[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2477-H2482]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           LEGAL IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] is 
recognized for 58 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BECERRA. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to talk tonight about a subject which has 
gotten some attention in this country, and these days we see it perhaps 
grabbing more and more of the attention not just of this Congress and 
of legislators, but of the American people, and it is a subject which 
is dear to my heart and which I believe needs more clarity and more 
discussion, because it affects human beings and it affects Americans.
  The subject is that of immigrants. Not immigrants who come into this 
country without permission, without documents to be here, not so-called 
illegal immigrants, but legal immigrants, those who have come in 
through application, waited, in some cases 10 or 15 years, to come to 
this country, and have now received the permission of this country to 
come and reside and make this their home and ultimately become U.S. 
citizens.
  These are the lawful permanent residents in this country, and we have 
approximately 9 million residing in this country, some who just got 
here and are waiting the 5 years before they can become U.S. citizens, 
others who have been here for decades and working and doing what most 
people in this country do, and that is paying their taxes and abiding 
by the laws and raising their families.
  I would like to discuss legal immigrants because it happens that in 
this process here in Congress of discussing reforms and in discussing 
the Republican contract on America, one of the proposals, a welfare 
reform proposal, proposes to use legal immigrants to fund the cost of 
this reform proposal within welfare. I think it is important not only 
that my colleagues have a chance to hear and understand more about 
legal immigrants, but quite honestly, the greater public should have a 
chance as well.
  So I would like to do a little bit here by discussing legal 
immigrants and perhaps do some personal discussions as well as some 
factual discussions and providing some data as well.
  Let me begin by giving a couple of examples of people who I happen to 
know in some cases, others that
 I know of and have been told about, and I think are worth sharing with 
you today.

  Mr. King Tam and Mrs. Tsui Kung Tam are two legal permanent residents 
in this country. Both came into the United States back in the 1960's. 
Mr. Tam and Mrs. Tam came from China, Mrs. Tam actually from Hong Kong, 
and as they arrived in this country they found right away they had to 
retrain themselves for jobs here in the United States. Mr. Tam went 
from a cabinetmaker to a cook, Mrs. Tam from a salesperson to a 
seamstress. They have lived their entire life and they still do in 
Chinatown in Los Angeles, CA. They have raised three children. All 
three have graduated from college; David from UCLA as an engineer, 
Linda from Cal State University of Los Angeles with a business degree, 
and Mai Li from Cal State, Los Angeles, with a degree in finance.
  Each one of them had a chance to undertake the opportunity to go to 
college, they had a chance to receive some student loans and some 
grants, and they worked every year while they 
[[Page H2478]] were in school to try to pay their way through as well. 
Never has the Tam family been on welfare.
  This is a family that in some cases, like son David, is providing 
volunteer services outside of his job with Habitat For Humanity, 
helping to build homes for people who cannot afford them on their own, 
and tutoring students. They have done in many ways what we all would 
love to be able to say at the end of our lives, that we have 
contributed to society.
  I should give a story about Mrs. Tam, who is very active in the 
community. Mrs. Tam quite some time ago found that there was quite a 
bit of traffic in one busy intersection in the Chinatown area, so busy 
in fact that at one point a child was killed. She became very active 
and pushed and pushed until finally she was able to get a four-way stop 
sign installed in that intersection.
  Now, let me tell you a little bit more about the Tams. The Tams were 
never rich, as you can tell from their jobs. They had to work very hard 
to do what they did for their children and also to raise children that 
were able to go on to college. The Tams mentioned, actually I should 
say that in discussions with a gentleman, a dear friend by the name of 
Don Toi, who is an activist and been a community organizer and a 
businessman in the Chinatown area for years and is sort of the person 
people turn to in Chinatown in Los Angeles for so much.
  He mentioned that these are kids who he knows who made use of school 
lunch programs because, again, their parents worked very hard, but were 
never rich. They were able to take advantage of the Chinatown teen post 
center the Chinatown area which provided recreational and diversion 
activities for the kids. They were each, all three kids were 
participants in the summer youth employment program, so they had a job. 
That was their first time learning how to fill out an employment 
application. And they were able, of course, to earn a little bit of 
money to help pay for their education.
  Now, the Tams never had enough money to buy health insurance to 
provide themselves with adequate health care, but they were able to 
make use of county hospitals and clinics and pay a small fee for the 
services. David at one point when he was about 13 broke his arm, but 
his family did not have enough money to go to a private doctor, so they 
had to use the county clinic. He was fortunate to have his arm reset.
  I mention this because Mr. Toi mentioned a very interesting story to 
me. Right around the time that
 David broke his arm, there was another young man in the Chinatown area 
who also had a broken limb, a broken leg. His family, however, perhaps 
did not make use or know how to make use of those facilities that were 
available, and they did not do a very good job, the family did not, of 
making sure their son was treated. It turned out that he ended up with 
a limp.

