[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 16, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S3365]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BILL

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, both the Senator from Utah and the 
Senator from Delaware are certainly hard acts to follow.
  I want to comment on this bill, but before I do so I want to make a 
public appeal to the majority leader to please, please, please bring 
back on the floor the illegal immigration bill. This bill, I believe, 
has widespread bipartisan support. But more fundamentally, I cannot 
tell you how important this bill is to the safety and well-being of the 
people of California.
  Right now on the border you have miles without a Border Patrol agent. 
Right now, for both Senator Boxer and I, Border Patrol people come in 
and tell us how they have rocks thrown at them, how they are concerned 
for their own safety.
  A few weeks ago you had a major freeway accident with 19 people 
killed, illegal immigrants in a van. More recently you had an incident, 
publicized all over the United States, of an unfortunate law 
enforcement action which involved unrestrained force against illegal 
immigrants who pummeled on a freeway, hitting other automobiles, trying 
to get away from a sheriff's officer in pursuit.
  This is the State that passed Proposition 187, which was a call for 
help from the Federal Government to enforce the law and change the law 
and stop illegal immigration.
  Mr. President, there is so much that this bill--worked on so hard by 
Senator Simpson, worked on I think on both sides of the aisle in the 
subcommittee and in the full committee--does. Let me just say it adds 
700 Border Patrol agents in the current fiscal year; 1,000 more in the 
next 4 years. It takes the total number of agents up to 7,000 by 1999. 
That is double the force that was in place 3 years ago. Every border 
State wants that.
  It establishes a 2-year pilot project for interior repatriation. When 
somebody comes across the border, they are not just returned to the 
other side of the border, but they are returned deep into the interior 
to stop them from coming right back again.
  It adds 300 full-time INS investigators for the next 3 fiscal years 
to enforce laws against alien smuggling, and it adds alien smuggling 
and document fraud, a big problem, as predicate acts in RICO statutes, 
something that Federal prosecutors have asked for.
  It increases the maximum penalty for involuntary servitude, to 
discourage cases like the one we saw very recently where scores of 
illegal workers from Thailand were smuggled in and forced to work in 
subhuman conditions, against their will, in a sweatshop in southern 
California.
  Mr. President, this bill is critical. It is an important thing for 
border States and particularly for the State of California. If 
Proposition 187 was not the bellwether that said, ``Federal Government, 
do your job,'' I do not know what else will be.
  So I earnestly and sincerely, please, I beg the majority leader to 
bring this bill back on the floor, let us debate it, let us resolve it, 
let us pass it, let us get it signed, and let it get into law in the 
State of California.

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