Segment 2 Of 2 Previous Hearing Segment(1)
SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
Page 126 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
FUNDING FOR IMMIGRATION IN THE PRESIDENT'S 2005 BUDGET
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Immigration,
Border Security, and Claims,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John N. Hostettler (Chair of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. The Subcommittee will come to order.
Today, the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims will hold its second of two hearings examining funding for immigration-related programs in the President's FY 2005 budget. At our hearing 2 weeks ago, the Subcommittee heard from Administration witnesses on their agencies' requests for funding. At today's hearing, we will listen to a spectrum of private witnesses. Two of our witnesses head organizations representing immigration enforcement officers. One of the witnesses comes to us from the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. The fourth, a former INS adjudicator, inspector, and special agent, will provide us with the perspective of those on the front lines of immigration enforcement and adjudications.
Page 127 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
At its February 25, 2004, hearing, the Subcommittee examined a number of increases in funding in the President's FY 2005 budget, and I would like to highlight a few.
The budget requests an additional $281 million for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Of that increase, $23 million will go to worksite enforcement, more than doubling the resources devoted to this priority. An additional $30 million is to be directed to ensure that aliens convicted of crimes in the U.S. are identified and processed before they are released back into society. The President also requests an increase of $50 million to apprehend alien absconders and $5 million for additional detention bed space to ensure that aliens appear for their immigration proceedings and that aliens ordered removed actually leave.
In addition to these increases, the President also requests an additional $257 million for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which enforces the laws along the border and at the ports. Of this $257 million, $64 million is directed toward Border Patrol surveillance and sensor technology. Such technology is a force multiplier which frees Border Patrol agents to enforce the law more vigilantly.
The FY 2005 budget also contains an additional $58 million for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This includes additional funding to reduce the backlog of applications and to enable the agency to meet the goal of a 6-month standard for processing all applications by FY 2006.
In connection with backlog reduction, there is one increase in the FY 2005 budget that I think bears notice that we did not discuss at the last hearing. The Homeland Security budget requests an increase of 16 full-time positions for the Office of the Immigration Ombudsman. This office, created by the Homeland Security Act, is charged with proposing changes to problems encountered by individuals in dealing with citizenship and immigration services. These additional positions will allow the ombudsman to address systemic flaws in our immigration application processes, flaws that lead to wasteful redundancies and unnecessary delays.
Page 128 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Critics have raised issues with priorities that have not seen funding increases in the FY 2005 budget, however. In particular, there is no funding for additional Border Patrol agents in the budget, ending a trend that lasted for several years. Further, critics have complained that there is not enough funding to reduce the backlog in immigration benefits applications.
We will explore these issues and others today in reviewing with our panel how the President's FY 2005 budget responds to the many immigration challenges facing the United States today. Those are reducing the large illegal alien population, protecting the American people from alien criminals and terrorists, and ensuring that applications for immigration benefits are adjudicated correctly and in a timely manner.
At this time I will turn to Members of the Subcommittee who may have opening statements. If not, I will turn to introductions of the panelists.
Today, T.J. Bonner has joined us and has served as president of the National Border Patrol Council since 1989. He joined the Border Patrol as an agent in 1978. He currently serves as a senior Border Patrol agent and patrols the San Diego sector. Mr. Bonner graduated magna cum laude from Los Angeles Valley College with an associate of arts degree.
Timothy Danahey is the national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. He also serves as special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Mr. Danahey was hired by NCIS in 1985 after 7 years' service as a patrol officer in Stonington, CT. Mr. Danahey received his degree in psychology at the University of Rhode Island. He has also completed both the U.S. Air Force Air Command Staff College and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff Officers College. In addition to his duties at FLEOA and NIS duties, Mr. Danahey is an Army Reserve officer.
Page 129 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Michael Cutler is currently a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. Mr. Cutler began his 30-year career with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, as an inspector at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York in 1971. He thereafter served as an examiner in the Adjudications Branch at the New York District Office. In 1975, Mr. Cutler became an INS special agent in the New York Service Office. He retired from the INS in 2002. Mr. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York with a B.A. in communication arts and sciences.
Demetrios G. Papademetriou is president, co-director, and co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute where he concentrates on U.S. immigration policy and related subjects. Previously he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he directed and co-directed the International Migration Policy Program. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment, Dr. Papademetriou was the Director for Immigration Policy and Research at the U.S. Department of Labor and the Chair of the Secretary of Labor's Immigration Policy Task Force. He also served as Chair of the Migration Committee of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or the OECD. Dr. Papademetriou received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Maryland.
Gentlemen, thank you for appearing today. Mr. Bonner, the Chair now recognizes you for 5 minutes for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF T.J. BONNER, NATIONAL PRESIDENT, NATIONAL BORDER PATROL COUNCIL, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO
Page 130 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. BONNER. Thank you, Chairman Hostettler and Members of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to present the views and concerns of front-line Border Patrol employees regarding the Administration's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.
For the past several decades, illegal immigration has been out of control. Millions of foreigners cross our borders illegally every year, and hundreds of thousands more violate the terms of their authorized temporary visits. Every legislative attempt to solve these problems has failed.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, perpetrated by foreign nationals should have served as a wake-up call to fix our failed immigration system. Sadly, little has changed since then.
Although most politicians claim to support the strict enforcement of our immigration laws, many of their actions belie their rhetoric. A case in point is the Administration's budget request for fiscal year 2005.
Despite an overall increase of $3.6 billion for all DHS programs, the funding for one of its most important programs, the U.S. Border Patrol, is being slashed significantly. Its budget is slated for an actual decrease of $18.4 million. Another $74.2 million is being reallocated for sensors and surveillance technology and unmanned aerial vehicles. This de facto cut totals $92.6 million, or 5 percent of the Border Patrol's overall budget of $1.85 billion.
Page 131 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Substituting detection technology for staffing and equipment designed for apprehending lawbreakers is unwise. While such technology can be useful in pinpointing the location of those who cross our borders illegally, it cannot catch a single violator. Only trained people can accomplish that task. Instead of augmenting the staffing of the Border Patrol, however, the Administration's budget proposal eliminates 19 agent positions. Inexplicably, all of the other occupations in the Department are slated to add positions or at least remain at the same level.
While technologies such as remote cameras and sensors are undoubtedly useful in serving as extra eyes and ears, they can never replace the hands that catch violators. New technology should not come at the expense of staffing and other essential equipment. If such technology is deemed necessary, additional funding should be allocated for its acquisition.
If our borders were under any semblance of control, this reduction and shifting of funding might make sense. With multitudes continuing to stream across our borders and elude apprehension on a daily basis, however, it is ridiculous. Until control of the borders is achieved, it is irresponsible to propose cutting the Border Patrol's budget and staffing. As long as our borders remain porous, they are just as open to terrorists and other criminals as they are to illegal aliens.
About a decade ago, the Border Patrol embarked on a forward deployment enforcement strategy that was designed to discourage illegal immigration. It never achieved that goal, and the strategy makes no sense at all given the new primary mission of securing the homeland and protecting it against conventional and unconventional attacks in the United States.