  This is significant because Don tells me that this young man, young 
boy at the time, he was about 14, he was a straight A student, he was 
doing very well, and after that, he developed a nickname, and in 
Chinese the nickname is Bai. That means crip. That is a short version 
of ``cripple.'' And quickly things started deteriorating for this young 
man, to the point where he became involved in a gang. Not just any 
gang, but the Wa Ching Gang, which is notorious, not just in the Los 
Angeles Chinatown area, but throughout the western region of the United 
States, because it is a very sophisticated gang.
  He has been in trouble in the past, and much of this Don says 
occurred after he had this problem with the limp. Unfortunate, because 
he was apparently a very bright student.
  I mention that because here you have an example of a young man who 
was able to take care of his broken limb, and another who didn't, and 
the path that their two lives took.
  Mai Li, the Tam's daughter, had a hearing problem a while back. Now, 
at one point the schools and teachers were classifying her as a slow 
learner, perhaps mentally retarded, and certainly mentally regressed. 
So what the Tams did, because they knew about the clinic, they were 
able to take her to get some preventive health services, and they found 
out she had a hearing problem.
  As I mentioned to you before, Mai Li now is a graduate from Cal State 
Los Angeles University, she has a degree in finance and is now an 
auditor, by the way, for the State Board of Equalization in California, 
which is the equivalent of the IRS here in the Federal Government. She 
clearly has no, we are hoping, we are certain now she has no particular 
mental impairment, because obviously she has a very important job. But 
clearly she had a chance to take advantage of services made available 
to her, and for which the Tams were paying, if not directly for the 
full price of the medical care, clearly through their taxes they were 
paying as workers through payroll taxes, the many property taxes, 
business taxes if they had a business. They were paying their taxes.
  Now, let me move on and tell you a little bit about another family. 
This family is the Rodriguez family. Juan and Delores Rodriguez came to 
the United States in 1956 from Mexico. Mr. Rodriguez served in the U.S. 
Army from 1956 until 1960. In fact, he was drafted into the Army 6 
months after entering this country. After an honorable discharge, he 
worked as a stockbroker clerk. Later he went on to earn his MBA and he 
opened his own stockbroker firm. He now works as an internal auditor. 
Mr. Rodriguez became a U.S. citizen in 1984. Mrs. Rodriguez is still a 
legal resident and she has been a homemaker raising five children and 
doing a very good job at it and working very hard at that.
                              {time}  2215

  She has been a PTA volunteer. She has been a schoolroom mother, a Cub 
Scout den mother and a church volunteer. This family, the Rodriquez 
family, has never been on welfare either.
  As I mentioned, they have five kids. Four are U.S. citizens. One is a 
legal resident. Ed, the child Edward, is a transportation planner who I 
know very well. Juan is a college professor at California State 
University. Victor is an investment banker as well, and Carol is an 
environmental specialist with the California Coastal Conservancy. And 
Miriam is a homemaker, five children, five law-abiding individuals, 
four of them U.S. citizens.
  Finally, let me tell you about one other individual. This individual 
is named Claudia. Claudia actually happens to live in Washington, DC. 
She came to this country when she was 14 with her parents.
  She enrolled in a community youth center shortly after coming. And 
before long, she was developing tutoring programs for other young 
people in this area. She work very hard in school, and she was 
encouraged to go on to apply to college.
  At the age of 17, she did so, and she applied for student loans. Now, 
until Claudia turns 18, she is ineligible, like any other person under 
the age of 18, to become a U.S. citizen. But she is now someone who not 
only wishes to become a U.S. citizen but also intends to go on and 
further her career.
  I mention these folks because they are important to us. These people 
in every respect to what they all consider to be the right thing by 
anyone in this country, citizen or not, law-abiding, pay taxes, they 
serve in the military defending this country in time of war. They do 
everything we would want any upstanding person to do, but there is a 
difference here, because the fact that they may not be U.S. citizens 
means that under the welfare reform proposal under the contract for 
America, these individuals would not qualify for benefits for which 
they have paid taxes. That, to me, seems to be a contradiction of the 
American dream and the American work ethic.
  Let me do this. Let me talk about immigrants a bit more and give some 
summary and some background on what we mean by the population of 
immigrants.
  People often ask, how many immigrants, legal immigrants are thee in 
this country? If you take a
 look, in our country of about 260 million people, about 3.8 percent 
are lawful permanent residents, legal immigrants. That amounts to about 
9 million people in this country who at some point after about 5 years 
are eligible to become U.S. citizens.

