Testimony of Barbara Jordan,
Chair, U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform
Before the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims
February 24, 1995

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, let me express my gratitude to you for the opportunity to report to you on the progress of the work of the bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform.
In our First Interim Report to Congress, U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility, presented to Congress September 30, 1994, this Commission undertook to recommend a comprehensive strategy for controlling illegal immigration. The comprehensive approach we outlined has eight parts.

First, we set forth principles. We are a nation of immigrants committed to the rule of law. The Commission believes that legal immigration has strengthened the country and that it continues to do so. We as a Commission denounce the hostility that seems to be developing toward all immigrants.

To make sense about the national interest in immigration, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it. Therefore, we disagree, also, with those who label our efforts to control illegal immigration as somehow inherently anti-immigrant. Unlawful immigration is unacceptable.

The second part of our strategy is worksite enforcement. You will hear testimony today about visa overstayers. You will hear that roughly one-half of the nation’s illegal alien problem results from visitors who entered legally but who do not leave when their time is up. Let me tell you in three simple words why that is: they get jobs.

We believe that employer sanctions can work, but only with a reliable system for verifying authorization to work. Employers want to obey the law, but they are caught now between a rock and a hard place. The current system is based on documents. An employer must either accept those documents, knowing that they might be forged, and thus live with the vulnerability to employer sanctions for hiring someone presenting false identification. Or, an employer may choose to ask particular workers for more documentation, which is discrimination.

The Commission has recommended a test of what we regard as the most promising option: electronic validation using a computerized registry based on the social security number. This is the only approach to deterring illegal immigration that does not ignore the half of the problem, the visa overstayer problem you are investigating today. We are pleased with the prompt, bipartisan support that this highly visible recommendation has received, and we look forward to real results from pilot projects before our final report in 1997.

Third in our recommmendations for a comprehensive strategy is making eligibility for public benefits consistent with our immigration policy. Decisions about eligibility should support our immigration objectives. Accordingly, the Commission recommended against eligibility for illegal aliens except in most unusual circumstances.

For legal immigrants, we recommended making abuse of the public charge provision grounds for deportation. The affidavit of support that sponsors sign should be a legally-binding contract. Moral obligations work well enough in church, but the law requires a contract.

But the Commission also recommended that legal permanent residents should continue to be eligible for means-tested programs and against any broad, categorical denial of eligibility for public benefits based on alienage for those who obey our laws. It is important to see a lack of citizenship as something more than “the funding mechanism” for welfare reform. It gets to a fundamental issue for defining the national interest in legal immigration-the relationship between the decision to come here as an immigrant and the decision to naturalize to become a citizen.

Citizenship and naturalization should be more central to the process of immigration. There are many barriers to naturalizing in law and practice, and they should be removed. But it is a debasement of the concept of citizenship to make it the route to welfare.

We on the Commission believe strongly that it is in the national interest for immigrants to become citizens for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. We want immigrants to be motivated to naturalize in order to vote, to be fully participating members of our polity-to become Americans. We don’t want to motivate lawabiding aliens to naturalize just so that they can get food stamps, health care, job training, or their homes tested for lead.

Fourth, deportation is crucial. Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave. The top priorities for detention and removal, of course, are criminal aliens. But for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process. The Commission will have additional recommendations on this crucial matter later this year.

Fifth, emergency management. Migration emergencies such as we have seen recently with Haiti and Cuba do recur, and we must be prepared for them. Again, we will have detailed recommendations on migration emergencies.

Sixth, reliable data. The current debate over the economic impact of immigration is marked by shaky statistics, flawed assumptions, and an amazing range of contradictory conclusions from what ought to be commonly-accepted methods. Rather than attempt to choose sides in this discussion, the Commission has contracted with the National Academy of Sciences to analyze the methods used for evaluating immigration data, to cut through this fog. We will share their interim results with you as we receive them.

Seventh, much as we support enhanced enforcement by this country, we must face the fact that unilateral action on the part of the United States will never be enough to curb illegal immigration. Immigrants come here illegally from source countries where conditions prevail that encourage or even compel them to leave. Attacking the root causes of illegal migration is essential and will require international cooperation.

As a case in point, this Commission is the lead agency for the U.S. government in developing the U.S-Mexico Binational Study to analyze the causes of migration across our border with Mexico. Perhaps we can even come to some agreement, not only on the analysis, but also on the policy prescriptions necessary.

