[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 28, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2098-E2099]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    COMMON SENSE ON IMMIGRATION FROM THE NEW BEDFORD STANDARD TIMES

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 28, 1997

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the New Bedford Standard 
Times in the congressional district I represent is a newspaper which 
knows a great deal about immigrants. New Bedford has long been a port 
of entry for many immigrants, and the publisher, editors, and staff of 
the New Bedford Standard Times therefore know a great deal about the 
value of immigration to American society. On Tuesday, October 21, the 
Standard Times ran an excellent editorial about the cruelty and 
foolishness of much recent congressional policy on immigration. Coming 
as it does from a major newspaper in an area where immigration is a 
very significant fact, this editorial is entitled to a great deal of 
weight and given the debate that now rages in Congress over the wisdom 
of our immigration policy, I ask that the Standard Times excellent 
editorial be printed here.

        Targeting Legal Immigrants Will Return To Haunt Congress

       One must suspect that since a majority of the members of 
     Congress voted to make ruthless cuts in the federal benefits 
     available to legal immigrants, that most of them live in 
     districts where immigration is not experienced first-hand. 
     Either that, or there are enough members of Congress who 
     simply don't care what happens when they pull the rug out 
     from under people to pass regulations that most people would 
     find abhorrent.
       Welfare reform provided a convenient window of opportunity 
     for immigrant-bashers to set out on a scorch-and-burn 
     campaign. On the one hand, hundreds and perhaps thousands of 
     legal immigrants who must resolve paperwork processing 
     difficulties are being forced to return ``home'' to work 
     through various U.S. embassies rather than stay in this 
     country while the problems are straightened out. For many, it 
     means leaving families here and going back to countries where 
     they have no roots, no job, no families, no connections after 
     many years away.
       In other cases, ruthless border agents have been banishing 
     to five years' exile many people who had been visiting here 
     legally for many years on such things as business trips. 
     There are ever-growing files of such people being detained 
     for hours, questioned and humiliated before being deported. 
     Yet the new rules strip virtually all due process; there is 
     no right of appeal, sometimes not even an inkling what has 
     gone wrong. Vast discretionary power has been put in the 
     hands of individual border agents, and they take that power 
     very seriously.
       Closer to home, though, what is proving intolerable in 
     state after state is the relentless cutoff of such things as 
     Medicaid and food

[[Page E2099]]

     stamps to deserving legal immigrants, such as the elderly and 
     disabled. A dozen states are dipping into their own 
     treasuries to supply food stamps. Sixteen do the same to 
     support Medicaid services. Eighteen use state money for cash 
     grants for those who desperately need it. Massachusetts is 
     included in each of those categories.
       Perhaps this is fine with members of Congress who would 
     wash federal hands of any such responsibility, and who view 
     legal immigrants as burdens at best.
       But immigration policy is a function of the federal 
     government, not of the 50 individual states.
       What's happening now is that the states' where the human 
     trauma of cutbacks is the worst have felt compelled to act on 
     their own and at their own expense to repair the damage 
     caused by those federal cutbacks.
       It is petty and small-minded of Congress, the president and 
     the federal government to allow this to continue. Using legal 
     immigrants as an ideological punching bag is a political 
     gimmick unworthy of the United States--but not evidently, of 
     many members of Congress.

     

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