[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 21, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H7247-H7253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SECURING THE NATION'S BORDERS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) is
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, since the 9/11 Commission's final report was
issued, we in this body have been working diligently to prepare
legislation to improve our Nation's security. To that end, I want to
talk about a paramount national security concern, and that is the
security of our borders. I know many of us have seen this recent Time
Magazine cover story which focused on the incredibly porous southern
border that we have with Mexico.
I personally was absolutely horrified when I read this article, Mr.
Speaker, on reports of human rights abuses perpetrated by ``coyotes''
who charge exorbitant fees to lead immigrants illegally across the
border, as well as Time's accounts of the heinous acts committed by
some of those illegals. And clearly, having a border which people feel
they can cross illegally at any time is a national security
vulnerability.
We must recognize that the vast majority of people who are coming
across our borders illegally are looking for better economic
opportunity for themselves and their families. This does not justify
illegal entry into the United States. So let me make it very clear, Mr.
Speaker, ``illegal'' means ``illegal.'' But it does mean that a long-
term solution to our immigration problem will only be found when the
economies of Mexico and the rest of Latin America provide better
opportunities for their
[[Page H7248]]
citizens. But the process of improving those economies, while underway,
will be very, very difficult, it will take decades, and we obviously
are hoping to implement the Ronald Reagan vision of a Free Trade Area
of the Americas which will be very important to that.
As altruistic as Americans have historically been toward immigrants,
we are, after all, a Nation of immigrants as we all know, we clearly
cannot have foreigners illegally crossing the United States borders
unbeknownst to our government. We know that international terrorists
have illegally entered our country. That is why we must act now.
In this effort, I have been working closely with two great Americans.
Those of you who read this Time Magazine article may recall the
comments made by T.J. Bonner, a 26-year veteran still working as a
border patrol agent, who is president of the National Border Patrol
Council, which represents 10,000 border patrol employees. Bonner's
first priority is to ensure that our border patrol agents have the
backing they need to do their job. It is his plan, the Bonner plan,
which I am introducing as legislation today.
I am joined by my good friend and Democratic colleague, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Reyes), who himself served as chief of the border
patrol in both McAllen and El Paso, Texas, during a long and
distinguished career fighting to protect our border from infiltration.
I am extremely pleased to have the support of Messrs. Bonner and Reyes,
for their expertise in border patrol issues is unparalleled. Our
legislation gets at the root of the problem of illegal immigration, the
draw of our strong economy.
We know why most people illegally cross our borders, as I was saying
earlier. Jobs lure them to this country. They are seeking economic
opportunity. We do not want to shut the door on that great American
dream of opportunity, which is why we have programs where foreign
nationals can legally migrate to the United States, can work and can
eventually become citizens. But people who skirt the process and enter
the United States illegally should not expect to benefit from the
American taxpayer.
Under the Bonner plan, we will strenuously enforce laws which
prohibit American businesses from employing illegal immigrants.
Regrettably, these laws have not been regularly enforced. The laws are
also undermined by the explosion in counterfeit identity documents and
employers who are unable or unwilling to establish the authenticity of
documents presented by job applicants.
Under our legislation, Mr. Speaker, we will dramatically improve the
security of the very precious Social Security card by adding a photo ID
and other countermeasures to reduce fraud. This same card will be
encoded with a unique electronic algorithm to allow employers to verify
each prospective applicant's work eligibility status prior to hiring,
either through an electronic card reader or a toll-free number. Mr.
Speaker, employers will face stiff Federal fines of up to $50,000 and
up to 5 years in jail if they knowingly hire an illegal immigrant or
choose not to verify a prospective employee's eligibility. The employer
would also then be responsible for the cost of deporting the illegal
immigrant. With the new and improved Social Security card and
verification system, employers will have no excuse if they are found to
have hired illegal immigrants.
By eliminating the supply of jobs for illegal workers, we will end
the incentive for illegal immigrants to enter the United States because
they know that they will be unable to make a living here.
I fully recognize that a number of American industries, from
agriculture to gardening and house cleaning and others, have come to
depend on an ample supply of illegal workers. That is why I have long
supported efforts to establish a responsible guest worker program to
allow willing employers to match up with willing foreign workers and to
allow those workers to legally enter the United States temporarily to
work and then ensure that they return to their homes as scheduled.
Coupled with a guest worker program, the Bonner plan will have a
positive impact on our economy and on our prospective workers. Workers
will only need to update their Social Security card once, to have their
photo placed on the card and for other long overdue antifraud measures
to be applied. A worker would only need the updated Social Security
card when applying for a new job. I want to make it very clear that
this is not a national ID card. This is not a national ID card, Mr.
Speaker. In fact, the legislation contains language to ensure that the
improved Social Security card does not become a national ID card and is
only used to verify a prospective employee's authorization to work in
the United States. Social Security cards are already routinely required
to be provided to new employers. The changes we are proposing to the
Social Security card take us no further down the road of creating a
national ID card.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to join in supporting this
very important effort that will, as Governor Schwarzenegger has said,
encourage the American people and those who are looking to come in to
play by the rules. This is a top national security priority for us. I
hope all of our colleagues will join with us.
[From Time Magazine, Sept. 20, 2004]
Who Left the Door Open?
(By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele)
The next time you pass through an airport and have to
produce a photo ID to establish who you are and then must
remove your shoes, take off your belt, empty your pockets,
prove your laptop is not an explosive device and send your
briefcase or purse through a machine to determine whether it
holds weapons, think about this: In a single day, more than
4,000 illegal aliens will walk across the busiest unlawful
gateway into the U.S., the 375-mile border between Arizona
and Mexico. No searches for weapons. No shoe removal. No
photo-ID checks. Before long, many will obtain phony
identification papers, including bogus Social Security
numbers, to conceal their true identities and mask their
unlawful presence.