  Now, I will mention later, if I have a chance, that when we talk 
about folks 
[[Page H2479]] who are receiving welfare, it is interesting to note 
that this population of legal immigrants actually has a lower usage 
rate of welfare than the U.S. citizen population. U.S. citizens, there 
are about 3.7 percent of the entire U.S. citizen population which is on 
welfare. That is about twice as much, almost twice as much as for legal 
immigrants being on welfare. So clearly, even though they are eligible 
to receive welfare benefits, they are less likely than U.S. citizens to 
use them.
  Now, let me move on and talk a little bit about what others have said 
about immigrants, because I do not want to just tell you what I think 
about immigrants.
  We have had a lot of folks tell us that we should take these services 
away from legal immigrants because they happen to not be U.S. citizens. 
They are not eligible to vote.
  These are people, let me show you a chart, these are people who have 
been recognized as contributors by not just one individual or a group 
of individuals but by a lot of very important individuals. Even the 
Council of Economic Advisors for President Bush in 1990 recognized that 
when they said that immigrants are more likely than the native 
population citizen to be self-employed and start new businesses. I am 
sorry. That was said by Commissioner Doris Meissner, who at the time in 
1990 was with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
  What the President's advisors in 1990 said was that the long-term 
benefits of immigrants, as you can see here, greatly exceed any short 
run costs.
  What we are saying really, in these two quotes, is very consistent 
with what we have found. That is, that for the most part you have able-
bodied people coming in as legal immigrants, ready to work. They do so. 
And they start contributing right away. And because you are talking 
about folks who are, for the most part, had to go through quite a bit 
to get in this country, whether it was waiting 15 years or trying to 
make the trek by themselves or with family,
 they are ready to be industrious. And that is reflected in both the 
quotes that you see from the Council of Economic Advisors, that 
President Bush had, and also from Miss Doris Meissner and Mr. Robert 
Bach.

  As I said, Miss Meissner happens to be the INS Commissioner, the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner.
  Other things that have been said, the Urban Institute, which is known 
for doing extensive studies and did an extensive study for the 
administration recently to determine the effects of immigration and the 
numbers of immigrants, found in its study that for every increase of 
100 people in the native population, in the citizen population, 
employment grew by 26 jobs. For every increase of 100 in the immigrant 
population, employment grew by 46 jobs. The Urban Institute further 
reports that immigrants actually complement native workers rather than 
substitute or displace native workers.
  That is important, because people say they are taking all our jobs. 
Most studies find that that is not the case.
  Immigrants make it possible for industry to survive here in the 
United States. Without their manpower, many businesses would have no 
choice but to shut down or perhaps move overseas.
  Do immigrants, as I said before, really pay taxes? Of course, they 
do.
  A lot of analysis has been done on this particular subject as well. 
Let me show you a chart that quotes a report by the periodical Business 
Week back in 1992.
  As you can see, Business Week, in this report, cited the fact that 
immigrants, while they earn in this country about $240 billion and they 
pay taxes to the tune of about $90 billion, their use of welfare is 
about $5 billion. Again, that is consistent with what President Bush's 
Council of Economic Advisors found to be the case, and it is consistent 
with what we have found in the past history with immigrants, that they 
work very hard to produce.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gene Green.
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the 
opportunity to be here tonight and talk about some of the issues 
involving legal immigration. I am glad you differentiated between 
illegal and legal immigration. Because the two stories you told of the 
families, I think anyone in
 this chamber, not just tonight but when we are actually here, could 
relate to that because we all have family or friends who we know who 
have come here as legal residents and worked their way into becoming 
full-fledged citizens.