Finally, the Commission recommends better border management. Far more can and should be done to meet the twin goals of border management: deterring illegal crossings while facilitating legal ones. But we have to recognize both goals.

The Commission on Immigration Reform endorsed a border crossing fee in principle as a user fee. It should not go into the general treasury. It should be used to avoid the kind of counterproductive backups which happen all the time in border towns. Many people who are authorized to cross the border legally simply tire of waiting in line and cross illegally to save time. This is a waste of resources for the Border Patrol, which frequently apprehends such people. We applaud the efforts of innovative Border Patrol leaders, such as Silvestre Reyes with Operation Hold the Line in El Paso, and we must do our part, as well.

A border crossing fee, properly applied, would benefit the border towns immensely. It would be a kind of NAFTA fund, used along both borders, to ensure that legal crossings are convenient and secure. It is to fund the future prosperity of border towns like El Paso, Laredo, Nogales, and San Diego that depend so much on crossborder trade.

So that is our eight-point strategy for dealing with illegal immigration in a comprehensive, systematic way. The Commission made all of these recommendations unanimously, by consensus. We are nine Commissioners, Republicans and Democrats, a diverse group. We might have been expected to simply throw up our hands at the difficulty of the task Congress mandated for us. But we put aside rhetoric. We determined that we would look for answers-and not excuses. And our work is not done.

I must leave here shortly, Mr. Chairman, to return to my colleagues just around the corner here, who are engaged in the second day of consultations on legal immigration reform. The Commission is well along in its consideration of the national interest in legal immigration, of the qualities that we seek in immigrants, of the limits. Our first report represented a hard-won, bipartisan consensus on emotionally-tough, intellectually-complex issues.

We ask that you give us the chance to try to reach such a bipartisan consensus on legal immigration reform. Bipartisanship ought to be more common. There is a time and a place for partisan battles, to be sure. But immigration, like foreign policy, ought to be a place where the national interest comes first, last, and always.

Immigration is far too important to who we are as a nation to become a wedge issue in Presidential politics. We have seen that kind of thing happen before, and it is not productive. I, for one, wish that we would do away with all the hyphenation and just be Americans, together.

I will be glad to answer any questions you may have.

FOR PLANNING PURPOSES CONTACT: Steve Forde
August 11, 2006 (202) 225-4527

***MEDIA ADVISORY***

U.S. Reps. Charlie Norwood, Tom Price, Nathan Deal to Lead Hearing on Impact of Immigration on Worker Wages

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Monday, August 14, 2006 at 11am (ET), the U.S. House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, chaired by Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA), will hold a hearing on “Immigration: Economic Impact on American Workers and their Wages” at the federal courthouse in Gainesville, Georgia.

The hearing is one in a series the House Education & the Workforce Committee is holding nationwide to examine key aspects of and proposed changes to U.S. border security and enforcement, with a particular focus on the U.S. workforce.

This hearing will focus on the impact of illegal immigration on the wages of American workers, while examining wage-related provisions of both the House and Senate immigration proposals. At a hearing held last month in Washington, the House Education & the Workforce Committee heard concerns of witnesses about a requirement in the Senate immigration bill that would force some employers to pay guest-workers prevailing wages, even if the same right is not extended to American workers doing the same job in the same city.

*****

WHAT: Hearing on “Immigration: Economic Impact on American Workers and their Wages”

WHO: Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) – Chairman, House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) – Member, House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections

Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) – Member, U.S. House of Representatives

WHEN: Monday, August 14, 2006, 11am (ET)

WHERE: Federal Courthouse, 121 Spring Street SE, Gainesville, Georgia

*****

WITNESS LIST

Gary Black

President

Georgia Agribusiness Council

Commerce, Georgia

Phil Kent

National Spokesman

Americans for Immigration Control

Atlanta, Georgia

D.A. King

President

Dustin Inman Society

Marietta, Georgia

Hon. Chip Pearson

Georgia State Senator

Dawsonville, Georgia

Dr. Jeffrey Wenger, PhD

Assistant Professor of Public Policy

University of Georgia

Athens, Georgia

Terry Yellig, Esq.

Sherman, Dunn, Cohen, Leifer, & Yellig

Washington, D.C.