In order to control illegal immigration, the employer sanctions laws need to be strengthened. The revised laws need to make it simple for employers to determine if a person is authorized to work in this country, difficult to circumvent, and onerous to violate. Although significant resources would initially be required to enforce these laws, the payoff would be well worth the effort and expense. Without the draw of jobs, illegal immigration would be reduced dramatically, allowing the Border Patrol and Inspections branches to concentrate on terrorists and other criminals. As it stands now, it is far too easy for these dangerous elements to slip in with the multitudes of illegal aliens.
Page 132 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Amnesty for lawbreakers cannot be part of any law designed to discourage illegal immigration, as it has the exact opposite effect. Despite its claims to the contrary, the Administration's proposed guest-worker program would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. The high levels of illegal immigration that exist today are directly attributable to the 1986 amnesty.
The Administration's budget request also seeks significant funding to implement a new human resources system within the Department of Homeland Security. The unfair system that was developed over the objections of employees will discourage even the most patriotic individuals from serving in the Department. The proposed pay system will significantly decrease average employee wages over time in order to balance the Department's budget and reward a few favored employees. The proposed disciplinary system will strip away meaningful appeal rights, allowing managers to unjustly punish employees for illegitimate reasons. The proposed labor-management relations system will deprive front-line employees of a voice in the decisions that affect them.
In conclusion, the American people, as well as the courageous men and women who risk their lives every day protecting our borders, deserve far better than the Administration's budget offers. The security of our Nation depends upon a comprehensive and effective immigration policy administered by a dedicated and highly motivated workforce. The Administration's budget proposal not only fails to advance any of these critical goals, it represents a tremendous step backward.
Thank you, and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
Page 133 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bonner follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF T.J. BONNER
On behalf of the 10,000 Border Patrol employees that it represents, the National Border Patrol Council thanks you for the opportunity to present our views and concerns regarding the Administration's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.
For the past several decades, illegal immigration has been out of control. Millions of foreigners cross our borders illegally every year, and hundreds of thousands more violate the terms of their authorized temporary visits. Every legislative attempt to solve these problems has failed.
The terrible events that unfolded on the morning of September 11, 2001 served to painfully remind us that we are not immune from terrorist attacks on our home soil. Without a doubt, our immigration laws and policies allowed all 19 of the perpetrators of that crime to enter and remain in the United States. Today, many of the same flaws and gaps that allowed those attacks to occur have not been fixed. This is unfathomable. As the philosopher George Santayana wisely noted in 1905, ''[t]hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.''
Although most politicians claim to support the strict enforcement of our immigration laws, many of their actions belie their rhetoric. A case in point is the Administration's budget request for Fiscal Year 2005.
Page 134 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Despite an overall increase of $3,600,000,000.00 for all DHS programs, the funding for one of its most important programs is being slashed significantly. The budget of the U.S. Border Patrol, the only agency that patrols the 6,000 miles between the land ports of entry along the borders between the United States and its two contiguous neighbors, Mexico and Canada, is slated for an actual decrease of $18,395,000.00. Another $64,162,000.00 would be reallocated for ''sensors and surveillance technology'' and still another $10,000,000.00 reallocated for ''unmanned aerial vehicles.'' This de facto cut totals $92,557,000.00, or 5% of the Border Patrol's total budget of $1,856,244,000.00. Substituting detection technology for staffing and equipment designed for apprehending lawbreakers is unwise. While such technology can be useful in pinpointing the location of those who cross our borders illegally, it cannot catch a single violator. Only trained people can accomplish that task. Instead of augmenting the staffing of the Border Patrol, however, the Administration's budget proposal eliminates 19 agent positions. Inexplicably, all of the other occupations in the Department are slated to add positions or at least remain at the same level.
The foregoing should not be construed as resistance to technology, but rather as a criticism of the theory that technology can replace human beings in labor-intensive tasks such as apprehending people who are determined to sneak into our country. While technologies such as remote cameras and sensors are undoubtedly useful in serving as extra eyes and ears, they can never replace the hands that catch violators. New technology should not come at the expense of staffing and other essential equipment. If such technology is deemed necessary, additional funding should be allocated for its acquisition.
If our borders were under any semblance of control, this reduction and shifting of funding might make sense. With multitudes continuing to stream across our borders and elude apprehension on a daily basis, however, it is ridiculous. Until control of the borders is achieved, it is irresponsible to propose cutting the Border Patrol's budget and staffing. As long as our borders remain porous, they are just as open to terrorists and other criminals as they are to illegal aliens.
Page 135 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
About a decade ago, the Border Patrol began deploying many of its resources in highly-visible, static positions along the immediate border, generally in close proximity to major urban areas. The theory behind this new enforcement strategy was that large concentrations of personnel would discourage illegal aliens from crossing in those areas, and the terrain and remoteness of the remaining areas would accomplish the same goal. Experience has shown that the latter part of that assumption severely underestimated the desperation and determination of the people who cross our borders. In fact, there has been no reduction in the volume of illegal immigration. The folly of this strategy is magnified when viewed in light of the Department's new primary stated goal of securing the homeland and protecting it against conventional and unconventional attacks in the United States. It is inconceivable that terrorists and other criminals will be deterred at all by the increased presence of uniformed agents.
In order to control illegal immigration, the employer sanctions laws need to be strengthened. The revised laws need to make it simple for employers to determine if a person is authorized to work in this country, difficult to circumvent, and onerous to violate. Although significant resources would initially be required to enforce these laws, the payoff would be well worth the effort and expense. Without the draw of jobs, illegal immigration would be reduced dramatically, allowing the Border Patrol and Inspections branches to concentrate on terrorists and other criminals. As it stands now, it is far too easy for these dangerous elements to slip in with the multitudes of illegal aliens.
Amnesty for lawbreakers cannot be part of any law designed to discourage illegal immigration, as it has the exact opposite effect. Despite its claims to the contrary, the Administration's proposed guest-worker program would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.(see footnote 4) The high levels of illegal immigration that exist today are directly attributable to the 1986 amnesty.
Page 136 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Given the Administration's support of amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, the proposed budget and personnel cuts for the Border Patrol should probably not come as a surprise to anyone. Nevertheless, they are disappointing and demoralizing to the front-line workers who risk their lives on a daily basis enforcing our Nation's immigration laws. The Administration's budget request also seeks significant funding to implement a new human resources system within the Department of Homeland Security. If the proposed system actually held out the promise of improving the existing system, it might be worth the increase sought by the Department. Unfortunately, instead of capitalizing on the opportunity to improve the current system, the ideologues in the Administration decided to combine the worst practices imaginable without regard to the consequences. The proposed pay system will significantly decrease average employee wages over time in order to balance the Department's budget and reward a few favored employees. The proposed disciplinary system will strip away meaningful appeal rights, allowing managers to unjustly punish employees for illegitimate reasons. The proposed labor-management relations system will deprive front-line employees of a voice in the decisions that affect them. Taken together, these draconian measures will discourage even the most patriotic individuals from serving in the Department.
In conclusion, the American people, as well as the courageous men and women who risk their lives every day protecting our borders, deserve far better than the Administration's budget offers. The security of our Nation depends upon a comprehensive and effective immigration policy administered by a dedicated and highly-motivated workforce. The Administration's budget proposal not only fails to advance any of these critical goals, it represents a tremendous step backward.
Page 137 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Bonner.
