think the way he has
outlined it, all the ingredients are there to fix this problem
in a way that serves our economic needs, maintains our free and
open society and helps protect us from terrorism.
Ms. Stock. Could I address that, too?
Chairman Chambliss. Ms. Stock.
Ms. Stock. I really like the President's proposal, and I
agree with you that it was very courageous of him to come
forward because obviously a lot of people have not felt
positively about the proposal. I believe, though, that if you
have a full understanding of U.S. immigration law, you should
agree with the President that we need to do something about the
situation, particularly the situation involving Mexican
workers.
I do think, though, that if we don't consider allowing a
certain number of workers who come in as guest workers to have
the possibility of adjusting status that we are going to have
far fewer takers on the temporary program. There is a sense out
there in the immigrant community that if it is just a guest
worker program and you can't get a green card eventually
through some other method or through the program that you may
want to just stay in the shadows because you are simply going
to be identifying yourself to the authorities for 3 years and
then you are going to be deported.
So in conjunction with the temporary guest worker program,
I think it is important to have some avenue for regularizing
some of those people. Not everybody is going to want to
regularize. Many people from Mexico do come to the United
States and they just want to work here for a short time, earn
some money and go back. That has been a historic pattern. But
there are some that are going to want to stay and that deserve
to stay that should be allowed to stay.
So I believe in conjunction with the guest worker program,
we should have some kind of earned adjustment program. We
should not, of course, make people immediate citizens. That is
a crazy idea, but we should have some kind of program in
conjunction with the guest worker program that allows some of
those people to regularize their status.
Chairman Chambliss. Do you have any numbers of any sort
that might indicate how many folks in the Hispanic community
would want a green card versus some other temporary status?
Ms. Stock. No, I don't have numbers on that. I haven't done
a poll.
Mr. Griswold. I will say, Senator, we had an experience
from the mid-1960's when the bracero program ended until 1986
when we passed IRCA and imposed employer sanctions. It was a
kind of ``don't ask, don't tell'' guest worker program. They
could come in without much trouble. Employers could hire them
without even asking for documents.
We found during that experience, according to the research,
that about 80 percent of them eventually went back to Mexico.
The average stay was something like two-and-a-half years. So
there is a very clear demand for a temporary entry into the
United States. Many Mexican migrants come here to solve
temporary problems, to raise some cash for investment back
home, to deal with temporary financial problems, and then they
want to go back to the country of their birth and their
culture. So I think there is a reasonable expectation, based on
history, that there would be a demand and compliance with a
temporary worker program.
Chairman Chambliss. Ms. Stock, your comment relative to
educating the public on the broad immigration issue, I think,
is very well taken. I also have said to my friends who are
critical of me for supporting the President, you don't really
understand what the President has said here. This is not an
amnesty program. As Mr. Verdery alluded to once again today,
this is a program where we are simply recognizing that people
are here illegally, and facing that problem and trying to
figure out what is the best way to deal with this issue.
I am not sure where we are going to go from here, but you
folks know a lot more about this than any of us do. You deal
with it on a much more regular basis, and I would simply say to
you that as we move through the process, don't wait on us to
call you. We asked you here today to testify because we knew
you had something to offer, and I hope that you will free to
contact either me or my staff or Senator Kennedy or his staff
as we move through this process.
And it is going to be a long process. We are not going to
get an answer to these issues in the short term. It is going to
take us months, maybe even years to finally get our arms around
this, but we can't do it in the right way without help from
folks who know the issues on the ground. That is why we asked
you here today, so I hope both of you will stay in touch with
us as we go through this and give us your thoughts and your
ideas, and give us your criticisms. If we are moving in the
wrong direction, we need to hear from folks out there who are
really on the street and are a little closer to the issue maybe
than we are.
So I thank you for being here today. It has been very
insightful to hear your observations and your insight into this
issue, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue with you.
Mr. Griswold. Thank you, Senator.
Ms. Stock. Thank you.
Chairman Chambliss. At the request of Senator Feinstein, we
have a statement of Senator Leahy, and also some documents that
Senator Feinstein would like to add to the record. That will
certainly be done, without objection.
With that, this hearing will stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow.]
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