The influx is so great, the invaders seemingly trip over
one another as they walk through the old copper-mining town
turned artist colony of Bisbee (pop. 6,000), five miles from
the border. Having eluded the U.S. border patrol, they arrive
in small groups of three or four, larger contingents of more
than a dozen and sometimes packs of a hundred. Worried
citizens who spot them keep the Bisbee police officers and
Cochise County sheriffs deputies busy tracking down all the
trespassing aliens. At night as many as 100 will take over a
vacant house. Some crowd into motel rooms, even storage-
compartment rental units. During the day, they congregate on
school playgrounds, roam through backyards and pass in and
out of apartment buildings. Some assemble at the Burger King,
waiting for their assigned drivers to appear. Sometimes
stolen cars are waiting for them, keys on the floor. But most
continue walking to designated pickup points beyond Bisbee,
where they will ride in thousands of stolen vehicles, often
with the seats ripped out to accommodate more human cargo, on
the next leg of their journey to big cities and small towns
from California to North Carolina.
The U.S.'s borders, rather than becoming more secure since
9/11, have grown even more porous. And the trend has
accelerated in the past year. It's fair to estimate, based on
a TIME investigation, that the number of illegal aliens
flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million--enough
to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every
day for a year. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and
roughly triple the number of immigrants who will come to the
U.S. by legal means. (No one knows how many illegals are
living in the U.S., but estimates run as high as 15 million.)
Who are these new arrivals? While the vast majority are
Mexicans, a small but sharply growing number come from other
countries, including those with large populations hostile to
the U.S. From Oct. 1 of last year until Aug. 25, along the
southwest border, the border patrol estimates that it
apprehended 55,890 people who fall into the category
described officially as other than Mexicans, or OTMS. With
five weeks remaining in the fiscal year, the number is nearly
double the 28,048 apprehended in all of 2002. But that's just
how many were caught. TIME estimates, based on longtime
government formulas for calculating how many elude capture,
that as many as 190,000 illegals from countries other than
Mexico have melted into the U.S. population so far this year.
The border patrol, which is run by the Department of Homeland
Security, refuses to break down OTMS by country. But local
law officers, ranchers and others who confront the issue
daily tell TIME they have encountered not only a wide variety
of Latin Americans (from Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil,
Nicaragua and Venezuela) but also intruders from Afghanistan,
Bulgaria, Russia and China as well as Egypt, Iran and Iraq.
Law enforcement authorities believe the mass movement of
illegals, wherever they are from, offers the perfect cover
for terrorists seeking to enter the U.S., especially since
tighter controls have been imposed at airports.
Who's to blame for all the intruders? While the growing
millions of illegal aliens cross the border on their own two
feet, the problem is one of the U.S.'s own making. The
[[Page H7249]]
government doesn't want to fix it, and politicians, as usual,
are dodging the issue, even though public-opinion polls show
that Americans overwhelmingly favor a crackdown on illegal
immigration. To be sure, many citizens quietly benefit from
the flood of illegals because the supply of cheap labor helps
keep down the cost of many goods and services, from chicken
parts to lawn care. Many big companies, which have an even
clearer stake in cheap labor, aggressively fend off the
enforcement of laws that would shut down their supply of
illegal workers.
The argument is getting stronger, however, that this is a
short-sighted bargain for the U.S. Beyond the terrorism
risks, Washington's failure to control the Nation's borders
has a painful impact on workers at the bottom of the ladder
and, increasingly, those further up the income scale. The
system holds down the pay of American workers and rewards the
illegals and the businesses that hire them. It breeds anger
and resentment among citizens who can't understand why
illegal aliens often receive government-funded health care,
education benefits and subsidized housing. In border
communities, the masses of incoming illegals lay waste to the
landscape and create costly burdens for agencies trying to
keep public order. Moreover, the system makes a mockery of
the U.S. tradition of encouraging legal immigration.
Increasingly, there is little incentive to play by the
rules.
In the aftermath of 9/11, illegal immigration slowed
dramatically for two years. Now it has turned up again. The
chronic reason is a Mexican economy unable to provide jobs
with a living wage to a growing population. But those who
live and work along the border say there is another, more
immediate cue for the rush. In a speech on immigration policy
last January, George W. Bush proposed ``a new temporary-
worker program that will match willing foreign workers with
willing American employers when no Americans can be found to
fill the jobs.'' The President said his program would give
three-year, renewable work visas ``to the millions of
undocumented men and women now employed in the United
States.'' In Mexico that statement was widely interpreted to
mean that once Mexican citizens cross illegally into the
U.S., they would be able to stay and eventually gain
permanent residence. Even though the legislation shows no
signs of getting through Congress this year, a run to the
border has begun.
Ranchers, local law officers and others say that is the
story they have heard over and over from border crossers.
Rancher George Morin, who operates a 12,000-acre spread a few
miles from the border, tells TIME, ``All these people say
they are coming for the amnesty program.
[They] have been told if they get 10 miles off the border,
they are home free.''
The border patrol, by nature an earnest and hard-working
corps, is no match for the onslaught. From last October
through Aug. 25, it apprehended nearly 1.1 million illegals
in all its operations around the U.S. But for every person it
picks up, at least three make it into the country safely. The
number of agents assigned to the 1,951-mile southern border
has grown only somewhat, to more than 9,900 today, up from
8,600 in 2000.
Given that the crisis of illegal immigration bridges the
two main issues in the presidential campaign--the economy and
national security--one might think that the candidates would
pound their podiums with calls for change. But that's not the
case so far. Bush has reaffirmed his pledge for an
immigration policy that would provide worker's permits for
aliens who find jobs, and John Kerry has promised to propose
legislation that would lead to permanent residence for many
illegal-alien workers. Neither candidate has called for
imposing serious fines on the people who encourage illegal
immigration: corporate employers.
On the Mexican side of the border, President Vicente Fox
has actively encouraged the migration. He made his goal clear
in 2000 when he called for a fully open border within 10
years, with ``a free flow of people, workers'' moving between
the two countries. When U.S. opposition to the proposal
intensified after 9/11, Fox sought the same goal through the
back door. He pushed U.S. businesses and city and state
governments to accept as legal identification a card called a
matricula consular, issued by Mexican consulates. That has
allowed illegals to secure driver's licenses and other forms
of identification and open bank accounts. Earlier this year
Fox pushed U.S. bankers to make it easier for Mexicans
working here--some of them legally but most illegally--to
ship U.S. dollars back home.