  During that time that they are legal residents, they also experience 
the same thing as someone who is here as a citizen. They experience job 
growth, as you have shown. They pay taxes. They raise their children. 
But they also may have problems. They may be laid off, whether they be 
in Texas or California or anywhere else. And because of that, they are 
here legally, they should also benefit from the services of the system 
that we have.
  You and I sit on the Economic and Educational Opportunity Committee 
that considered and marked up a portion of the welfare reform bill last 
week and the Republican version of the welfare reform bill. I had an 
amendment during that time that we did not get to that would have said, 
the bill obviously exempted anyone from any public service who is a 
legal resident, who is not a full citizen. I had an amendment that 
would have exempted legal immigrants, would have allowed them to be 
eligible for these programs if they at least paid taxes for five years 
over and above being a legal resident. We did not get to consider that 
amendment because, one, we had a two-day markup on probably the most 
important bill that we may see this session, and so our amendment was 
cut off, and I hope when we do get to that legislation in the next two 
weeks, we will see it. We also had an amendment that was available that 
maybe the Ways and Means Committee, in their section, will deal with 
it. But even a legal immigrant who is in the United States, who laid 
their life down maybe for our country would be ineligible for benefits 
under the bill that came out of our committee.
  I know the other committees may be addressing it. I hope they do so 
we do not have to tell a veteran in my district in Houston that may 
have fought in World War II, may be a legal citizen and yet they cannot 
go and have a senior citizen nutrition meal because they are not 79 
years old.
  I think there are some travesties in that bill. I am glad you asked 
for this time tonight to talk about it.
  I wanted to add to a little bit of what you have said. In that bill, 
a legal immigrant would be
 ineligible for Pell grants, for example, even though they pay taxes 
and their families may have paid taxes to the Federal Government. As 
you said, 240 billion in earnings and 90 billion in taxes and only 5 
billion in social services or welfare. So they have paid taxes. A good 
example of that bill, 111 legal residents in Houston participating in 
Pell grants right now would be ineligible for those programs. These are 
legal residents who very well may have paid their taxes, and we were 
trying to provide that ability for.

  Like I said earlier, it seems ironic that we would, in our bill that 
came out of committee, that a legal immigrant would be ineligible for a 
hot meal at a senior citizen center or a meals on wheels. Under the 
bill, they would be eligible if they are 79 years old, I believe. 
Hopefully, we will be able to address that again when that bill comes 
up next week or the week after. Or maybe it could be addressed in the 
other committees that have jurisdiction. But these centers, I have a 
number of them in my district, they do not check people's citizenship 
much less whether they are legal or illegal, because that is not their 
job. They are mainly concerned about providing a hot meal and the 
social contact that we need for these seniors that is provided under 
the Older Americans Act.
  Let me remind my colleagues that we are not talking about someone who 
broke the law. We are not talking about somebody who came here 
illegally. We are not talking about somebody who is just taking jobs as 
we are worried about. We are talking about somebody who has admitted, 
who may have waited, as you said, for many years to gain legal 
residence, who obeyed the rules and still is not allowed to partake of 
some of the good things that maybe our country may provide them, 
whether it be low income housing, income energy assistance, or even job 
training for adults and disadvantaged youth. Someone who comes here 
legally and because of the 
[[Page H2480]] downsizing that we see all over our country, they may be 
out of a job and they would not be eligible for some of the job 
training that we have and that we are trying to expand more and even 
consolidate so it is more effective.
  I guess the difference is we are trying to ask Congress to 
differentiate between someone who is here legally, who obeyed the 
rules, and someone who is not here legally.
  And that is all we are saying. Do not tell a senior citizen that you 
cannot have a hot meal even though you may have lived here 30 years and 
raised your family and have, like you said, some great examples of 
young people who have grown up in the country and obviously productive 
citizens. And their family would not be eligible to have a hot meal at 
their local community senior citizen center. Several times during the 
discussion, members of the committee, particularly from the majority 
side, said that we have limited resources and we should provide for 
citizens first. And, of course, that assumes we are pitting our 
citizens against legal residents. As if any of us would say, we are 
going to support withholding assistance to citizens to help a legal 
immigrant.
  I think that is not what we are all about. We are about providing the 
services to people who are here legally, whether you are born here or 
whether you are here as a legal immigrant. We should not argue with the 
citizen, argue citizen over legal immigrant. We should try to discuss 
the needs of the people on our committee, particularly when we are 
talking about a welfare reform bill or a reform bill that deals with 
social services.

