[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 130 (Thursday, September 19, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10901-S10902]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page S10901]]



                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, Republicans in Congress say they want to 
work out an immigration bill that can become law. Yet, the only 
negotiations now going on are between Republicans and Republicans. The 
struggling Dole campaign is desperately trying to keep the poison pill 
Gallegly amendment in the bill, over the objections of many Republicans 
who want to deal responsibly with illegal immigration. Dr. Dole is 
prescribing a poison pill, but Congress doesn't have to swallow it.
  The record is clear. Members of both parties have worked together 
effectively and intensively for the past 2 years to develop bipartisan 
legislation to address the crisis in illegal immigration, and it is 
irresponsible for Bob Dole to sabotage the possibility of agreement.
  This bill had its origin in the work of the bipartisan Jordan 
commission, which conducted extensive hearings and produced a 
comprehensive set of recommendations in September 1994.
  Senator Simpson then conducted extensive Judiciary Committee hearings 
in 1995 on needed enforcement at the border, and on measures to deny 
jobs to illegal immigrants and prevent document fraud. The Immigration 
Subcommittee held 3 days of markup in June 1995 and again in November.
  The full Judiciary Committee considered almost 150 amendments during 
8 days in February and March 1996.
  The full Senate adopted by the bill by an overwhelming vote of 97 to 
3 in May, after almost 2 weeks of intense debate.
  So we know how to work together to develop responsible legislation to 
combat illegal immigration. But instead of working together in this 
final stage, Republicans Tuesday canceled our immigration meeting at 
the last minute.
  So far, Republicans are still fighting among themselves because of 
Bob Dole's irresponsible 11th hour intervention to salvage his campaign 
by sinking the bill, so that President Clinton will not have this bill 
to sign.
  We need a bill that is tough at the border and tough in the 
workplace, not tough on children. We need a bill that tackles the 
problem of document fraud head on, so that illegal immigrants can no 
longer steal American jobs by using counterfeit documents to pose as 
legal workers. We need a bill that continues to protect Americans and 
legal immigrants from job discrimination. We need a bill that preserves 
the ability of American citizens to bring close family members to the 
United States.
  We need a bill that protects all refugees from exclusion, not just 
those from Cuba. We need a bill that treats legal immigrants fairly 
under the welfare laws.
  The current Republican bill winks at unscrupulous employers, and then 
lowers the boom on innocent school children through the Gallegly 
amendment.
  The Nation's police officers and educators vigorously oppose the 
Gallegly amendment, and for good reason. As Chief of Police Jerry 
Sanders of San Diego wrote in his June 25 letter to Congress:

       If the proposed legislation becomes law, thousands of 
     children may be turned away from school. Many of these 
     children will be drawn to trouble or victimized by it, and I 
     believe that both gang activity and juvenile crime will 
     increase. I hope you will take these factors into 
     consideration, and I encourage you to oppose the legislation.

  Expelling children from school and dumping them on the street is no 
solution to the problem of illegal immigration, and is not even a 
partial solution. It will only make other problems worse. The cost to 
America in crime and other social costs will be immense.
  A UCLA study found that each student kicked out of school will cost 
the Los Angeles government $6,100 in police costs, judicial and penal 
costs, and health, welfare, and employment services.
  Teenage pregnancy rates rise dramatically when students leave school. 
The pregnancy rate for teenagers in school is 8 percent, compared with 
41 percent for those who are out of school. The result is huge costs in 
emergency medical services, intensive care for babies born prematurely 
to teenage mothers, and welfare costs for the children.
  Every major study of illegal immigration reaches the same conclusion. 
The reason illegal immigrants come to the United States is for 
jobs. Jobs are the overwhelming magnet. They don't come so that their 
children can attend U.S. schools.

  That was the conclusion of the 1976 report of the Ford 
administration's Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Immigration. 
That was the conclusion of the 1981 report of Select Commission on 
Immigration and Refugee Policy chaired by Father Theodore Hesburgh. 
That was the conclusion of the Bush administration survey of illegal 
immigrants in 1992. That was the conclusion of the Barbara Jordan 
commission in 1994. That was the conclusion this year of a study by the 
Center for Population Research at the National Institutes of Health, 
which concluded that ``the estimated value of welfare, medical, and 
educational benefits that migrants could expect to receive in the 
United States had no clear relationship to the likehood of migrating.''
  Expelling children from school won't prevent illegal immigration. 
Some 80 percent of the children have brothers or sisters or parents who 
are legally in the United States or who may even be citizens. These 
families have roots here, and the Gallegly amendment won't make them 
leave.
  Some versions of the Gallegly amendment have proposed that States 
charge tuition, rather than expelling children from school. The average 
cost of public school is $5,600 per child per year. Charging tuition is 
the same as kicking children out of school. Their parents can't afford 
tuition, even if they were willing to identify themselves by writing a 
check.
  The Gallegly amendment is only the beginning of the problems with the 
current Republican bill. Republicans have kowtowed to special business 
interests and eliminated needed provisions to protect American jobs 
from illegal workers. In fact, for American workers under the 
Republican bill, it is three strikes and you're out.
  First, the bill denies the Department of Labor the additional 
inspectors needed to make sure employers obey the law. The Senate bill 
added 350 more inspectors, a 50-percent increase. The House bill 
contained a similar increase when it was approved by the House 
Judiciary Committee. But under pressure from business lobbyists, the 
House Republican leadership quietly stripped that provision from the 
bill, with no vote and with no debate.
  No one can say to the American people with a straight face that this 
bill combats illegal immigration, when it gives employers a slap on the 
wrist if they hire illegal immigrant workers.
  Second, this bill fails to deal adequately with the serious problem 
of document fraud. Too many illegal workers obtain jobs by using fake 
documents to pass as legal immigrants or even U.S. citizens.
  What's needed is more secure forms of birth certificates and other 
documents widely used to prove citizenship and identification. Birth 
certificates in particular are breeder documents. A fake birth 
certificate breeds a host of other fraud. With a fake birth 
certificate, an illegal immigrant can get a Social Security card--and 
often a passport, too. These fake documents enable them to get jobs 
illegally, and get welfare benefits illegally, too. Yet the Republican 
bill, under pressure from unscrupulous employers, doesn't crack down 
the way it should.
  Third, this Republican bill gives employers who discriminate against 
Hispanic-American workers and Asian-American workers a green light to 
continue that discrimination. The bill sets an impossibly high standard 
for proving that employers put Hispanics and Asians through more hoops 
to get jobs than other American workers. This kind of job 
discrimination is flagrant and wrong, and Congress should not let 
employers continue to get away with it.
  The Republican bill also puts an unfair dollar sign on family 
reunification. American citizens who want to bring in family members--
even wives or husbands or young children--must meet excessive income 
standards. It doesn't matter if the family members they are sponsoring 
have a job or have assets of their own. These citizens are out of luck 
and out of hope for reuniting their families in America, and Congress 
should reject this harsh antifamily standard.
  Finally, the Republican bill hurts refugees, makes the recent welfare 
reforms even worse, and gratuitously endangers the environment. All of 
these