Because of the exploding illegal population, the money sent
back represents the third largest source of revenue in
Mexico's economy, trailing only oil and manufacturing. That
figure reached a record $13 billion last year.
The current border-enforcement system has fostered a
culture of commuters who come and go with some hardship but
little if any risk of punishment. Thousands cross the U.S.-
Mexico border multiple times.
Under immigration law, they could be imprisoned after the
second offense. But no one is. Nor on the third, fourth or
fifth. In fact, almost never. When asked whether Homeland
Security would initiate criminal proceedings against a person
who, say, is picked up on four occasions coming into the
country illegally, a border-patrol representative said if it
did, the immigration legal system would collapse. Said the
spokeswoman: ``Because there's such a large influx of people
coming across, if we're to put the threshold at four and send
them up [to Tucson, Ariz., or Phoenix, Ariz., for
processing], we'd be sending . . . too many people, and it
would overwhelm the immigration system.''
People who live and work on the Arizona border know all
about being overwhelmed.
Living in the War Zone
When the crowds cross the ranches along and near the
border, they discard backpacks, empty Gatorade and water
bottles and soiled clothes. They turn the land into a vast
latrine, leaving behind revolting mounds of personal refuse
and enough discarded plastic bags to stock a Wal-Mart. Night
after night, they cut fences intended to hold in cattle and
horses. Cows that eat the bags must often be killed because
the plastic becomes lodged between the first and second
stomachs. The immigrants steal vehicles and saddles. They
poison dogs to quiet them. The illegal traffic is so heavy
that some ranchers, because of the disruptions and noise, get
very little sleep at night.
John Ladd, Jr., a thoughtful, soft-spoken rancher just
outside Bisbee, gives new meaning to the word stoic. He is
forced to work the equivalent of several weeks a year to
repair, as best he can, all the damage done to his property
by never-ending swarms of illegal aliens.
``Patience is my forte,'' he says, ``but it's getting
lower.'' The 14,000-acre Ladd ranch, in his mother's family
since the 1800s, is right on the border. Ladd and his wife
and three sons as well as his father and mother have their
homes there. The largely flat, scrub-covered piece of real
estate, with its occasional groves of cottonwoods, spiny
mesquite and clumps of sacaton grass and desert broom,
seems to offer few places to hide. But the land is laced
with arroyos in which scores of people can disappear from
view. Ditches provide trails from the border to Highway
92, a distance of about three miles. That is the route
that Ladd says 200 to 300 illegals take every night as
they enter the U.S. They punch holes in the barbed-wire
border fence and then tear up the many fences intended to
separate the breeding cattle--Brahmin, Angus and
Hereford--that divide the Ladd land.
Ladd doesn't blame the border patrol, most of whose
officers, he says, are doing all they can under the
circumstances. Indeed, apprehensions of illegals in Arizona
have soared from 9% of the nation's total in 1993 to 51% this
year. ``I have real heartache for the agents who are really
working,'' he says. ``They track down the [smugglers], and
the judges let them off, and they get a free trip back to
Mexico, where they can start all over.'' The border-patrol
agents, Ladd feels, ``are responsible guys in a hypocritical
bureaucracy.''
Border crossing at the Ladd ranch is so flagrant that
sometimes the illegals arrive by taxi. A dirt road parallels
the border fence and the Ladd property for several miles, in
full view of border-patrol electronic lookout posts that
ceased functioning long ago. When drivers reach an
appropriate location, passengers pile out and run through one
of the many holes in the fence and make their way across the
ranch.
These gaps present their own special problem. On the other
side are Mexican ranches whose cattle wander onto Ladd's.
``I'm up to 215 Mexican cows that I've put back into
Mexico,'' he says. ``I've got a dual citizen friend--he's
Mexican and American--works on this side for Phelps Dodge
[Mining Co.], but he's got a ranch over at the San Jose
Mountain. So I call him, and then he calls the Mexican cattle
inspector. Then that guy meets me at the border and then
coordinates the cows getting back to the rightful owners in
Mexico.'' Ladd acknowledges that his do-it-yourself cattle
diplomacy is ``breaking both countries' laws.'' How so?
``[In] the United States, you're supposed to quarantine any
Mexican cattle for 30 days, and they test them for disease
and everything else. What the problem is, there isn't enough
cattle inspectors to do that, and then they don't have a
holding corral anymore to do that.''
Why does he spend so much time returning strays? So his
counterparts in Mexico will return the favor because some of
his cattle amble across the border through the same holes.
``The whole reason that I started doing this for the Mexican
ranchers was to show'em, `Yeah, I'm honest. I'm going to give
you yours back, so you give me mine.' And it's worked. But
the whole story is that I've spent money on long-distance and
talked to everybody from the Boundary Commission to USDA to
border patrol to customs and everybody else, and I said, `You
need to do something with your international fence.' '' He's
still waiting.
While the Department of Homeland Security seemingly lacks
the money to secure the border, it does have money to spend
in quixotic ways.
In a $13 million experimental program started in July, the
border patrol will not just drop illegal Mexican aliens at
the border but actually fly them, at taxpayer expense, into
the heart of Mexico. The theory is that it will discourage
them from making the trek north again. But as one illegal, a
Dallas construction worker who was among the 138 aboard the
first flight, told a Los Angeles Times reporter, ``I will be
going back in 15 days. I need to work. The jobs in Mexico
don't pay anything.''
The plight of Jim Dickson, a hospital administrator in
Bisbee, is summed up with one image. It's an ambulance that
pulls into
[[Page H7250]]
tiny Copper Queen Community Hospital and discharges illegal
aliens injured in an auto accident. The border-patrol
officers--on orders from Washington--have refused to take
them onto the hospital property after taking them into
custody. Instead, the officers have called an ambulance for
the injured. If the officers were to arrive at the hospital
to make their drop-off, then the border patrol (make that the
U.S. government) would be responsible for paying the medical
bill. And that's something the Federal Government (make that
Congress) will not do. Instead, the government stiffs
Dickson, 56, the genial CEO of the Copper Queen, a hospital
that dates back to the turn of the previous century, when
Bisbee was the largest town between San Diego and St. Louis,
MO.