                              {time}  2230

  If a person cannot afford their electricity bill during the summer or 
their heating during the winter, we should not mandate that the local 
agency play the INS agent. For one thing, if that person is here 
legally, whether it be in L.A. or Houston or anywhere else, are we 
really going to ask that HLNP in Houston or some agency to verify their 
papers? That is just not the case. It could work, and work efficiently.
  I think we are building even more cost into our cost, and 
particularly after November 8 we surely do not want to build more 
government bureaucracy.
  Restricting legal immigrants from assistance also does not affect 
that they pay into the system, again, as you said, they pay taxes just 
like everyone else. They pay sales taxes in Texas, they pay school 
taxes. If they rent, I have people all the time who say they do not pay 
any taxes. The last time I looked, even rental property has to pay 
property taxes, and if they pay whatever they pay per month, their 
property taxes are built into it, because as someone who owns property, 
hopefully I do not lose money on renting that property.
  Mr. BECERRA. If we can engage in a colloquy, Mr. Speaker, I think 
that is an important point. One, we have to stress again that what we 
are talking about here is people who have a legal right now to be in 
this country, and eventually will become U.S. citizens.
  We are not talking about folks who have come across this country 
clandestinely or without permission of this government. They are people 
who have been told by the people of the United States, ``You are here, 
you are allowed to stay here permanently and become U.S. citizens.''
  We are not talking about visitors on a visa, or about students who 
come on a visa to stay and then have to go back. We are talking about 
people who have been told by this country, ``Yes, you can come now and 
make this your permanent home and become U.S. citizens.''
  They are people who are saying, ``We are coming with the intention of 
coming permanently. That is why we have waited,'' in some cases, ``10 
or 15 years, because we are asking for a visa to stay here permanently, 
not for a visa to visit as a student or tourist.''
  Then the point about taxes. In every respect, a legal immigrant is 
like any U.S. citizen except in perhaps two or three situations. 
Obviously, they cannot yet vote because they are not citizens. They 
cannot hold certain classified Government jobs, for example, with the 
CIA. They cannot, obviously, be Members of Congress.
  But except for a few things like that, they do everything that 
citizens do. They have every obligation that citizens have. They have 
to conduct themselves and comport themselves under the laws the way 
every citizen must, so that if they own a home they pay the same 
property taxes.
  If they have a business, they must pay the same business taxes. If 
they work, they must pay the same payroll, social security, all the 
different taxes, FICA, everything we see in a pay stub deduction they 
must have deducted, as well; unemployment insurance, they pay that as 
well.
  In every respect they do that. They pay the local taxes, States taxes 
for schools, et cetera, so in every respect, they are the same. In 
fact, there is no way to distinguish between a citizen and a legal 
immigrant unless somehow you can ask them for some verification
 of their status to try to prove citizenship.

  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue 
to yield, these are people who had permission to come here, like the 
gentleman said. If we want to say, today, March 1st, we are not going 
to let any more people come in legally, if that is the decision this 
Congress wants to make, or the American people want to make, but not 
tell someone who has invested not only their life in some cases, and 
particularly with our veterans, they could have invested their life in 
defense of our country and not make them eligible even though they have 
paid the bill just like everyone else.
  I always use the example that our forefathers were not citizens of 
our country. All of us came from somewhere. I am glad my great-great-
grandmother happened to be born in Baltimore Harbor, because that made 
my great grandmother a citizen. I guess we have to recognize that, that 
we are a nation of immigrants, because every one of us came from 
somewhere. Even Native Americans walked across the Alaska bridge to 
come here.
  We need to remember that when we are talking about it and not say 
that someone is here legally, because for many years we had no 
immigration controls at all. When a lot of our forefathers came, if you 
could make it here, that was fine, because we were building a country.
  We are still building a country, but we have immigration controls, 
and we are asking people to abide by the law, and yet these people who 
have abided by the law, we are now saying, No matter how many years you 
have invested in this country that you wanted to come here, nobody 
forced you to come here, that you have invested, now we are going to 
take these benefits away, or take something away from you.
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to give some examples about 
what the Contract With America's welfare reform proposal would do to 
certain individuals and families. Let me give some examples.
  A pregnant woman who is a legal immigrant would not be eligible for 
the Women, Infants, and Children's Program, called WIC, which gives, in 
some cases, infant formula--it helps a woman who just had a child, a 
U.S. citizen child, even though she is preparing to give birth or if 
she already gave birth, as I said, to what would be a U.S. citizen.
  A 7-year-old child would be denied foster care and
   adoption assistance if, by some accident, her parents happened to 
die. Because, solely because, she would be a legal immigrant and her 
parents had expired, she would not be eligible for any foster care or 
adoption services under the Contract With America.