Mr. Danahey, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY J. DANAHEY, NATIONAL PRESIDENT, FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS ASSOCIATION
Mr. DANAHEY. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to testify on such an important and vital subject. I respectfully request my written submission be admitted to the record.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Without objection.
Mr. DANAHEY. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association—FLEOA—is a voluntary, nonpartisan professional association. FLEOA currently represents over 20,000 Federal law enforcement officers and is the largest association for Federal officers of its kind.
In April 2003, FLEOA testified and stated it was our belief that the creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, within the Department of Homeland Security was exactly what was needed to address systemic problems of the former INS and its inability to effectively enforce the immigration laws. We appreciated the Committee seeking our input on concerns we wish to discuss in the spirit of assisting you to make the Department more efficient and effective.
Page 138 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
As a national officer of FLEOA, I represent many of the outstanding men and women who enforce our Nation's immigration laws. These men and women risk their lives every day in an ever increasingly dangerous line of work.
I would like to highlight six points in my testimony.
Pay parity. It is our belief that one of the biggest obstacles to effective immigration enforcement is the fact that ICE special agents are still being paid at very different levels, depending on which agency they migrated from. We recommend an immediate across-the-board increase for all legacy INS special agents as well as all agents currently assigned the 1811 job classification at DHS.
Interior enforcement. Currently, the number of aliens illegally in the United States is estimated at about 8.5 million, or 28 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States. The annual increase in the undocumented population is in excess of 500,000 per year and could possibly be higher for recent years. The results from Census 2000 call into question some of the basic information regarding immigration which we relied upon in the past.
Alien smuggling has become more sophisticated, complex, organized, and flexible. Thousands of aliens annually seek immigration benefits fraudulently.
FLEOA testified in April 2003 that ICE will need to address problems concerning interior capacity issues in relation to US-VISIT, Student Exchange and Visitor Information System, SEVIS, and other law enforcement agency referrals.
Page 139 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
FLEOA feels that ICE has begun to address these issues as part of its overall immigration enforcement strategy through the creation of ICE's Compliance Enforcement Unit and the strengthening of its Worksite Enforcement Units. ICE management has stated that the FY 2005 budget will allow them to more than double existing funds devoted to worksite enforcement and allow ICE to devote more special agents to these efforts.
Detention and removal. FLEOA testified in April 2003 that the administrative mission relating to ICE's immigration enforcement such as Institutional Removal Program, IRP, and county jail cases be assigned to the Detention and Removal component. It is FLEOA's belief that ICE would be better off served by allowing ICE special agents to focus on the complex criminal matters as well as matters relating to national security.
International affairs. In FLEOA's April 2003 testimony, we recommended the consolidation of DHS overseas operations. FLEOA stated that these functions should include oversight of visa issuance at overseas posts. Through the creation of ICE's Office of International Affairs, ICE now has the ability to provide visa security by working cooperatively with U.S. consular offices to review select visa applications.
Immigration fraud. In previous testimony, FLEOA cited a 2002 GAO report titled ''Immigration Benefit Fraud, Focused Approach Needed to Address Problems.'' The GAO noted that the former INS did not know the extent of the immigration benefit fraud program problem. Excuse me. The GAO reported that the former INS interior enforcement strategy failed to lay out a comprehensive plan to identify how components within and among service centers and district offices are to coordinate their immigration benefit fraud investigations.
Page 140 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
FLEOA notes that ICE has created Benefit Fraud Units in Vermont, Texas, and California as a means of identifying and targeting fraud.
Alien smuggling. FLEOA notes that ICE has failed to indicate a budget increase in support of efforts to investigate alien-smuggling and human-trafficking organizations. Currently, there is no stated mission involving the targeting of human-trafficking and alien-smuggling organizations within ICE.
We recommend that by making human-trafficking and alien-smuggling investigations one of ICE's primary enforcement functions, there exists a need to immediately fund and staff this component to levels to allow it to be effective.
In summary, we note that many of ICE's initiatives were suggested during FLEOA's April 2003 testimony before this Committee. We will never restore domestic tranquility or integrity into the legal immigration process until we begin to establish meaningful rather than token control over our borders and the interior of the United States through comprehensive immigration law enforcement.
On behalf of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association and the many dedicated men and women who risk their lives enforcing our immigration laws, I appreciate your time and attention and the opportunity to share our views. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.
Page 141 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
[The prepared statement of Mr. Danahey follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY J. DANAHEY
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I am honored to testify on such an important and vital subject. I respectfully request my written submission be admitted to the record.
The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association—FLEOA, is a voluntary, non-partisan professional association. FLEOA currently represents over 20,000 federal law enforcement officers and is the largest association for federal officers of its kind. Several years ago, FLEOA joined with all of the major state and local national police associations to form the Law Enforcement Steering Committee. The Law Enforcement Steering Committee includes the following prominent and important organizations: Fraternal Order of Police, National Troopers Coalition, Major Cities Chiefs of Police, Police Executive Research Forum, the National Association of Police Organizations, National Organization of Blacks in Law Enforcement, the International Brotherhood of Police Organizations and the Police Foundation. In becoming a part of this group, federal agents were able to add their voices to those of the over half a million state and local officers already commenting on the issues that our Association considers to be of greatest importance. I tell you today, as FLEOA has told our membership and the Law Enforcement Steering Committee for the past several years that the continuing revitalization of immigration law enforcement is one of our highest priorities. In April 2003, FLEOA testified before this committee and stated that it was our belief that the creation of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) within the Department of Homeland Security was exactly what was needed to address systemic problems of the former INS and its inability to effectively enforce the immigration laws. We appreciated the committee seeking our input on concerns we wish to discuss in the spirit of assisting you to make the Department more efficient and effective.
Page 142 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
As a National Officer of FLEOA, I represent many of the outstanding men and women who enforce our Nation's immigration laws. These men and women risk their lives every day in an ever-increasingly dangerous line of work.
In our review of the President's Fiscal Year 2005 Budget regarding funds requested for immigration enforcement, we note that ICE has requested $4.0 billion for the FY 2005 budget, $302 million more than FY 2004, representing an increase of 8 percent. The requested increase includes $186 million for ICE to fund improvements in immigration enforcement both domestically and overseas, and approximately $100 million to fund the detention and removal of illegal aliens. We note that many of ICE's initiatives were suggested during FLEOA's April, 2003 testimony before this committee.
PAY PARITY
FLEOA supports ICE's budget request, although we note that its ability to effectively enforce our Nation's immigration laws is contingent upon ICE's ability to immediately address issues regarding pay equity within its Special Agent ranks. It is our belief that the one of the biggest obstacles to effective immigration enforcement is the fact that ICE Special Agents are still being paid at very different levels; depending on which agency, they migrated. The problems associated with this are self-evident. We recommend an immediate across the board increase for all legacy INS Special Agents as well as all agents currently assigned the 1811 job classification within the DHS.
While ICE represents a significant advancement in the protection of the homeland, legacy INS Special Agents have been left behind when it comes to the issue of pay parity. In recent years, legacy Customs Special Agents had their positions upgraded to allow for progression to a GS–13 pay grade, while INS Special Agents could only progress to the GS–12 pay grade, a difference of several thousand dollars. With the consolidation of the two agencies under ICE, the practice of receiving less pay for the same position in the same agency has become a serious issue. FLEOA notes that legacy INS Agents have proved invaluable in the fight against terrorism, and will continue to do so under ICE.