Dickson and his community hospital symbolize much of what
has gone wrong with the immigration policies of the U.S. and
Mexico--``the irresponsibility,'' as Dickson puts it
politely, of both governments.
He figures he has another three years, maybe a little
longer, before he might be forced to shut down the hospital.
``We used to have 250 emergency-room visits a month. Now it's
500,'' says Dickson. They range from a lone man or woman
rescued in the desert, suffering from dehydration or a heart
attack, to multiple victims injured when vans jammed with 20
or more illegals crash during high-speed chases. Along the
way the hospital is seeing more and more tuberculosis, aids
and hepatitis. ``We don't have to do disaster drills like
other hospitals,'' Dickson says. ``We have enough real
disasters every year.''
Unlike big governments, small community hospitals cannot
run deficits forever. The Copper Queen's shortfall from
treating illegal aliens grows each year. This year it will be
about $450,000, bringing the total for the past few years to
$1.4 million. With each money-losing year, a tiny piece of
the 14-bed hospital dies. When that happens, the entire
community suffers. Dickson's most agonizing decision came
when he was forced to shutter the long-term-care unit. ``It
was the only place the elderly could go,'' he says. ``If
someone had dementia, we had a room for them.'' But no more.
Now if people who spent their life in Bisbee need elder care,
they must leave the area. ``The more free care we give,''
Dickson says, ``the more we have to ration what's left.''
Dickson emphasizes that not all the free care is going to
illegal aliens passing through on their way to other states.
About half goes to Mexicans who use the Copper Queen as their
personal emergency-care facility. In effect, the hospital,
which performs general surgery, has become the trauma center
for that stretch of northern Mexico. If an ambulance pulls up
to the border-crossing point near Bisbee and announces
``compassionate entry,'' the border patrol waves it through,
and the Copper Queen is compelled to treat the patient. It is
one more program that Congress mandates but does not pay for.
``If you make me treat someone,'' says Dickson, ``then you
need to pay me. You can't have unfunded mandates in a small
hospital.'' Although the Medicare drug act that passed last
year provides for modest payments to hospitals that treat
illegal aliens, Dickson says there is a catch that the U.S.
government has yet to figure out. ``How do I document an
undocumented alien? How am I going to prove I rendered that
care?
They have no Social Security number, no driver's license.''
The limits of compassion are also being tested on the
Tohono O'odham Nation. About twice the size of Delaware, the
tribe's reservation shares 65 miles of border with Mexico.
Like the residents of the small Arizona towns just to the
east, the Native Americans, many of whom live without running
water and electricity, are overwhelmed. The Nation's hospital
is often packed with migrants who become dehydrated while
crossing the scorching desert, where summertime temperatures
reach upwards of 110 (degree). The undermanned tribal police
force helps the border patrol round up as many as 1,500
illegals a day. ``If this were happening in any other city or
part of the country,'' says Vivian Juan Saunders, Tohono
O'odham chairwoman, ``it would be considered a crisis.''
Yet the highest levels of the U.S. and Mexican governments
have orchestrated this situation as a kind of dance: Mexico
sends its poor north to take jobs illegally, and the U.S.
arrests enough of the border crossers to create the illusion
that it is enforcing the immigration laws while allowing the
great majority to get through.
Local lawmen like Jim Elkins and Larry Dever have learned
the dance firsthand, and their towns and counties have to pay
for it.
Elkins has been the police chief in Bisbee for 12 years, on
the force for 30. Dever has been the sheriff of Cochise
County--which includes Bisbee and encompasses an area almost
the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island, with 84 miles along
the Mexican border--for eight years and a deputy before that
for 20 years. The two lawmen handle the same kinds of citizen
demands made on local law-enforcement agencies everywhere--
from murder to drugs to reports of abandoned cats. But never
have they seen the likes of today's work, in which their time
is monopolized by relentless reports of alien groups making
their way through the area. The entries from Bisbee police
logs speak for themselves, these a sampling from Friday, May
7: 9:05 a.m.: ``[Caller] advised udas [undocumented aliens]
on foot, west [of] high school on dirt road. At least 10 in
area. U.S. border patrol advised of same. 38 udas turned over
to U.S. border patrol.''
4:31 p.m.: ``[Officer] located three udas walking on
Arizona and Congdon. All three turned over to usbp [U.S.
border patrol] Naco.''
4:32 p.m.: ``[Officer] copied a report of a silver-in-color
van loaded with approximately 30 udas left Warren. Later
copied vehicle went disabled at mile post 345 on Highway 80.
Thirty to 35 udas were located with vehicle. Udas turned over
to U.S. border patrol.''
7:52 p.m.: ``[Officer] located a group of udas in the area
[of Blackknob and Minder streets]. Fifteen udas turned over
to BP.'' 10:02 p.m.: ``Reported a group of udas gathering on
the bridge on Blackknob at Minder. Officers located six udas.
tot [turned over to] usbp.''
On and on it goes. ``Every day we deal with this,'' says
Elkins.
``People don't feel safe. The smugglers are dangerous
people . . . I find it hard to believe we can get 80 to 100
people in our neighborhoods. They come across in droves.''
Transporting them requires fleets of stolen cars, which
explains why Arizona ranks No. 1 in cars stolen per capita,
with 56,000 ripped off last year. ``This is a lot of work for
us. We're a small department,'' says Elkins, who has 15
officers. ``So much of our time is spent on federal issues.
We should be getting money for this [from the Federal
Government]. But we don't.''
The kinds of crime found in most communities are interwoven
with the illegal-alien traffic on the border. ``Our
methamphetamine problem is alarming,'' Elkins tells TIME.
``The last three homicides here were related to meth. Kids
doing meth will take a load of udas to Tucson or Phoenix for
a couple of hundred dollars.''