***Other witnesses and participating Members may be announced.

Those who study United States history understand the principles upon which our nation was founded and the ideals for which we fought over the last two centuries. Many immigration reformists expect our elected officials to defer to our history and embrace the ideals that we see as fundamental to our nation. Yet our history is now presented in our schools through the sanitized filter of political correctness and our ideals have become nearly lost in an amalgamation of values resulting from a deliberately-constructed multicultural society.

There is a substantial flaw in reformists’ demands that “President Bush must seal the border and enforce our immigration laws.” Quite simply, President Bush and his fellow Neocons have every intention of NOT securing our borders and strengthening our national bonds. Actions speak for themselves. In 2005, Bush signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America with the clearly-stated goal of eradicating our borders by 2010. We’re well on our way to planned assimilation into the North American Union. Bush to People: resistance is futile. (More information is at http://www.theamericanresistance.com/sovereignty/sovereignty.html ).

Mass immigration is but one way to destroy a nation. The immigration reform movement will not succeed under the assumption that elites really want to secure our borders if only they could. We are dealing with a multi-faceted problem; mass immigration is now the most clearly visible aspect. That should be a warning to those who are perceptive enough to look deeper.

Why do those in power wish to dissolve our national sovereignty? A large part of the answer is simply power and money. And then what? It remains to be seen whether the sovereign People of America will act to curtail these insurgent actions by their elected public servants.

Check this Website out.

Illegalimmigrationcounters.com

Pass it around – I am.

The Committee on Energy and Commerce has scheduled a two-day field hearing entitled “Examining the Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Medicaid Program and Our Healthcare Delivery System.” The first day of the field hearing will take place on Thursday, August 10, 2006, at 10:00 a.m. in the Main Room at the Brentwood City Hall, 5211 Maryland Way, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027. The second day of the hearing will take place on Tuesday, August 15, 2006, at 10:00 a.m. in the Lecture Hall at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center, 2211 Dug Gap Battle Road, Dalton, Georgia 30720. The hearing will focus on the impact of illegal immigration on our healthcare system and provide a forum for Members to examine recent legislative efforts that help address this growing problem, such as §6036 and §6043 of the Deficit Reduction Act (P.L. 109-171).

Witnesses

Brentwood, Tennessee: On August 10, 2006, the Committee will hear the testimony of three panels. The first panel will consist of The Honorable Bill Ketron, member of the Tennessee State Senate, and The Honorable Donna Rowland, member of the Tennessee State House of Representative. The second panel will consist of Mr. Darren Gordon, Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of Tenncare, and Mr. Dennis G. Smith, Director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The third panel will consist of Mrs. Jone Koford, President of American Division for LifePoint Hospitals; Mr. Bob Duncan, Vice President for Advocacy and Government Relations for Methodist Healthcare-LeBonheur; and Dr. Corey M. Slovis, Professor of Medicine and Chairman of Emergency Medicine for the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dalton, Georgia: On August 15, 2006, the Committee will hear the testimony of three panels. The first panel will consist of The Honorable Casey Cagle, member of the Georgia State Senate; The Honorable Chip Rogers, member of the Georgia State Senate, and The Honorable Curt Thompson, member of the Georgia State Senate. The second panel will consist of Ms. B. J. Walker, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Resources (DHR), and Ms. Jean Sheil of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations for CMS. The third panel will consist of Mr. James E. Gardner, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of Northeast Georgia Health System; and Mr. Charles Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of Hutcheson Medical Center.

Purpose

The purpose of this field hearing is to provide Members of the Energy and Commerce Committee with a forum within which to examine the impact of illegal immigration on the health delivery systems of the areas surrounding Brentwood, Tennessee, and Dalton, Georgia, and how recent legislative efforts may impact this growing problem. Specifically, witnesses at the field hearing will be prepared to provide testimony on how §6036 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (Improved Enforcement of Documentation Requirements) is being implemented in Tennessee and Georgia, and any State plans to potentially implement §6043 of the DRA (Emergency Room Co-payments for Non-emergency Room Care).

The March 2005 Current Population Survey (CPS), produced by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, estimates that there are 11.1 million illegal aliens residing in the United States. However, it is difficult to precisely enumerate a population which is trying to avoid detection by the government, and as a result, estimates on the number of illegal immigrants as well as their impact on certain sectors of the economy vary widely. Since it is extremely difficult to get accurate data on illegal aliens, many studies make assumptions about the number of illegal aliens, their service usage, and their revenue contributions. As a result, many studies which attempt to estimate the cost of health care for illegal aliens in the United States focus on limited geographic regions (e.g., border communities, States, or cities). Some of these studies survey immigrant communities and ask immigration status, while others ask for local agencies to estimate the cost of services provided to illegal aliens. Other studies use proxies, such as those who provided a false Social Security number or foreign-born workers who are low wage earners, to determine who is an illegal alien.