  A 23-year-old woman, again, legally present in the United States, who 
may have been forced to flee her home from an abusive husband would be 
denied services coordinated by a battered woman's shelter under the 
Contract With America's welfare proposal.
  A 35-year-old man granted political asylum because the country he was 
fleeing might have tortured him or was intending to torture him, in 
some capacity this gentleman's life was in danger and that is why he 
was granted political asylum, it could have been because of religious 
beliefs, political beliefs, but he has now been granted by this country 
refuge because he has proven that he was in danger of losing his life, 
that person legally in this 
[[Page H2481]] country would be ineligible to receive canned goods from 
the food bank run by his local church under this welfare reform 
proposal by the Republican Contract With America.
  Two more examples: A legal immigrant, again, who served in the armed 
services and fought in the Persian Gulf War could be ineligible to 
receive Social Security, excuse me, Supplemental Social Security income 
benefits, even if he was disabled during the line of duty.
  Finally, let us take a 60-year-old woman who may have emigrated to 
this country legally when she was 15 years of age. She worked in this 
country, say, all her life, and somehow was rendered incapable of 
continuing to work because of, say, a heart condition. She would not 
qualify for any Medicaid under the welfare proposal that the 
Republicans have in their Contract on America.
  Those are the types of things that we face in this particular 
proposal which make no sense, because we are not talking about people 
who are somehow sloughing off, taking advantage of this country, not 
paying taxes, breaking the laws. They are in every respect abiding by 
the laws of this country and contributing, yet we are now telling them 
that they will be excluded simply because of the distinction between 
citizenship and not yet getting there.
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, let me give an example, like 
the gentleman did. I have a family that I grew up with. Their children 
are my same age
 now. They have lived here all their life.

  Their mother is still alive. She is not a citizen, she is here 
legally. The children were all born here. The children are now in their 
forties, and they are law enforcement officers, they are managers of 
business, they are superintendents at companies, and those children are 
providing--and that mother raised those children here. They pay taxes 
with their father, and they have lived here, and yet to tell that 
elderly senior citizen that now, I'm sorry, you are 77 years old, and 
even though your children are hard-working and paying lots of taxes, 
because I know their income, that she is not going to be able to have 
the socialization and the hot lunch with the senior citizen center that 
is 7 blocks from her house.
  I do not think that is the Americanism that we all understand, and 
the compassion for people, and also the feeling that we have for 
everyone who, again, tries to obey the law and is a productive citizen. 
That is why I think hopefully the committees will change, the other 
committees, because we were not able to in ours, because of the 
abbreviated session, and I don't know if we would have had the votes 
anyway, even if we had the time to have the amendment.
  But I hope when it comes to the House floor we will at least make 
that correction so we can address it for legal immigrants, and 
particularly for legal immigrants who are also veterans, who again have 
put down their lives and sacrificed their time in defense of the 
freedoms that they now enjoy, but we may be taking some of them away if 
we pass this bill.
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Texas for coming 
down tonight at this late hour to participate in this special order. I 
appreciate his words. He has always been there to talk about families 
and people, and it is clear that he has a concern for people who are 
contributors to this society. I thank him for adding some very eloquent 
words to this particular discussion.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to discuss a little bit more about 
welfare, more of the specifics about welfare. What most of us know as 
welfare includes a number of different programs, from AFDC, which is 
Aid to Families with Dependent Children, to Supplemental Security 
Income to Medicaid and food stamps.
  AFDC costs the Federal Government about $16.5 million. SSI is about 
$26 billion. Medicaid is $82 billion. That is, of course, medical 
services to the
 aged, the blind, and the disabled. Food stamps is about $25.5 billion. 
If we add up those programs, they amount to about 1 percent of the 
Nation's budget, annual budget.