Sheriff Dever says more than a quarter of his budget ``is
spent on illegal immigration activities,'' and he points to
the ripple effect through the criminal justice system: ``The
illegal aliens can't make bond, so they spend more time in
jail. They're indigent, so they get a public defender. If
they have health problems, they have to be treated.''
Dever feels overrun and doesn't mind who knows it. He
relates a story about a recent visit by a television crew
that arrived in his office and asked whether he was aware
that a group of presumably illegal aliens was camped out in a
drainage ditch next to the sheriff's headquarters. Sensing a
story, the crew wondered if he was embarrassed by the aliens'
presence. A plainspoken man, Dever said he was not the least
bit embarrassed. Their presence, he said, illustrated quite
pointedly just how pervasive the problem was.
The people who probably should be a little embarrassed are
the folks up the road at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., home of the
U.S. Army's top-secret Intelligence Center. The facility,
which trains and equips military intelligence professionals
assigned around the world, also happens to be a thoroughfare
for illegal aliens and drug smugglers, with mountains on the
base providing a safe haven.
Using some of the same routes as the people smugglers, the
drug runners are well armed, equipped with high-tech
surveillance equipment and don't hesitate to use their
weapons. That's what happened earlier this year, when law-
enforcement officers and Mexican drug runners engaged in a
fire fight at the border in front of a detachment of Marines
just back from Iraq, who were installing a steel fence to
prevent illegal aliens from driving through the flimsy barbed
wire. The Marines, unarmed, watched placidly. None were
injured.
The situation across southern Arizona has spun so far out
of control that many on the border believe a day of reckoning
is fast approaching, when an incident--an accidental
shooting, multiple auto fatalities, a confrontation between
drug and people smugglers--will touch off a higher level of
violence. And the nightmare scenario: some resident
frustrated by the Federal Government's refusal to halt the
onslaught will begin shooting the border crossers on his or
her property. As a rancher summed up the situation: ``If the
law can't protect you, what do you do?'' Everyone, it seems,
is armed, including nurses at the local hospital, who carry
sidearms on their way to work out of fear for their safety.
how corporate america thrives on illegals
Popular belief has it that illegals are crossing the border
in search of work. In fact, many have their jobs lined up
before they leave Mexico. That's because corporate managers
go so far as to place orders with smugglers for a specific
number of able bodies to be delivered. For corporate America,
employing illegal aliens at wages so low few citizens could
afford to take the jobs is great for profits and
stockholders. That's why the payrolls of so many businesses--
meat packers, poultry processors, landscape firms,
construction companies, office-cleaning firms and corner
convenience stores, among others--are jammed with illegals.
And companies are rarely, if ever, punished for it.
A single statistic attests to this. In 2002 the former
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) issued orders
levying fines on only 13 employers for hiring illegal aliens,
a minuscule portion of the thousands of offenders.
Nonenforcement of employer sanctions, which is in keeping
with the Federal Government's nonenforcement of immigration
laws across the board, has been the equivalent of hanging out
a help wanted sign for illegals. Says Steven Camarota,
research
[[Page H7251]]
director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a
nonpartisan think tank on immigration issues: ``They're
telling people, `If you can run that border, we have a job
for you. You can get a driver's license.
You can get a job. You'll be able to send money home.' And
in that context, you'd be stupid not to try. We say, `If you
run the gauntlet, you're in.' That's the incentive they've
created.''
For nearly 20 years, it has been a crime to hire illegal
aliens. Amid an earlier surge in illegal immigration,
Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1986, which provided that employers could be fined up to
$10,000 for every illegal alien they hired, and repeat
offenders could be sent to jail. The act was a response to
the widespread belief that employer sanctions were the only
way to stem the tide. ``We need employer sanctions to reduce
the attraction of jobs in the U.S.,'' an INS spokesman
declared as Congress debated the bill. When President Ronald
Reagan signed it, he called the sanctions the ``keystone'' of
the law. ``It will remove the incentive for illegal
immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which draw
illegal aliens here,'' he said. Making it a crime for a
company to hire an illegal was seen as such a dramatic step
at the time that many worried over the consequences. Phil
Gramm, then a Republican Senator from Texas, said the
legislation ``holds out great peril, peril that employers
dealing in good faith could be subject to criminal penalties
and in fact go to jail for making a mistake in hiring an
illegal alien.''
But companies had little to fear. Neither Reagan nor
subsequent Presidents or Congresses were eager to enforce the
law. The fate of just one provision in the 1986 act is
revealing. As part of the enforcement effort, the law called
for a pilot program to establish a telephone verification
system that employers could use when hiring workers. It would
allow employers to tap into a national data bank to determine
the legal status of a job applicant. Only those who had
legitimate documentation would be approved. With such a
system, employers could no longer use the excuse that they
had no way to verify a potential worker's legal status.
To this day--18 years after passage of the immigration-
reform bill--a nationwide telephone-verification system has
yet to be implemented. A small-scale verification project was
established in 1992, but it covered only nine employers in
five states. In 1996, Congress enacted yet another
immigration-reform bill, and it too provided for a telephone
verification program. Called Basic Pilot, it promised to
provide employers with an easy way to verify a prospective
employee's status. An employer who signed up for the system
could call an 800 number and provide the name, Social
Security number or the alien ID number of a new hire. The
employer would receive either a confirmation that the number
and name were valid or an indication that called for further
checking.
The system is fatally flawed. Basic Pilot is voluntary.
Employers aren't required to sign up. Imagine what compliance
with tax laws would be if filing a 1040 were optional.
For all the rhetoric about the perils of illegal
immigration, Congress shows no interest in cracking down on
employers. When the INS attempted in the past to enforce the
law, lawmakers slapped down the agency. In 1998 the INS
launched Operation Vanguard, a bold attempt to catch
illegals in Nebraska's meat-packing industry. Rather than
raid individual plants to round up undocumented workers,
as it had done for years, the INS aimed Operation Vanguard
at the heart of illicit hiring practices. The agency
subpoenaed the employment records of packing houses, then
sought to match employee numbers with other data like
Social Security numbers.