Page 143 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
In the nearly one year since the creation of ICE, legacy INS Special Agents have been assured that the issue of pay parity is a top priority. However, in recent months it has become clear that there is neither the willpower nor apparently the resources to accomplish this important task. Meanwhile, ICE continues to hire new Agents, all of whom can progress to the GS–13 pay grade. This situation severely undermines morale. Far from being an issue of money, this is an issue of morale and equity. All ICE Special Agents bear the same risks in protecting the homeland.
ICE will likely implement a new pay-banding compensation system in the near future, abolishing the former pay-grade arrangement. This leaves legacy INS Special Agents vulnerable to perpetually earning less than former Customs Agents. With less than 2000 Special Agents nationwide, the cost is minimal.
INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT
Currently the number of aliens illegally in the United States is estimated at about 8.5 million or 28% of the foreign-born population in the United States. The annual increase in the undocumented population is in excess of 500,000 per year and could possibly be higher for recent years. The results from Census 2000 call into question some of the basic information regarding immigration which we relied upon in the past. The surprising figures from the Census suggest strongly that immigration levels, particularly undocumented and temporary immigration, are substantially higher than most had suspected.
Through its FY 2005 budget request, ICE has shown a commitment to the ''base'' Immigration Mission—starting with the development of a meaningful interior enforcement strategy. FLEOA notes that ICE has began to address concerns raised in a 2002 GAO Report titled ''Immigration Enforcement, Challenges to Implementing the INS Interior Enforcement Strategy''. In this report, the GAO noted that having an effective interior enforcement strategy is an essential complement to having an effective border strategy. The GAO noted that the former INS faced numerous and daunting enforcement issues such as the potential pool of removable criminal aliens and fugitives that number in the hundreds of thousands. The number of individuals smuggled into the United States has increased and alien smuggling has become more sophisticated, complex, organized and flexible. Thousands of aliens annually seek immigration benefits fraudulently. The GAO concluded that the former INS' tasks with regard to interior enforcement are considerable given the nature, scope, and magnitude of illegal activity.
Page 144 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
FLEOA testified in April 2003, that ICE will need to address problems concerning interior capacity issues in relation to US-VISIT, Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS) and other law enforcement agency referrals. FLEOA testified that budget formulation, budget execution, resource deployment, personnel staffing, position management and position classification must address the lack of Special Agents, Deportation Officers, and other clerical staff actually in place to address ''leads'' from US-VISIT and SEVIS, as well as from sources to include federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Systems such as US-VISIT and SEVIS will be rendered toothless if ICE doesn't have the interior enforcement resources to meaningfully deal with information on overstays, status violators and other law enforcement referrals.
FLEOA feels that ICE has began to address these issues as part of its overall immigration enforcement strategy through the creation of ICE's Compliance Enforcement Unit and the strengthening of its Worksite Enforcement Units. FLEOA feels that ICE's FY 2005 budget request, as well as the request for an additional $23 million for enhanced worksite enforcement is a positive first step in creating the infrastructure required to investigate and resolve violator leads. ICE management has stated that the FY 2005 budget will allow them to more than double existing funds devoted to worksite enforcement and allow ICE to devote more Special Agents to these efforts.
DETENTION AND REMOVAL
FLEOA testified in April 2003, that the administrative mission relating to ICE's immigration enforcement such as Institutional Removal Program (IRP) and county jail cases be assigned to the Detention and Removal component. It is FLEOA's belief that ICE would be better served by allowing ICE Special Agents to focus on the complex criminal matters as well as matters relating to national security. To achieve this goal, it is essential that ICE Special Agents be relieved of all administrative jail duties.
Page 145 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
To this end, FLEOA supports ICE's request of $30 million to transfer the IRP duties currently being performed by Special Agents to Immigration Enforcement Agents within the Detention and Removal Program. ICE realizes that this shift of responsibilities will allow ICE to assign Special Agents to investigations that are more complex.
Our members in the field have continuously stated that one of the greatest problems in enforcing our Nations Immigration Law is in the area of detention and removal. Large amounts of illegal aliens are released in some areas (as many as fifty a day) before ever seeing an Immigration Judge. Lack of bed space is always cited as the reason. Many of these illegal aliens are released despite the fact that many do not have a valid, verifiable address. FLEOA supports the FY 2005 budget request for Detention and Removal Initiatives.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
In FLEOA's April 2003 testimony, we recommended the consolidation of DHS overseas operations. FLEOA stated that these functions should include oversight of visa issuance at overseas posts. ICE's FY 2005 budget request of $14 million includes an increase of $10 million to support a new Visa Security Unit, which was established pursuant to Section 428 of the Homeland Security Act. Through the creation of ICE's Office of International Affairs, ICE now has the ability to provide visa security by working cooperatively with U.S. consular offices to review select visa applications.
IMMIGRATION FRAUD
Page 146 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
In its April 2003 testimony, FLEOA cited a 2002 GAO report titled ''Immigration Benefit Fraud, Focused Approach Needed to Address Problems''. The GAO noted that the former INS did not know the extent of the immigration benefit fraud problem. The GAO reported that the former INS interior enforcement strategy failed to lay out a comprehensive plan to identify how components within and among service centers and district offices are to coordinate their immigration benefit fraud investigations.
FLEOA notes that ICE has created Benefit Fraud Units in Vermont, Texas and California as a means of identifying and targeting fraud. FLEOA supports ICE's request for $25 million in FY 2005 budget in an effort to ''provide stable funding to ICE's benefits fraud and assist in restoring integrity in the immigration application process''.
ALIEN SMUGGLING
FLEOA notes that ICE has failed to indicate a budget increase in support of efforts to investigate alien smuggling and human trafficking organizations. In its April 2003 testimony, FLEOA cited a 2002 GAO Report on the former INS, in which the GAO was very critical of the INS ability to investigate alien smuggling groups. At that time, FLEOA recommended that ICE be the central investigative agency for all human trafficking and alien smuggling investigations. Currently, there is no stated mission involving the targeting of human trafficking and alien smuggling organizations within ICE.
We recommend that by making human trafficking and alien smuggling investigations one of ICE's primary enforcement functions, there exist a need to immediately fund and staff this component to levels that allow it to be effective. Research and experience has led us to believe that the most effective means to enforce laws relating to human trafficking and alien smuggling organizations would be to centralize all human trafficking and alien smuggling investigations into one agency with adequate staffing, funding and a strong headquarters component.
Page 147 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Congress and the Administration must begin to strike a balance between enforcement on our borders and enforcement in the interior. Word of mouth travels rapidly back to the source countries that one must merely make it across the border in order to attain this new form of unsanctioned amnesty. In short, we will never restore domestic tranquility or integrity into the legal immigration process until we begin to establish meaningful rather than token control over our borders and the interior of the United States through comprehensive immigration law enforcement.
On behalf of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, and the many dedicated men and women who risk their lives enforcing our immigration laws, I appreciate your time and attention, and the opportunity to share our views. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Danahey.
The floor now recognizes—the Chair now recognizes the gentleman, Mr. Cutler.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL W. CUTLER, FORMER INS SPECIAL AGENT
Mr. CUTLER. Thank you. Good morning.