In May 2004, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a study entitled Undocumented Aliens: Questions Persist about Their Impact on Hospitals’ Uncompensated Care Costs. The study concluded that since hospitals do not generally collect information on patients’ immigration status, an accurate assessment of the impact of illegal aliens on hospitals’ uncompensated care costs “remains elusive.” GAO surveyed 503 hospitals, but as a result of the low response rate to the survey, was unable to determine the true cost of uncompensated care provided to illegal aliens.

Look for the Bush White House and the rest of the amnesty-again crowd to push again for amnesty after the Congressional break.

Latest title? The Pence – Hutchison Plan.

Read what Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has to say about the plan in the WashingtonTimes.

Reform the immigration debate
TODAY’S COLUMNIST
By Jeff Sessions

The Pence-Hutchison immigration-reform proposal, like the other prominent plans, fails to address critical issues relating to meaningful immigration reform. It must not become law.
The legislation fails to provide a real solution for a number of important reasons. Namely, the proposal: 1) will allow for a virtually unlimited number of immigrants to come to the United States; 2) favors low-skilled workers; 3) provides more preferences to the eight NAFTA and CAFTA countries over the rest of the world; and 4) gives no preference for English-language or employment skills that help make immigrants successful in our dynamic economy.
This plan swallows hook, line and sinker the idea that as long as there is a foreign worker wanting to come to America, and an American company that wants to hire the individual, the foreign worker should be admitted, allowed to work and put on a path to citizenship. This concept violates the principle followed by every other nation in the world, that immigration policy should be based on the needs of the nation, not the desires of those that want low-cost labor.
Under the Pence-Hutchison plan, foreign workers will initially be granted two-year work visas, automatically renewable for an additional 12 years. Then the foreign worker is given an “X-Change” visa, newly created by the legislation. After five years, the “X-Change” visa will allow the worker to transition to permanent resident status (a green card holder). Permanent residents are entitled to citizenship after five years. Because “temporary” workers will have the right to bring their families, the right to stay and work for 17 years and then the right to stay permanently, the vast majority will certainly do so.
A temporary worker program can play an important role in our immigration reform policy, but the Pence-Hutchison proposal, like the flawed Senate bill, does not create a real “temporary” worker program. To be truly “temporary,” the workers’ stay must be limited, for instance, to 10 months each year, and they cannot be allowed to bring dependents. This is common sense — we cannot expect that workers invited to move their entire families to America and live here for years will want to go home. Who will uproot these long-settled families if they become temporarily unemployed? The answer is that no one will.

Senator Sessions has more to say, read the rest here.

Dan Stein of FAIR calls the plan “amnesty with a road trip”…read it here.

For those who may have missed the news, Governor Perdue has begun the process of having about fifteeen State Troopers trained to enforce American immigration law under the 287 (g) provisions of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act.

Here is an AJC report:
State troopers may enforce federal laws
Mary Lou Pickel – Staff
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

About a dozen state troopers could be trained to enforce immigration laws in Georgia as the state moves toward implementing an immigration reform bill passed in the spring.

“It’s not like we’re going to be out there as a branch of the federal government,” Georgia Department of Public Safety spokesman Gordy Wright said. “But the trooper who does encounter an immigration problem during a traffic stop would have the power to take action.”

An agreement for local officers to enforce federal immigration laws is one of the provisions called for in Senate Bill 529, the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act sponsored by Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) and signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue in April.

Col. Bill Hitchens, commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, has met with Ken Smith, special agent in charge of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Atlanta, to talk about how his troopers will be trained to enforce such laws. Right now, only state troopers are under consideration.

Hitchens would like to start with 12 to 15 troopers statewide in the department’s interdiction unit. Those troopers work drug cases and are equipped with small electronic devices that can translate questions into several languages during a traffic stop, he said.

Read the rest of the AJC report here.

Thank you Governor Perdue!

While the president and the U.S. Senate push for amnesty – again for illegal employers, bankers and aliens, many state and local governments around the nation are taking advantage of tools provided to them by Congress – 10 years ago – to fight illegal immigration themselves.