The INS subpoenaed some 24,000 hiring records and
identified 4,700 people with discrepancies at 40 processing
plants. It then called for further documentation to verify
the workers' status. Nebraska was seen as just the first
step. Plans were in the works to launch similar probes in
other states where large numbers of illegals were known to be
employed in the meat-packing industry. But the INS never got
the chance. A huge outcry in Nebraska from meat-packers,
Hispanic groups, farmers, community organizations, local
politicians and the state's congressional delegation forced
the INS to back off.
Not surprisingly, the INS's employer-sanctions program has
all but disappeared. Investigations targeting employers of
illegal aliens dropped more than 70%, from 7,053 in 1992 to
2,061 in 2002. Arrests on job sites declined from 8,027 in
1992 to 451 in 2002. Perhaps the most dramatic decline: the
final orders levying fines for immigration-law violations
plunged 99%, from 1,063 in 1992 to 13 in 2002.
As might be expected, employers got the message, albeit one
quite different from that spelled out in the 1986 and '96
legislation. Now many corporate managers feel emboldened to
place orders for workers while the prospective employees are
still in Mexico, then assist them in obtaining phony
documentation and transport them hundreds, sometimes
thousands of miles from the interior of Mexico to a
production line in an American factory.
This notion was supported by evidence introduced during an
alien smuggling trial in 2003 involving Tyson Foods Inc.,
which describes itself as ``the world's largest processor and
marketer of chicken, beef and pork.'' In this secretly
recorded conversation, a federal undercover agent posed as an
alien smuggler who was taking an order from the manager of a
chicken-processing plant in Monroe, N.C.:
FEDERAL AGENT: [After explaining that he was a friend of a
mutual friend] He said you wanted to talk to me?
CHICKEN-PLANT MANAGER: Yeah, about help . . . Now I'm going
to need quite a few . . . Starting on the 29th, a Monday, we
are going to start. How many can I get, and how often can you
do it?
FEDERAL AGENT: Well, it's not a problem. I think [the
mutual friend] told me that you wanted 10?
CHICKEN-PLANT MANAGER: Well, 10 at a time. But over the
period of the next three or four months--January, February,
March, April, probably May, stuff like that--I'm going to
replace somewhere between 300 and 400 people, maybe 500. I'm
going to need a lot.
FEDERAL AGENT: . . . I can give you what you need.
CHICKEN-PLANT MANAGER: Now let me ask you this. Do these
people have a photo ID and a Social Security card?
FEDERAL AGENT: No . . . these people come from Mexico. I
pick them up at Del Rio. That's in Texas, after they cross
the river, and then we take them over there, and they get
their cards. [The mutual friend] gets them their cards, I
guess.
CHICKEN-PLANT MANAGER: I need to talk to him about that.
FEDERAL AGENT: About the cards?
CHICKEN-PLANT MANAGER: Yes, some of them that's got the INS
card, and if they put it in a computer . . . if it's not any
good . . . Something happens, and we have to lay them off.
But if they just have got a regular photo ID from anywhere
and a Social Security card, then we don't have to do that.
Securing phony paperwork was part of the scheme, and
corporate plant managers often knew in detail how the
illegals got their papers. This was apparent in the following
exchange between the undercover federal agent arranging for
illegals and the manager of a Tyson facility in Glen Allen,
Va. The manager is talking about a go-between named Amador
who had delivered workers in the past.
TYSON MANAGER: When I went to Tyson and I met Amador, we
had very few Spanish-speaking people. With Amador's help, in
a couple of years, we went from very few to 80%.
FEDERAL AGENT: My job . . . is to get the people in Mexico
to come to the border. When they cross the river, I pick them
up, and then I take them to Amador. And he says he can get
them, you know, their cards--their IDs and their Social
Security cards, and they can go to work that way.
TYSON MANAGER: Excellent. That's what we're needing.
Two Tyson managers later pleaded guilty to conspiring to
hire illegal aliens. Three other managers were acquitted of
the charges, as was the Tyson Corp. itself. The company
insisted that it did not know that illegals were being hired
at some of its plants. A company spokesman said the charges
were ``absolutely false. In reality, the specific charges are
limited to a few managers who were acting outside of
company policy at five of our 57 poultry-processing
plants.''
One of the arguments that is regularly advanced to justify
hiring illegal workers is that they are merely doing jobs
American workers won't take. President Bush echoed the theme
earlier this year when he proposed the immigration-law
changes that would allow millions of illegals to live and
work in the U.S.: ``I put forth what I think is a very
reasonable proposal, and a humane proposal, one that is not
amnesty, but, in fact, recognizes that there are good,
honorable, hardworking people here doing jobs Americans won't
do.''
While there is no doubt that many illegal aliens work long
hours at dirty, dangerous jobs, evidence suggests that it is
low wage rates, not the type of job, that American workers
reject. That also surfaced in the Tyson case. The two Tyson
managers who pleaded guilty contended that they had been
forced to hire illegals because Tyson refused to pay wages
that would let them attract American workers.
One of those two managers was Truley Ponder, who worked at
Tyson's processing plant in Shelbyville, Tenn. In documents
filed as part of Ponder's guilty plea, the U.S. Attorney's
office noted, ``Ponder would have preferred for the plant to
hire `local people,' but this was not feasible in light of
the low wages that Tyson paid, the low unemployment rate in
the area from which the plant drew its work force, and the
general undesirability of poultry processing work when there
were numerous other employment opportunities for unskilled
and low skilled employees.
``Ponder made numerous requests for pay increases in
Shelbyville above and beyond what the company routinely
allowed, but Tyson's corporate management in Springdale
rejected his requests for wage increases for production
workers. This refusal to pay wages sufficient to enable Tyson
to compete for legal laborers, plus the limited work force in
the local area, dictated Ponder's need to bring workers in to
meet Tyson's production demands.'' Needless to say, hiring
illegals had benefits for Tyson. A government consultant
estimated that the company saved millions of dollars in
wages, benefits and other costs.
When asked whether the company has any illegals on its
payroll today, a Tyson spokesman said, ``We have a zero
tolerance for the
[[Page H7252]]
hiring of individuals who are not authorized to work in the
U.S. Unfortunately, the reality for businesses across the
country is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to
determine just who has proper authorization. The tangle of
laws and the increasing sophistication of those providing
false documentation puts employers in a very tough position .