  Mr. Speaker, folks think of that as welfare, when we talk about 
welfare, but most people do not recognize other things as welfare. 
Welfare is really government assistance of some form or another, 
whether it is AFDC to a woman with a child who is poor, or in many 
cases, most of us do not think of it this way, but I know I own 
property.
  I own a home. I am able before April 15 of every year to deduct the 
interest I pay on my mortgage from my taxes. I am also able to deduct 
the property taxes I pay on that home from my taxes, and I get to 
reduce the tax load that I have by that particular deduction.
  In essence, I have reduced the amount of taxes the government 
collects, which makes it necessary, of course, to collect from some 
other source, or have that budget deficit. That in a sense is 
assistance that is offered to me, because I am subsidized by the 
Federal Government for the purchase of my home.
  Mr. Speaker, most folks do not think of the mortgage interest 
deduction or the property tax deduction as welfare. We think of them as 
incentives that we have to purchase property, to own property, and ways 
to make it possible for families to, obviously, buy a home.
  Most people would find it very difficult to purchase a home and 
actually maintain that residence if they found that they had to pay the 
full amount and actually pay it off in less than 30 years, so we have 
ways to try to encourage home ownership, which I hope most families 
growing these days and becoming participants in society have a chance 
to do, even though it is becoming tougher and tougher these days to do 
it.
  However, that is an example of something that could be considered 
public assistance or government assistance that most folks do not 
consider obviously welfare. We never classify that as welfare.
  However, let me say that the mortgage interest deduction by itself, 
without the property tax deduction, amounts to about $51 billion. that 
is what we will probably see deducted from tax forms from people's 
taxes just in 1955.
  By the way, Mr. Speaker, 44 percent of that
   deduction, 44 percent, about $23 or so billion of that $51 billion, 
goes to taxpayers with incomes in excess of $100,000 or more.

  Compare that, Mr. Speaker, $51 billion just in the mortgage interest 
rate deduction that I get to participate in, and anyone who owns a home 
gets to participate in, with some of the proposals in the majority 
party's Contract on America welfare reform proposal.
  They are talking about cutting school lunch programs, they are 
talking about cutting back student loan programs, and there you are 
talking about sums that are even less than what we are talking about 
for the mortgage interest rate deduction.
  We have subsidies for agricultural products and crops. In my mind, 
what concerns me greatest is this idea that we see floating around 
these days of cutting taxes at a time when we have a large deficit, 
where we are trying to balance the budget, and at the same time, we 
have discussions about a capital gains tax cut.
  The capital gains tax is something that is used by people who own 
capital, certain types of capital. If you happen to own a big tractor 
or a bulldozer and a construction company, that is capital. If you 
happen to sell it, you would be able to reduce your taxes on the 
capital gains, on the gain from that particular product or that 
equipment, by a certain amount if a capital gains tax cut were actually 
implemented.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are talking about a capital gains tax 
cut of about $200 billion over the next five years. That means that 
somewhere we are going to have to find the money to make up for the 
$200 billion.
  When we put that on top of the $1.2 or so trillion deficit that we 
have to make up over the next seven years or so, you see that the task 
is monumental, to try to balance the books.
  When you see proposals to cut capital gains taxes which will benefit 
mostly those who make over $100,000, about 70 percent of the benefits 
will go to those who make over $100,000, you will see that it is going 
to be difficult to swallow having to cut a program that would make a 
legal immigrant who has paid taxes ineligible for services that he has 
already paid for.
  That, I think, shows a contradiction that we are going through right 
now, the reason I wanted to have a chance in 
[[Page H2482]] this special order to discuss the whole issue of legal 
immigrants.
  What we have to do is come up with some reasonable approaches to fund 
welfare. We have to come up with things that will help us change the 
way we provide welfare assistance. We have to streamline, obviously, 
the process. We have to make it workable, so that ultimately, people 
will work and be off of welfare, but we have to attack the problem 
where the problem lies.
  Why go after legal immigrants who, as we can see from the studies, 
the empirical data, all of which show that immigrants by far contribute 
much more than they ever consume.
 Not only that, but if you are going to attack a population for 
purposes of welfare reform, why attack the group that is making least 
use of welfare? It does not make any sense. But that is the direction 
some of the Members of Congress would seem to want to head in, and I 
think that is unfortunate because what we find is that rather than have 
reform we are ending up with expediency, and to me that does not make 
the best sense; this is not the way to legislate.