Chairman Hostettler, distinguished Members of the Committee, I want to start out by commending Chairman Hostettler's courageous leadership in the vital area of immigration law enforcement. It is my belief that nothing will have a greater impact on the future of our Nation than the way in which we handle this critical issue. Consequently, I am honored at having been invited to participate in this hearing.
Page 148 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
I am a New Yorker. On September 11, 2001, ashes from the conflagration at the World Trade Center fell on my house. The sight of the location we used to refer to as ''the World Trade Center'' that we now call ''Ground Zero'' continues to trigger in me and my fellow New Yorkers a profound sense of loss and grief and anger.
We are constantly reminded that we are in a state of war. Many of our Nation's valiant men and women, many of them scarcely old enough to vote, go in harm's way as members of our armed services to help wage a war on terrorism, some of whom return home seriously injured, or worse. I laud their bravery. The war effort is also costly in financial terms as well as human terms. But we must match the efforts of our soldiers fighting in distant lands with a commensurate effort within our own borders. The men and women who are responsible for enforcing our immigration laws need to have the resources to do an effective job.
Of late, we have heard some people question if the immigration laws can be enforced. They say that we have tried to enforce the laws, but even with the additional Border Patrol agents now standing watch at our Nation's borders, we still have many millions of illegal aliens living and working in the United States today. I would say to them that we have, to date, only been given the illusion of making a serious effort to enforce our immigration laws.
Before the merger of INS and Customs, there were some 2,000 INS special agents enforcing the immigration laws within the interior of the United States. Let us put this in perspective. New York has some 8 million residents policed by some 38,000 police officers. There are perhaps one and half times as many illegal aliens in the United States today as there are residents in the City of New York. Clearly, many more special agents are needed to handle the issue of interior enforcement, especially in view of the fact that, according to recently published statistics, there are some 400,000 aliens still living within the United States borders that have been ordered deported. And from what I have read, some 80,000 of these aliens have serious criminal histories. How can we expect so few agents to effectively deal with so vast a problem?
Page 149 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
While only a small percentage of aliens become involved in serious criminal activity, a large percentage of our criminal population is indeed comprised of aliens. In addition to terrorists, our Nation is plagued by criminal aliens who are involved in narcotics trafficking, ethnic organized crime organizations, and other areas of criminal activities whose actions result in many more lives being lost each and every year than were lost in the horrific attacks of September 11. Half of the illegal aliens in the United States did not succeed in entering the United States by running the border but, rather, entered through a port of entry and then, in one way or another, violated the terms of their admission. This was, I would remind you, the way that the 19 terrorists who attacked our Nation entered our country. If we want to reduce the number of illegal aliens in our country and secure our Nation against the criminal intentions of terrorists and other criminals, we need to change the way we do business. It will require the expenditure of additional funds, but to not take appropriate action will ultimately cost our country far more. Law enforcement is labor-intensive work, and we desperately need many more special agents to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior.
We need many more Border Patrol agents to properly patrol the thousands of miles of borders. As I am sure Mr. Bonner will attest, the job of a Border Patrol agent is frustrating, and our agents are put in harm's way often, only to arrest recidivists repeatedly.
We also need many more adjudications officers and immigration inspectors to do a more effective job of ensuring that applications are correctly adjudicated in a timely manner. I have been told that each adjudications officer is expected to process some 40 applications for benefits each and every day in order to get a passing grade on their evaluations. I have also been told that the average naturalization examiner is expected to process between 20 to 25 applications for United States citizenship each and every day. We have so truncated the process that applicants for citizenship are no longer required to provide witnesses to attest to the fact that they possess good moral character, nor are background investigations conducted in support of applications for United States citizenship. Additionally, there is no routine effort to conduct field investigations in conjunction with applications for resident alien status to be conferred upon aliens. Is it any wonder that we often find the fraud rates are as high as they are in the benefits program? I would recommend that perhaps retired INS annuitants or retired law enforcement officers from other agencies such as local police departments should be hired to act as compliance officers to lend integrity to this critical process.
Page 150 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Another issue that we need to consider is the fact that there are four immigration service centers that process some 6 million applications for benefits each year. Each center has employees known as intelligence research specialists. Their job is to screen the applications for fraud. There are fewer than ten of these employees at each center.
There is also supposed to be 128 special agents assigned to work in conjunction with these service centers. I've been told that sparse as that number of agents may seem, in reality only 30 or 40 special agents are actually working full-time in this vital mission in the entire United States. The result is that fraud is running rampant. To cite an example, the State of Florida will issue driver's licenses to any aliens who can show proof that they have filed an application with immigration authorities to enable them to remain in the United States. The application need not be approved to qualify for the license to be issued, only that it is pending. As a result, many aliens working through immigration consultants and lawyers who specialize in immigration law have filed applications for authorizations to accept employment in conjunction with an application for political asylum. In reality, the application for political asylum is never filed, but the fee is waived for such an application and the receipt for the application satisfies the Florida requirement for the issuance of a driver's license. The cost of processing the spurious application runs at least $200 per application, and it is never recouped by the Government.
According to what I have been told, some 17,000 fraudulent applications have been identified. The aliens who made these applications have apparently given their real addresses on their applications, but ICE does not have the resources to go out and arrest these people, a number of whom are citizens of Middle Eastern countries and are consequently of potential national security concern. Florida is only one State of many that is experiencing this problem.
Page 151 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Immigration inspectors are expected to determine the admissibility of an alien applying for admission to the United States in approximately 1 minute. We have in place a visa waiver program which means that we do not have the ability to effectively screen aliens seeking admission to the United States from the 28 visa waiver countries.
Consider that Richard Reid, the so-called ''shoe bomber,'' was traveling on a British passport and would have been exempted from the requirement of obtaining a visa before applying for entry into the United States. If citizens of the United States can be inconvenienced by being thoroughly searched before they board airplanes, if they can be made to wait on long lines of traffic before crossing bridges and tunnels at elevated threat level times, then why aren't we requiring that aliens who have no inherent right to be here be more effectively screened in the interest of national security? The effective screening of alien visitors would, in my humble opinion, decrease the number of aliens who ultimately violate the terms of their admission and potentially threaten our well-being and security.
For years, the former INS was plagued by an incredibly high attrition rate. Funds that might have been put to far better use were squandered on a veritable revolving door in which the agency continually recruited and trained qualified young men and women who came to the INS highly motivated to serve their country, but who quickly became disillusioned by the inept leadership of the agency and resigned so that they could pursue satisfying careers at other agencies. No one at the INS seemed to care that so many talents and motivated employees were fleeing to other agencies. If we are to run a more cost-effective agency, management at ICE, CIS, and CBP must be made accountable for the attrition rates of the respective officers to which they are assigned. This would save significant money and result in a more effective and motivated workforce.
Page 152 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Law enforcement relies on the principle of deterrence to provide the most bang for the buck. The abysmal reputation that our Nation has gained over the past several decades in terms of our ability and determination to enforce the immigration laws deters few if any aliens who would come here, either in violation of our laws or with the intention of violating our laws after they enter our country. It is said you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. The way that we enforce and administer the immigration laws serves as the first impression many people throughout the world have of our Nation's resolve to enforce our laws.
We can do better. We must do better.