. . Given the scope of undocumented immigration to the U.S.,
we and countless other American businesses face a very
difficult task in trying to figure out who is eligible to
work.''
The impact of the below-market wage earners tends to fall
hardest on unskilled workers at the bottom of the wage
pyramid. ``Any sizable increase in the number of immigrants
will inevitably lower wages for some American workers,'' says
George Borjas, a professor at the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard. Borjas calculates that all
immigration, by increasing the labor supply from 1980 to
2000, ``reduced the average annual earnings of native-born
men by an estimated $1,700, or roughly 4%.'' Borjas says
African Americans and native-born Hispanics pay the steepest
price because they are more often in direct competition with
immigrants for jobs.
Why Alien Criminals Are at Large in the U.S.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of having 15 million
illegals at large in society is Congress's failure to insist
that federal agencies separate those who pose a threat from
those who don't. The open borders, for example, allow
illegals to come into the country, commit crimes and return
home with little fear of arrest or punishment.
From Oct. 1, 2003, until July 20, 2004, the border patrol's
Tucson sector stopped 9,051 persons crossing into the country
illegally who had criminal records in the U.S., meaning they
committed crimes here, returned to Mexico, then were trying
to re-enter the country. Among them: 378 with active warrants
for their arrest. In one week, said border patrol spokeswoman
Andrea Zortman, there were two with outstanding ``warrants
for homicide.''
And those were just the illegals the border patrol
determined had arrest records. Most go undetected. Reason:
the border patrol's electronic fingerprint-identification
system, which allows officers to determine how many times an
alien has been caught sneaking into the U.S., has only a
limited amount of criminal-background data. The FBI maintains
a separate electronic fingerprint-identification system that
covers everyone ever charged with a crime. In true
bureaucratic fashion, the two computer systems do not talk to
each other. In the 1990s, the two agencies were directed to
integrate their systems.
They are still working at it. The most optimistic
completion date is 2008. Until then, illegals picked up at
the border may have any number of criminal charges pending,
but the arresting officers will never know and will allow the
intruders to return home.
In any event, the numbers suggest that tens of thousands of
criminals, quite possibly hundreds of thousands, treat the
southern border as a revolving door to crimes of opportunity.
The situation is so out of control that of the 400,000
illegal aliens who have been ordered to be deported, 80,000
have criminal records--and the agency in charge, the Homeland
Security Department, does not have a clue as to the
whereabouts of any of them, criminal or noncriminal,
including those from countries that support terrorism.
What's more, those figures are growing. Every day, prisons
across the U.S. release alien convicts who have completed
their court-ordered sentences. In many cases, the INS has
filed detainers, meaning the prisons are obliged to hold the
individuals until they can be picked up by immigration
agents and returned to their native countries. But state
law enforcement authorities are not permitted to keep
prisoners beyond their original sentence. When Homeland
Security agents fail to show up promptly, which is often,
the alien convicts are released back into the community.
In addition to all these, at least 4 million people who
arrived in the U.S. legally on work, tourist or education
visas have decided to ignore immigration laws and stay
permanently.
Again, Homeland Security does not have the slightest idea
where these visa scofflaws are.
The government's record in dealing with the 400,000 people
it has ordered to be deported is dismal. A sampling of cases
last year by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector
General (oig) found that of illegal aliens from countries
supporting terrorism who had been ordered to be deported,
only 6% of those not already in custody were actually
removed. Of 114 Iranians with final orders for removal, just
11 could be found and were deported. Of 67 Sudanese with
final-removal orders, only one was deported. And of 46 Iraqis
with final-removal orders, only four were sent packing. All
the rest, presumably, were living with impunity somewhere in
the U.S. Those statistics tell only part of the story. Most
people charged with an immigration-law violation do not even
bother to show up for a court hearing. Imagine for a moment a
majority of people charged with a crime in state or federal
courts flouting the indictment or charge and refusing to
appear in court. They would be swiftly arrested.
But immigration law marches to a different drummer. Most
illegals, including those with arrest records, are not jailed
while awaiting a hearing. That's because Congress has failed
to appropriate enough money to build sufficient holding
facilities. Rather, the immigrants are released on their
promise to return. They don't. And the odds are they won't be
found. The oig investigation revealed that of 204 aliens
ordered to be removed in absentia, only 14 were eventually
located and shipped out.
The situation is even worse when it comes to those aliens
whose requests for asylum are rejected and who are ordered to
be deported.
The oig study found that only 3% of those seeking asylum
who were ordered removed were ultimately located and
deported. That pattern, like failed immigration-law
enforcement across the board, bodes well for potential
terrorists. In the 1990s, half a dozen aliens applied for
asylum before committing terrorist acts. Among them: Ahmad
Ajaj and Ramzi Yousef, who entered the country in 1991 and
1992, respectively, seeking asylum. According to the oig,
Ajaj left the U.S. and returned in 1992 with a phony
passport. He was convicted of passport fraud. Yousef
completed the required paperwork and was given a date for his
asylum hearing. In the meantime, in 1993, the two men helped
commit the first World Trade Center attack, for which they
were convicted and imprisoned. At the time, Yousef's
application for asylum was still pending.
So what does the failed immigration system mean for
ordinary people?
Just ask Sister Helen Lynn Chaska. Actually, you can't. You
will have to ask her family and friends.
It's the waning days of summer in 2002 in Klamath Falls,
Ore., a city of about 19,000 on the eastern edge of the
Cascade Mountains. Two nuns who belonged to the Order of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary in Bellevue, Wash., had made one of
their periodic trips to Klamath Falls to carry out missionary
work. As they had in the past, Sister Helena Maria (her
church name), 53, and Sister Mary Louise, 52, checked into a
Best Western motel. On Saturday, Aug. 31, they spent the
evening proselytizing and selling religious items outside an
Albertsons supermarket.
After returning to the motel, the two set out on their
ritual prayer walk shortly after midnight. They were dressed
in the blue habits they always wore as they walked on a
darkened bike path behind the motel, reciting their rosaries.