                              {time}  2314

  I believe when we have a chance to closely look at the issue, 
especially the issue with regard to legal immigrants, we are going to 
see that rather than try to dissuade or punish people who are showing 
industry and entrepreneurship, the American dream, that are trying to 
do the things that make us America, what we will see is there will be I 
hope a change of heart and a recognition that what we must do is tackle 
the problem, and with welfare that means of course making sure we put 
people on a program where we tell them here is the plan, you have to 
follow this plan. You may need some assistance now, so we are going to 
give you some assistance. You may need some education, you may need 
some training and we are going to give you that. And once that is done, 
we want you to work. And you are going to work, because that is why you 
are on welfare, to transition off of welfare back to being a 
productive, paying member of society.
  And when we do that, when we provide that training and the education, 
if the person happens to lack some skills and education is necessary, 
and if the person maybe has a child, maybe provide the child care to 
let the person get to school or get to work, and make some health care 
available so a person does not have to worry about the child getting 
sick or the individual getting sick, when we can transition them off 
and see them become productive, then we have true welfare reform. And 
in the process of coming up with that program we have to come up with 
the financing for it, and in coming up with the financing for it we 
should be addressing the issues that relate to welfare, not going after 
a population that is demonstrating in every respect the American dream.
  I think that is where we have to head and I hope that is where we 
will head, and perhaps by having full, open discussions on this we will 
head in that direction.
  That is my hope, and I hope to have a chance over
   the course of the next days and weeks as we discuss welfare reform 
to bring this issue closer to the fore so people can have an 
opportunity to understand it, recognize it, and then act based on full, 
complete and accurate information.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Becerra] for calling this special order tonight on the subject of 
immigrants and welfare benefits. As we debate the complex and sometimes 
heated issues surrounding immigration generally, I am hopeful that the 
tone of this discussion will be both reasonable and balanced.
  Furthermore, I hope that this special order, and others to follow, 
will deflate some of the politically-charged myths surrounding the 
immigration debate.
  One of the myths often cited to support the contention that 
immigrants cost more than they contribute is that they are heavy users 
of welfare. The facts, however, are very different. When refugees are 
excluded, statistics show that immigrants of working age are 
considerably less likely than native-born residents of working age to 
receive welfare.
  Only 3.9 percent of immigrants, who come to the United States to join 
family members or to work, rely on public assistance, compared to 4.2 
percent of native-born residents.
  The failure to differentiate between the legal status of refugees--
who are explicitly entitled to public benefits upon arrival--and other 
immigrants contributes greatly to continuing misperceptions and to 
proposals of potentially ineffective policies.
  It should also be noted that those legal immigrants who seek public 
assistance must meet much tougher standards for the major programs than 
native-born residents, while undocumented immigrants are ineligible for 
any public assistance except emergency medical care under Medicaid and 
some nutrition programs.
  Another one of the myths surrounding immigrants and welfare benefits 
is that these benefits act as a magnet which attract immigrants to the 
United States. According to an INS report on the legalized alien 
population, this is simply untrue.
  Fully 64 percent of legal immigrants come to the United States to 
join family members, 14 percent come because U.S. employers need their 
skills, and 16 percent are fleeing political persecution. Very few 
immigrants come to the United States seeking public assistance.
  Undocumented immigrants legalized under the amnesty program come to 
the United States for the same reasons: to join close family members--
62 percent, to work--94 percent, and to flee repression--28 percent, 
not to use public services like welfare.
  Mr. Speaker, most of the Republican welfare reform proposals would 
hurt U.S. citizens and their sponsored relatives. Some of these 
proposals involve outright bans on more than 60 Federal programs for 
legal immigrants who have not yet become citizens.
  One of these proposals would require Federal programs to report to 
the INS all legal immigrants who receive benefits for more than 1 year. 
These immigrants would be considered public charges by the INS and 
therefore subject to deportation.
  I urge my colleagues to examine the facts and not the myths 
surrounding the debate on immigrants and welfare benefits.
  The facts are these, Mr. Speaker, and they speak for themselves.
  Immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. According 
to the Urban Institute, legal and undocumented immigrants combined, pay 
approximately $70.3 billion per year in taxes and receive $42.9 billion 
in services such as education and public assistance.
  Legal immigrants' Social Security deductions help keep the Social 
Security system solvent. Because immigrants tend to be young and have 
years of work ahead of them, they are significant contributors to the 
Social Security system.
  The combined total of all immigrants' income came to $285 billion 
according to the 1990 census. This was 8 percent of all income earned 
in the United States, and equal to immigrants' share of the 
population--7.9 percent. Immigrants spend much of their income on U.S. 
goods and services, helping to spur the U.S. economy forward.
  Undocumented immigrant workers provide tax dollars to the United 
States because undocumented workers are subject to payroll deductions 
and income taxes, they help to support programs like unemployment 
insurance and Social Security, even though they themselves are not 
eligible for benefits from these programs. In 1990, undocumented 
immigrants paid $2.7 billion in Social Security and $168 million in 
unemployment insurance.
  Once again, I thank Mr. Becerra for his leadership on this important 
issue.


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