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cutler follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL W. CUTLER
Chairman Hostettler, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, distinguished members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen. I want out to start our by commending Chairman Hostettler's courageous leadership in the vital area of immigration law enforcement. It is my belief that nothing will have a greater impact on the future of our nation than the way in which we handle this critical issue; consequently I am honored at having been invited to participate in this hearing.
The issue of immigration law enforcement is one that I have been involved with for some 30 years, the length of my tenure at the former INS. I began my career an immigration inspector, was detailed as an immigration examiner—now known as an adjudications officer and then, in 1975 I became a Special Agent.
Page 153 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
I am a New Yorker. On September 11, 2001, ashes from the conflagration at the World Trade Center fell on my house. I have a vivid recollection of the many yellow ribbons that were tied to the trees in front of many of my neighbors' houses in the days that followed the worst terrorist attack ever committed on our nation. I also vividly recall the numerous cars that drove by bearing the photos of so many of the victims of the Trade Center attack with variations of the same plaintive question written below or above the photographs, ''Have you seen my mother?'' ''Have you seen my son?'' ''Have you seen my wife?'' ''Have you seen my brother?'' The people who tied the ribbons on the trees and pasted the photos on the windows of their cars were hoping and praying to one day find their missing loved ones. We know, of course, that their hopes were not realized.
The sights I have mentioned and the smells of the fires that burned for quite some time after the attack will never leave my memory—they will never leave my heart. The look of rage, sadness, fear and pain etched on my neighbors' faces will stay with me for the rest of my life. The sight of the location we used to refer to as the World Trade Center that we now call, ''Ground Zero'' continues to trigger in me, and my fellow New Yorkers, a profound sense of loss and grief and anger.
We are constantly reminded that we are in a state of war. Many of our nation's valiant men and women, many of them scarcely old enough to vote, go in harm's way as members of our armed services, to help wage a war on terrorism, some of whom return home seriously injured or worse. I laud their bravery. The war effort is also costly in financial terms as well as human terms. But we must match the efforts of our soldiers fighting in distant lands with a commensurate effort within our own borders. The men and women who are responsible for enforcing our immigration laws need to have the resources to do an effective job.
Page 154 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Of late we have heard some people question if the immigration laws can be enforced. They say that we have tried to enforce the laws but even with the additional Border Patrol agents now standing watch on our nation's borders we still have many millions of illegal aliens living and working in the United States today. I would say to them that we have, to date, only been given the illusion of making a serious effort at enforcing our immigration laws.
Before the merger of the Immigration and Naturalization Service with the U.S. Customs Service there were some 2,000 INS Special Agents enforcing the immigration laws within the interior of the United States. Let us put this in perspective. New York has some 8 million residents. These residents are confined to the five boroughs that comprise the City of New York. Our mayor has said that New York is the safest big city in the United States if not the entire world. I believe that he is right. The reason we have a safe big city is that those 8 million residents are policed by a police department that, from what I have read, has some 38,000 police officers. The United States is estimated to have anywhere from 8 million to 14 million illegal aliens who are scattered across a third of the North American Continent and they have been policed by some 2,000 special agents! What do you suppose would happen to New York's crime rate if 36,000 members of the NYPD resigned tomorrow? Perhaps you now understand why we have the magnitude of the problem we have, where immigration law enforcement is concerned. According to recently published statistics, there are some 400,000 aliens still living and working within our nation's borders even though they have been ordered deported. From what I have read, some 80,000 of these aliens have serious criminal histories. How can we expect so few agents to effectively deal with so vast a problem?
While only a small percentage of aliens become involved in serious criminal activity, a large percentage of our criminal population is, indeed, comprised of aliens. In addition to terrorists, our nation is plagued by criminal aliens who are involved in narcotics trafficking, ethnic organized crime organizations, and other areas of criminal activities whose actions result in many more lives being lost each and every year than were lost in the horrific attacks of September 11. Half of the illegal aliens in the United States did not succeed in entering the United States by running the border but rather entered through a port of entry and then, in one way or another, violated the terms of their admission. This was, I would remind you, the way that the 19 terrorists who attacked our nation entered our country. If we want to reduce the numbers of illegal aliens in our country and secure our nation against the criminal intentions of terrorists and other criminals, we need to change the way we do business. It will require the expenditure of additional funds, but to not take the appropriate actions will, ultimately, cost our country far more. Law enforcement is labor-intensive work and we desperately need many more special agents to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior.
Page 155 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
We need many more Border Patrol agents to properly patrol the thousands of miles of borders. As I am sure Mr. Bonner will attest, the job of a Border Patrol Agent is frustrating, and that our agents are put in harm's way often, only to arrest recidivists repeatedly.
We also need many more adjudications officers and immigration inspectors to do a more effective job of ensuring that applications are correctly adjudicated in a timely manner. I have been told that each adjudications officer is expected to process some 40 applications for benefits each and every day to get a passing grade on their evaluations. I have also been told that the average naturalization examiner is expected to process between 20 to 25 applications for United States citizenship each and every day. We have so truncated the process that applicants for United States citizenship are no longer required to provide two witnesses to attest to the fact that they possess good moral character. Nor are background investigations conducted in support of applications for United States citizenship. Additionally, there is no routine effort to conduct field investigations in conjunction with applications for the conferring of Lawfully Admitted, Permanent Resident status on aliens. Is it any wonder that we often find that the fraud rates are as high as they are in the benefits program? I would recommend that perhaps retired INS annuitants or retired law enforcement officers from other agencies such as local police departments should be hired to act as compliance officers to lend integrity to this critical process.
Immigration inspectors are expected to determine the admissibility of an alien applying for admission to the United States in approximately one minute. We have in place a visa waiver program, which means that we do not have the ability to effectively screen aliens seeking admission to the United States from the 28 visa waiver countries.
Page 156 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Consider that Richard Reid, the so-called ''shoe bomber'' was traveling on a British passport and would have been exempted from the requirement of obtaining a visa before applying for entry into the United States. If citizens of the United States can be inconvenienced by being thoroughly searched before they board airplanes, if they can be made to wait on long lines of traffic before crossing bridges and tunnels at times of elevated threat levels, then why aren't we requiring that aliens, who have no inherent right to be here, be more effectively screened in the interest of national security? The effective screening of alien visitors would, in my humble opinion, decrease the number of aliens who ultimately violate the terms of their admission and potentially threaten our well-being and security.
For years the former INS was plagued by an incredibly high attrition rate. Funds that might have been put to far better use were squandered on a veritable revolving door in which the agency continually recruited and trained qualified young men and women who came to the INS highly motivated to serve their country but who quickly became disillusioned by the inept leadership of the agency and resigned so that they could pursue satisfying careers at other agencies. No one at the INS seemed to care that so many talented and motivated employees were fleeing to other agencies. If we are to run a more cost effective agency, management at ICE, CIS and CBP must be made accountable for the attrition rate of the respective offices to which they are assigned. This would save significant money and result in a more effective and motivated workforce.
Law enforcement relies on the principle of deterrence to provide the most ''bang for the buck.'' The abysmal reputation that our nation has gained over the past several decades in terms of our ability and determination to enforce the immigration laws deters few if any aliens who would come here, either in violation of our laws or with the intention of violating our laws after they enter our country. It is said you get only one opportunity to make a first impression. The way that we enforce and administer the immigration laws serves as the first impression many people throughout the world have of our nation's resolve to enforce our laws.