What a concept – American law enforcement enforcing American laws. The open borders/illegal alien lobby is having a cow. So are the drug-dealing gangs.

Section 287 (g) of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act provides an opportunity to expand existing authority of state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce the immigration laws that have been so inadequately addressed by our federal government.

Under the language of existing law, a state or local government can enter into a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the feds and then send officers to a four to six week federal training program. The officers are then authorized to not only arrest and detain illegal aliens in the normal course of their duties, but also to investigate immigration violations and build a case for deportation – similar to how Mexico does it.

Here in Georgia, we should all be thankful to Gov. Perdue for recently having begun the process of using the 287(g) section of the 1996 law to train Georgia State troopers and effectively have them deputized by the feds to perform the duties of an immigration officer. We also should all be grateful to state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) for including the requirement for 287 (g) implementation in the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (SB 529) he authored that was passed by the Legislature this year.

This access to increased authority is not limited to governors or state police, as legislation is not required. Nationwide, city and county governments can, and are, obtaining the training that serves to multiply the intended effect of the under-staffed Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At around 2,000 agents, ICE is in desperate need of all the assistance it can find to deal with what many experts recognize to be more than 20 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. with little real fear of American law.

Put simply: Cops can make a difference in our community on illegal immigration.

We should be asking why our county and city governments in Georgia are not sending some of their police and deputies for the training and additional authority to deal with a crisis that Georgians will no longer ignore. According to the ICE “Fact Sheet” on 287 (g), any head of law enforcement or government has the ability to apply for the federally funded training (about $500 per officer). That includes police chiefs, sheriffs, county commission chairs and mayors.

Because of Gov. Perdue’s action, state enforcement officers in Georgia will soon join their counterparts in Alabama, Arizona, California and Florida in becoming immigration crime-fighters. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 14 other states are considering similar action.

With illegal immigration out of control in the Peach State, it is time that Georgia counties and cities join the city of Costa Mesa and Riverside, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties in California, the Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina and others around our republic that are taking advantage of the law to protect their communities.

As a result of a recent Freedom of Information Act request for data on the results of using 287(g), Judicial Watch – a non-profit, public interest law firm – reports that “287(g)-trained law enforcement officers have accounted for 820 immigration-related arrests since the program began in 2002.”

The 1996-vintage 287(g) program works. It will reduce not only the potential for additional crimes committed by people with no legal right to be in Georgia, but will also serve to convince them to relocate to places less likely to actually enforce the law.

We should be asking our local elected officials in Georgia why Mecklenburg County, N.C. is ahead of us on dealing with illegal immigration.

And we should demand answers that we will remember in November.

MEDIA ADVISORY
House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections

For immediate release: August 9, 2006

Impact of Illegal Immigration on Georgia Workforce to be Subject of U.S. House Hearings in Gainesville

(Gainesville, GA) – The impact of illegal immigrant workers on American workers and their communities will be examined during field hearings in Gainesville by members of the House Education and Workforce Committee, chaired by Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chairman Charlie Norwood (R-GA9).

What: “Immigration: Economic Impact on American Workers and

their Wages”

Where: U.S. Courthouse/Federal Building, 126 Washington Street, S.E., Gainesville, GA 30501

When: August 14, 11:00 AM -1:00 PM

Who: U.S. Representative Charlie Norwood

U.S. Representative Nathan Deal

U.S. Representative Tom Price

Witnesses: Phil Kent, Americans for Immigration Reform

State Senator Chip Pearson

Gary Black, Georgia Agribusiness Council

D.A. King, Dustin Inman Society

*Additional House members and witnesses may be announced at a future date.

House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections

U.S. Representative Charlie Norwood, Chairman

2452 Rayburn Building, Washington, DC 20515

Phone (202) 225-4101; Fax (202) 226-0776; Contact: John Stone, john.stone@mail.house.gov

John Lilpop writes:

Can America afford to grant amnesty to third-world peasants equal in population to the entire nation of Australia? Or five times the population of Ireland? Sixty seven percent the population of Canada?

[note from D.A. ummm….no]

Hat tip – Wiz Bang blog

“In terms of sheer numbers, if the population of illegal aliens currently here was a separate state, that state would be the most populous in the United States, excepting California.

On a global scale, that “Illegal Alien State” would rank among the most populous in the world based on current data”:

Canada:
33 million

Iraq:
27 million

North Korea:
23 million

Australia:
20 million

Ireland:
4 million