[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
[May 6, 1995]
[Pages 646-648]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's Radio Address
May 6, 1995

    Good morning. This morning I want to talk with you about the problem 
of illegal immigration. It's a problem our administration inherited, and 
it's a very serious one. It costs the taxpayers of the United States a 
lot of money, and it's unfair to Americans who are working every day to 
pay their own bills. It's also unfair to a lot of people who have waited 
in line for years and years in other countries to be legal immigrants.

[[Page 647]]

    Our Nation was built by immigrants. People from every region of the 
world have made lasting and important contributions to our society. We 
support legal immigration. In fact, we're doing what we can to speed up 
the process for people who do apply for citizenship when they're here 
legally. But we won't tolerate immigration by people whose first act is 
to break the law as they enter our country. We must continue to do 
everything we can to strengthen our borders, enforce our laws, and 
remove illegal aliens from our country.
    As I said in my State of the Union Address, we are a nation of 
immigrants, but we're also a nation of laws. And it is wrong and 
ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind 
of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years.
    This week, I sent strong legislation to Congress to try to stop 
those abuses, to secure our borders in the future, and to speed up 
deportation of illegal immigrants.
    Our immigration policy is focused in four areas: first, 
strengthening border control; second, protecting American jobs by 
enforcing laws against illegal immigrants at the workplace; third, 
deporting criminal and deportable aliens; fourth, giving assistance to 
States who need it and denying illegal aliens benefits for public 
services or welfare.
    Let me talk a little bit about two or three of these issues. First 
of all, on strengthening border control: For 2 years, we've been working 
very, very hard to strengthen our borders. We've put the best American 
technology to work at our borders. We've added a lot of Border Patrol 
agents, 350 last year, 700 this year. We're going to add at least 
another 700 next year.
    In El Paso, our border guards stand so close together they can 
actually see each other. They maintain a sealed border in what used to 
be the biggest route into America for illegal aliens. We're extending 
this coverage to other sectors of the borders. We'll increase border 
control by 51 percent this year over 1993 and by 60 percent along the 
southwest border. That's pretty good for just 3 years.
    We're also helping States to remove illegal aliens who are 
criminals, and I want to talk more about that in a moment. But focus on 
this: Right now we're deporting 110 illegal aliens everyday. That's 
almost 40,000 a year. And we're going to do even better.
    Now, let me talk a little bit about increasing deportations. Our 
plan will triple the number of criminal and other deportable aliens 
deported since 1993. We want to focus on the criminal population or on 
those who are charged with crimes but who are here illegally. Every day, 
illegal aliens show up in court who are charged. Some are guilty, and 
surely, some are innocent. Some go to jail, and some don't. But they're 
all illegal aliens, and whether they're innocent or guilty of the crime 
they're charged with in court, they're still here illegally and they 
should be sent out of the country.
    If they're sentenced to jail, they should go to jail. But then after 
their term is over, they should be removed from the United States. And 
when there is a plea bargain, I want deportation to be part of the deal. 
We've been doing this now in southern California, and just in southern 
California, under this provision, we're going to send out 800 to 1,000 
illegal immigrants this year. It simply doesn't make any sense for us to 
have illegal aliens in our custody, in our courts, and then let them go 
back to living here illegally. That's wrong, and we should stop it.
    Now, in addition to strengthening the Border Patrol, deporting more 
aliens who are part of our court system, and really cracking down on 
inspection at the work site in America, we have to face the fact that 
we've got another big problem, and that is the backlog. There is 
actually a backlog in the deportation of illegal aliens of over 100,000. 
That's 100,000 people we have identified who are still awaiting the 
completion of their deportation hearings. I have instructed the Justice 
Department to get rid of this backlog. If it takes extra judges, we'll 
ask Congress for the money to get them. We cannot justify continuing to 
have this large number of illegal aliens in our country simply because 
our court system won't process them.
    We also have hundreds of thousands of people who have been ordered 
to leave our country, who then disappear back into the population. I 
have instructed the Justice Department, and particularly the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service, to come up with a plan in which we can 
cooperate with the States to identify these people and move them out as 
well.
    Our country was built by immigrants, but it was built also by people 
who obeyed the law. We must be able to control our borders; we must 
uphold respect for our laws. We're cracking down on this huge problem we 
found when

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I got here, and we're going to keep working at it until we do much, much 
better.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The President spoke at 10:06 a.m. from the Map Room at the White 
House.