Page 157 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
We must do better.
I welcome your questions.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. Cutler.
The Chair now recognizes Dr. Papademetriou.
STATEMENT OF DEMETRIOS G. PAPADEMETRIOU, PRESIDENT, MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, Members of the Subcommittee. Good morning. I am delighted to be here.
I will take or I have taken already a somewhat different tack in my testimony. I am focusing on the services side. I anticipated that everyone else would do exactly what it is that they're doing.
Roughly speaking, the resources for the enforcement side go up by about $500 million. The resources on the service side go up a nominal $68 million. But, in reality, in terms of governmental commitments, they go down by a larger amount than that.
I do not know what is the proper level of enforcement resources that the country, our country, any country, should put into the function itself. Half a billion dollars may or may not be enough. I'm not going to take issue on this, with the exception that I have been in this business for about 30 years. Many of you have also done this for quite a while. I have never heard the Immigration Service, the enforcement function, or, for that matter, any other police or enforcement agency ever claim that they have had just the right amount of resources to do the job that they need to do. And I think it is important that we keep that in mind as we throw more and more resources at that part of the agency.
Page 158 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Now, with regard to the services, I'm focusing on the adjudication backlogs. We all know that in immigration we have all sorts of backlogs. Sometimes we focus on the backlogs of people who have a theoretical right to come to the United States but have to wait outside until they get a visa. And those backlogs are 5 million people plus. What I'm focusing on today is in the 6.2 million plus people who are waiting for their adjudication, for their petition to actually be adjudicated by the services part of the Department, CIS. And if I might perhaps ask for my first chart to go up on the screen—that's what I understand happens up there. This is, you know, too sophisticated for me.
But on the principle that a picture is worth in this case about 10 million words, if we can spend just about a minute on that particular chart, and you will see the history of the investments that our country has been making on the services part of the immigration function going back 20, 25 years, but the most important, the most interesting stuff begins to happen at about 1994. That's when basically applications—that's sort of the dark blue line—begin to increase. As you may recall—Mr. Smith certainly does—this was the time when we were talking a lot about immigrants and what it is that we're going to do about them and what kind of new requirements we're going to impose on them, et cetera, et cetera. And that conversation culminated in three pieces of legislation touching on immigrants, some more directly, some less directly, all of them in 1996.
In the sharp rise of the red line on your chart, what you see is the Clinton administration effort in 1995 and 1996, something that became a major political debacle, to naturalize many more people than we had been doing up to that time. And you see the sharp increase in naturalizations from 1995 and 1996.
Page 159 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Then, what you see between 1996 and 1998, you see a continuous increase in received applications but a dramatic drop in completed applications. And as you may recall, that was the time we tried to re-engineer, for God only knows which time—third, fifth time—the immigration services function. It took us a couple of years to re-engineer it. Then indeed the re-engineering may or may not have been successful. The only thing I know is that the completed—the number of completed applications started to rise again from about 1998 to the year 2001, 2002, after 9/11, and then you see a dramatic drop in all services.
So the next three—and please do not put any more charts up there. You can sort of look at them at your leisure. The next three tables or charts are basically trying to peel away this particular onion. In the second chart, I'm taking naturalization out of the overall picture. In the following one, I'm focusing just on naturalization. And in the last chart, I'm focusing just on green card adjudications.
What we have at the end of last year—and I'm sure that you can ask GAO or the immigration—I guess CIS, to give you the exact figure. What we have is a backlog in green card adjudications that is now probably about 1.3 or 1.4 million, and naturalization that is higher than that, naturalization backlogs are higher than that. And, of course, probably another three, three and a half, four million applications for all sorts of other immigration benefits.
And I ask myself: Is this good for us? And you will have the answer here in perhaps too many words in my text. And I would like to make just one more point because this is an important point, not only for this Subcommittee but for thinking about immigration or thinking smartly about immigration.
Page 160 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
We need to understand that our failures—it's not only that our failures in enforcement that increase the number of illegal—the size of illegal immigration in the United States, but it is also our failure in adjudications.
The sad thing is that failures in adjudications are actually perfectly avoidable. I cannot tell you—the GAO perhaps could—what is the actual contribution or make an estimate of the contribution of these delays in adjudications to the illegal immigration—immigrant population in the United States. I suspect it's going to be hundreds of thousands. It may be much more than that. But this is something that the Subcommittee should consider.
I make five recommendations. Three of them in a sense deal with better management. The last two deal primarily with doing things differently.
First, the Subcommittee might make certain through your oversight powers that the CIS is held equally accountable for its mandated responsibilities as the immigration enforcement bureaus are.
Second, you might convey to the managers of CIS, and indirectly to the President, that they will be held to their commitments about better and more timely services and that excuses for failing to meet self-imposed targets and deadlines will be rejected.
Third, that this Subcommittee, the full Committee, the Congress, should accept at least co-responsibility with the Administration for reducing and eliminating adjudication backlogs because, (a) they keep immediate families apart, (b) they induce employers to break the law, and, more generally, (c) they undermine respect for and the integrity of the immigration system itself.
Page 161 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
We don't fail in that function only by not enforcing the law. We fail by not delivering on promises that we also make.
The fourth recommendation, I think you should put, this Subcommittee, Congress, should put its shoulders behind better services in the immigration area by working with your colleagues in the relevant Appropriations Committees to obligate the proper levels of public funding resources to immigration services. The objective here will be to eliminate backlogs as quickly as possible. Simultaneously, you should make it absolutely clear that you will not tolerate standards of excellence for that function that are less than equal to those you regularly demand from the DHS' enforcement bureaus.
And, finally, you might want to begin to consider that maybe, just maybe, the CIS is misplaced within a bureaucracy whose mandate and measurements of success are about hard-headed, and necessary—it's not in my testimony, but I think I have made it clear in my remarks—homeland security functions. Put differently, and looking once more at the four charts and the inexorable falling behind of immigration services for the last decade or so, should we not be thinking more about whether the CIS contributes anything unique to homeland security and the cost at which it does so?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Papademetriou follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DEMETRIOS G. PAPADEMETRIOU
Page 162 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
INTRODUCTION
Chairman Hostettler, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, Members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before you to comment on the President's FY2005 Budget request for the immigration functions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The facts about the President's request are well known to you, especially since you have already heard from Government witnesses about them at an earlier hearing.
In outline form, the President proposes to increase funding for the Department's two ''enforcement'' bureaus—Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—by $538 million. At the same time, funding for the services/benefits part of DHS—Citizenship and Immigrant Services (CIS)(see footnote 5)—would increase by $58 million. Even this increase, however, is deceptive in that in terms of appropriated funding, adjudications suffer an $11 million cut and overall funding for the Bureau is cut by $85 million. As Ms. Jackson Lee noted in her Statement of February 25, ''. . . for every additional dollar the Administration is requesting for the benefits bureau, it is requesting 9 dollars for the enforcement bureaus.''
Perhaps this is as it should be—were it not for two important and interrelated factors.
Page 163 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
The first is the fact that CIS is falling ever further behind in discharging its principal responsibilities to US citizens and US residents, namely, the adjudication of their petitions for immigration benefits for which they have already paid the requisite fees. Adding insult to injury, petitioners, who have been waiting for several years for the immigration services' division to ''get its act together,'' are about to be required to pay more, retroactively, for a service they will receive at some distant time in the future.
