[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21592-21593]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         VISA ENTRY REFORM ACT

  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong 
support for S. 1267, the Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001. I am pleased to 
be an original cosponsor and to have contributed to the drafting of 
this important immigration control measure.
  This bill will help America get back control of our borders. Illegal 
immigration has long been a serious problem in our country. Census data 
indicates that there are now about 7 or 8 million illegal aliens in the 
United States, and the problem is getting worse. This is at least 
double the number of illegals that were here in 1990.
  The terrorist attacks of September 11 have demonstrated how dangerous 
it can be for us to fail to know who is coming into our country. Of the 
19 men who apparently hijacked the commercial airliners on September 
11, the Director of Immigration and Naturalization Service last month 
testified that his agency had no record of how some of them came to the 
United States.
  The legislation would create one centralized database of all 
noncitizens. It would be updated as aliens entered and left the United 
States through a modern system of quickly swiping a card at border 
crossings.
  Also, the database would be integrated with law enforcement and 
intelligence information so that all relevant agencies could share and 
have access to critical data. Morever, all airlines, cruise ships, and 
cross-border bus lines would have to submit passenger manifests prior 
to departure so that foreigners could be pre-screened on the database 
before their arrival.
  This bill would help address the rampart problem of document fraud, 
especially for immigration documents. It would require that all Federal 
identification and immigration papers, including visas and social 
security cards, be fraud and tamper-resistant. Using modern technology, 
immigration documents would have to contain biometric data, such as 
photographs and fingerprints.
  Further, the legislation would impose greater controls on foreigners 
who are here on student visas. It is noteworthy that, according to 
media reports, one of the hijackers from September 11 came into this 
country on a student visa but did not attend classes. This bill would 
help prevent this problem by requiring schools to report quarterly to 
the INS on the student's classes and whether he or she had problems 
with law enforcement during that period. If a foreign student dropped 
out, or failed to register or attend classes, the school would be 
required to notify the INS immediately. Further, background checks 
would have to be conducted prior to visas being issued, and additional 
background checks could be done when visas were renewed. The increased 
government costs for the student reforms would be paid in part through 
increased application fees for foreign students.
  Anther important provision would prohibit any visas from being issued 
for students from terrorist countries. While this is a significant 
first step, I believe we need to go further in the future and prohibit 
any visas from being issued to terrorist nations, except for limited 
refugee and humanitarian reasons.
  One provision of the bill that was included at my request requires a 
General Accounting Office study on returning to annual registration of 
aliens. Annual registration is needed to determine whether temporary 
aliens are actually here for the reasons they were

[[Page 21593]]

authorized to enter, such as attend school. This was a World War II-era 
program that was essentially abandoned about twenty years ago, although 
the Attorney General maintains the authority to require any classes or 
groups to register. I believe this reform could be very beneficial to 
our security. The terrorism threat we face today is no less serious 
than the more conventional wars we fought in the past.
  I would also like to note a related problem. Increasing penalties for 
illegal immigration has little meaning if the laws are not followed. In 
a hearing which I chaired in the last Congress in the Criminal Justice 
Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we showed 
that many criminals, especially illegal aliens at the Southwest Border, 
are routinely being sentenced far below what the law requires. To 
control the huge number of cases on the dockets in many border states, 
many defendants are being sentenced far below the ranges established in 
the Sentencing Guidelines in exchange for guilty pleas. Often, guilty 
pleas are for charges much less serious than the government could 
provide in court.
  To address this problem, we need to increase judicial and related 
resources in these areas. We should increase the number of authorized 
judgeships at the Southwest Border, which has already been proposed, 
and the Senate should quickly consider judicial nominations from the 
President for existing vacancies in these areas. Also, these areas have 
inconsistent policies, and the Justice Department needs to work with 
these districts to create consistency. It is critical that we strictly 
enforce the immigration laws that are already on the books.
  We need to do more this year to address the growing threat of illegal 
immigration. This bill is an important part of that effort, and I 
encourage my colleagues to support it.

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