As they reached the midway point in their prayers and turned
back toward the motel, they heard a bicycle coming up behind
them. A Hispanic male in his 30s or 40s got off, grabbed both
women and began kissing them. The more they resisted, the
angrier he became. He finally punched Sister Mary Louise in
the right eye so hard that she fell and hit her head on a
rock, leaving her dazed. While holding Sister Helena Maria so
tightly by the rosary knotted around her neck that she gasped
for breath, he raped her first and then raped and sodomized
Sister Mary Louise and raped Sister Helena Maria a second
time. The man pulled the veil over Sister Mary Louise, told
her not to move or he would kill her, climbed back on his MTB
Super Crown bike and pedaled off. Sister Helena Maria was
dead. The rosary had been wound so tightly, its marks were
embedded in her neck.
Later that day, police tracked a suspect to another motel,
where they began questioning him. He gave his name as Jesus
Franco Flores, which turned out to be one of many names he
used. In the end, he confessed to beating and raping both
nuns. He was not supposed to be in the U.S.; he had been
deported at least three times. By his account, his unlawful
entries into the U.S. began in 1986 at the age of 17. Under
the name Victor Manuel Batres-Martinez, which may have been
his legal name, he found his way to Oregon, where he was
arrested for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. His
sentence to a juvenile facility was suspended, with the
understanding that the INS would deport him. The agency did
so and in May 1987 granted him a voluntary return to Mexico,
with a notation on government records that ``subject has many
good productive years ahead of him.''
Assuming he went as the INS promised, he didn't stay long.
In September that year, he was arrested and convicted of
theft and shoplifting in Wenatchee, Wash., under the name
Manuel Martinez. Two months later, he was convicted of
felony sales of marijuana and hashish in Los Angeles and
sent to jail for 60 days. In March 1988 he was arrested in
Los Angeles, once for robbery, once for possession of a
controlled substance. Another possession arrest followed
in April.
In August he was arrested in Los Angeles for robbery. In
December he was sent to prison in California for second-
degree robbery and kidnapping. While there, he was treated
for what was deemed to be ``a significant psychiatric
disorder.''
In January 1992, after his release, the INS sent him back
to Mexico by way of Nogales, Ariz. Six months later, he was
back again, spotted by border-patrol officers as he attempted
to come back into the U.S. near El Paso, Texas. When agents
tried to stop him, he ran into rush-hour traffic on
Interstate 10, ``narrowly avoiding collision with several
cars,'' according to immigration records. He subsequently was
arrested, that time under the name Mateo Jimenez, and ordered
to be returned to Mexico. It didn't stick. In November he was
arrested by Portland, Ore., police for possession and
delivery of a controlled substance. He never showed up for
court appearances.
On two occasions in January 2002, border-patrol agents
again apprehended him as he tried to re-enter the U.S. Both
times they returned him to Mexico. If the border patrol's
[[Page H7253]]
electronic fingerprint identification system had been in
synch with the FBI's, the agents would have discovered
Batres-Martinez's extensive criminal record. Given his prior
deportations, Batres-Martinez could have been charged with
re-entry after deportation, a felony that carries a
substantial prison sentence. In any event, Batres-Martinez
told police in Klamath Falls that he entered the U.S. on Aug.
11, 2002, that time coming through New Mexico. He said he
hopped a freight train for San Bernardino, Calif., and looked
for work, without success, from Los Angeles to Stockton. When
he heard that he might have better luck in Portland, he
hopped another train but got mixed up in a freight yard and
ended up in Klamath Falls.
To avoid the death penalty, Batres-Martinez pleaded guilty
to the murder of Sister Helena Maria, attempted aggravated
murder of Sister Mary Louise and rape of both nuns. He was
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of
parole.
As for U.S. immigration authorities, they were
characteristically ineffectual. On Sept. 5, four days after
the murder, the INS faxed an immigration detainer to the
Klamath County jail, concerning Maximiliano Silerio Esparza,
also known as Victor Batres-Martinez: ``You are advised that
the action below has been taken by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service concerning the above-named inmate of
your institution: Investigation has been initiated to
determine whether this person is subject to removal from the
United States.''
Both political parties and their candidates pay lip service
to controlling the borders. But neither President Bush nor
Senator Kerry supports a system that would end the incentives
for border crossers by cracking down on the employers of
illegals. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border
Patrol Council, a labor organization that represents 10,000
border-patrol employees, believes the solution is obvious.
The U.S. government, he says, should ``issue a single
document that's counterfeit proof, that has an embedded
photograph, that says this person has a right to work in the
U.S. And that document is the Social Security card. It's not
a national ID card.
It's a card that you have to carry when you apply for a job
and only then. The employers run it through a scanner, and
they get an answer in short order that says, Yes, you may
hire, or No, you may not. That would cut off 98% of all the
traffic across the border. With your work force of 10,000
border-patrol agents, you actually could control the
borders.''
But Bonner doesn't see that happening anytime soon because
of pressure from corporate America. And all the available
legislative evidence of the past quarter-century supports
that view. ``All the politicians--it doesn't matter which
side of the aisle you're on--rely heavily on the donations
from Big Business,'' he says, ``and Big Business likes this
system [of cheap illegal labor].
Unfortunately, in the post-9/11 world, this system puts us
in jeopardy.''
In the 9/11 commission's final report, now on the best-
seller lists, the panel of investigators took note of the
immigration breakdown in general, saying that ``two systemic
weaknesses came together in our border system's inability to
contribute to an effective defense against the 9/11 attacks:
a lack of well-developed counterterrorism measures as a part
of border security and an immigration system not able to
deliver on its basic commitments, much less support
counterterrorism. These weaknesses have been reduced but are
far from being overcome.''
Folks on the border who must deal daily with the throngs of
illegals are not optimistic that the Federal Government will
change its ways.
As Cochise County Sheriff Dever dryly observes, ``People in
Washington get up in the morning, their laundry is done,
their floors are cleaned, their meals are cooked. Guess who's
doing that?''
____________________