[[Page S10902]]

issues can be satisfactorily resolved in a fair bipartisan 
conference. But they cannot be resolved if Republicans continue to 
quarrel among themselves and let the Dole campaign dictate steps that 
have nothing to do with reasonable immigration legislation. Bob Dole 
may not want action by Congress on illegal immigration but the country 
does, and the vast majority of Americans and Congress do.

  I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the 
excellent editorial in the New York Times today.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                      A Dangerous Immigration Bill

       As the White House and members of Congress make final 
     decisions this week about a severely flawed immigration bill, 
     they seem more concerned with protecting their political 
     interests than the national interest. The bill should be 
     killed.
       Debate over the bill has concentrated on whether it should 
     contain a punitive amendment that would close school doors to 
     illegal-immigrant children. But even without that provision, 
     it is filled with measures that would harm American workers 
     and legal immigrants, and deny basic legal protections to all 
     kinds of immigrants. At the same time, the bill contains no 
     serious steps to prevent illegal immigrants from taking 
     American jobs.
       Its most dangerous provisions would block Federal courts 
     from reviewing many Immigration and Naturalization Service 
     actions. This would remove the only meaningful check on the 
     I.N.S., an agency with a history of abuse. Under the bill, 
     every court short of the Supreme Court would be effectively 
     stripped of the power to issue injunctions against the I.N.S. 
     when its decisions may violate the law or the Constitution.
       Injunctions have proven the only way to correct system-wide 
     illegalities. A court injunction, for instance, forced the 
     I.N.S. to drop its discriminatory policy of denying Haitian 
     refugees the chance to seek political asylum.
       On an individual level, legal immigrants convicted of minor 
     crimes would be deported with no judicial review. If they 
     apply for naturalization, they would be deported for such 
     crimes committed in the past. The I.N.S. would gain the power 
     to pick up people it believes are illegal aliens anywhere, 
     and deport them without a court review if they have been here 
     for less than two years.
       The bill would also diminish America's tradition of 
     providing asylum to the persecuted. Illegal immigrants 
     entering the country, who may not speak English or be 
     familiar with American law, would be summarily deported if 
     they do not immediately request asylum or express fear of 
     persecution. Those who do would have to prove that their fear 
     was credible--a tougher standard than is internationally 
     accepted--to an I.N.S. official on the spot, with no right to 
     an interpreter or attorney.
       Scam artists with concocted stories would be more likely to 
     pass the test than the genuinely persecuted, who are often 
     afraid of authority and so traumatized they cannot recount 
     their experiences. Applicants would have a week to appeal to 
     a Justice Department administrative judge but no access to 
     real courts before deportation.
       The bill would also go further than the recently adopted 
     welfare law in attacking legal immigrants. Under the 
     immigration bill they could be deported for using almost any 
     form of public assistance for a year, including English 
     classes. It would make family reunification more difficult by 
     requiring high incomes for sponsors of new immigrants. The 
     bill would also require workers who claim job discrimination 
     to prove that an employer intended to discriminate, which is 
     nearly impossible.
       A bill that grants so many unrestricted powers to the 
     Government should alarm Republicans as well as Democrats. 
     This is not an immigration bill but an immigrant-bashing 
     bill. It deserves a quick demise.

  Mr. KENNEDY. I will read the lead paragraph and the final paragraph.

       As the White House and Members of Congress make final 
     decisions this week about a severely flawed immigration bill, 
     they seem more concerned with protecting their political 
     interests than the national interest. The bill should be 
     killed.
       A bill that grants so much unrestricted powers to the 
     Government should alarm Republicans as well as Democrats. 
     This is not an immigration bill but an immigrant-bashing 
     bill. It deserves a quick demise.

  I yield the remainder of my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Frahm). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator is recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair.

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