The second factor relates to the relationship between the Government's abject failure in this elementary good governance function and illegal immigration.
I will take each issue in sequence.
IMMIGRATION ADJUDICATION BACKLOGS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
Benefit adjudication backlogs, on a steep rise since the mid-1990s, have spiraled seemingly out of control in the last two years. CIS Director Aguirre has acknowledged as much before this Subcommittee and has offered both his explanations for this development and another iteration of a ''plan'' for performing magic by the end of FY2006.
And in fact, part of Director Aguirre's explanation is quite legitimate. Delivering immigration benefits must indeed be accurate, security considerations must be satisfied to virtual certainty, and the service must be professional, courteous and above reproach. But immigration benefits must also be delivered in a timely fashion.
Page 164 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
The cost of failure in that last regard is not just longer waiting lines and the likely (but completely unnecessary and avoidable) swelling in the unauthorized population; it is the breeding of disrespect, if not disregard, for the rules, a phenomenon that has an extraordinarily corrosive effect on the rule of law. That effect is not unlike that which offends so many law-abiding Americans when they see unauthorized immigrants come and/or stay in our country illegally.
a. Backlogs
If you will allow me, I would like to give you a sense of the sorry state of our government's performance in delivering immigration benefits in the last twenty or so years.
Let us take a look at Chart 1, which tracks the total benefit applications received, completed (a number that reflects approvals plus denials), and pending since 1980. (My colleagues at the Migration Policy Institute have also graphed the same data going back to 1960, and I will be happy to provide that graph to the Subcommittee, if you so wish. I assure you, however, that the trend and the relationship among these three variables are unexceptional, except for a brief spike in the number of applications received in 1976 that reflects certain one-time adjustments to our immigration formula that year.)
Returning to the chart in front of you, please note that until the early 1990s, pending applications were holding fairly steady both in absolute numbers (in the low hundreds of thousands) and relative to completion rates—as did the numbers of received and completed applications. Demand began to grow as those who received legal permanent status under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) became eligible for benefits, primarily as petitioners for their immediate family members. Yet, for a period, the then INS more or less was able to keep up with most of the additional demand, primarily as a result of the efforts of then INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. (Please note the sharp upward climb in completed applications—the red line—and the corresponding flattening in the number of pending cases—the light blue line—in chart 1.)
Page 165 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Things started to fall apart, however, by the mid-1990s, when the IRCA-fueled demand for adjudications combined with the surge in naturalization petitions that resulted from what some analysts have characterized as the ''assault on immigrants'' that culminated in three pieces of legislation affecting that population in 1996: The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
Surges in demand, however, are not the only variable responsible for what happened after 1996. The naturalization re-engineering that followed the political debacle of the Clinton Administration's efforts to promote naturalizations in 1995 and 1996 created a sharp completion trough that lasted until 1998. At that time, completion rates increased nicely again until FY 2002, when they dropped precipitously once more—a drop from which they have shown no signs of recovering so far. In fact, at this time, the immigration services' backlog is well over six million (it stood at 6.2 million at the end of FY2003, with more than 1.2 million pending ''green card'' adjudications and multiyear naturalization delays).
No part of this tale is a surprise to anyone with even a passing interest on immigration matters. During the immigration roller-coaster years of the last ten years, demands on the INS (and its successor agencies) have been increasing exponentially while the organization's capabilities have been diminishing seemingly at even steeper rates. It is no wonder, then, that the ratio of pending-to-completed applications have been rising so steeply during this same time.
Taking naturalization petitions out of the statistical picture does not alter the overall portrait dramatically. This suggests that the inability of the INS and its successor organizations to deliver services with any predictability cannot be laid to the feet of surging naturalization petitions alone. Most migration specialists would agree that this statistical picture reflects a clear systemic performance deficit. They would also agree that it reflects the failure of the services' side of our immigration system to make an effective case to its political superiors—whether at the Justice Department or DHS, but especially at OMB, the White House proper, and the U.S. Congress—that immigration services are critical to the organization's mission and overall objectives.
Page 166 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Chart 2 makes that point clear. It shows a broadly a similar pattern to that of the previous chart with similar troughs and surges and a virtually identical performance portrait. The similarity on patterns holds both for the gap between applications received and those completed but especially for the steeply growing backlogs beginning in 1993 but becoming sharply obvious after 1996.
The next two charts focus on two components of the adjudication function that should be of particular importance to this Subcommittee as it considers both the President's budget request and his immigration reform proposals put forth on January 7 of this year.
The next chart offers another look at the performance pattern of the services' side of the immigration agency, this time by focusing exclusively on naturalization petitions. The chart starts again with 1980 data.
Chart 3 makes abundantly clear that when it came to naturalizations, the agency kept received, completed and pending applications within a rather narrow band essentially until 1994—when two factors began to wreak havoc with the system. By 1994, the first cohorts of those who received permanent legal status under IRCA were becoming eligible for naturalization and were in fact availing themselves of that privilege. Simultaneously, that period's intense debates about immigrants encouraged some immigrants to naturalize and persuaded others who, although eligible, had been sitting on the fence about whether to naturalize or not, to do so also. Hence the surge in applications. The severe slowdown in the adjudication of naturalizations during the re-engineering years in the late 1990s is clearly evident in the enormous spike in pending applications in 1997 and 1998, when the number stood at nearly 1.9 million.
Page 167 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Three more data quirks on this chart require a brief explanation.
First, and not surprisingly, these same two years (1997 and 1998) also witnessed the formation of the largest gap between pending and completed applications for any period—about 1.2 million.
Second, completions of naturalization petitions surged from 1998 to 2000 when, without any contextual explanation other than the chaos and dysfunctionality of an agency set adrift in the post 9/11 environment, they begin to slump sharply again, reaching their nadir today.
Third, the number of petitions themselves dove dramatically starting in 1997, in some significant part because new applicants became discouraged by the widely-reported adjudication delays. This trend, however, reversed itself for a time after 9/11, demonstrating once more (as it did in the 1994–1996 period) the ''defensive adaptation'' character of naturalization surges. That is, that a proportion of those who seek to naturalize do so as a means of protecting themselves from the legal and other uncertainties of not being a citizen.
The final chart is the most graphic depiction yet of the chaotic relationship between demand for and the government's capacity to adjudicate (or is it the priority it attaches to adjudicating?) lawful permanent residence (LPR) or ''green card'' applications. Chart 4 shows the dramatic and consistent increase in pending LPR petitions beginning with FY 1994. Remarkably, for much of that period of extended and continuous increases in demand, application completions have hardly ever kept up with new application intakes, a factor which explains the accumulation of the backlog evident in the graph. (The exceptions are 1995–1996 and 1999–2000).
Page 168 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Most striking perhaps is the 2002–2003 segment of the graph that shows demand spiking at the same time that the government's capacity to and priority in adjudicating petitions simultaneously plummets. While the need to be as certain as possible that no one who may wish us harm receives a green card—a perfectly natural impulse and a critical governance objective—the preponderance of the evidence still points to another, inescapable, conclusion: immigration services, whether under the old INS or the new CIS, have been no more than the stepchild in what many consider the immigration system's foremost (and all too often nearly exclusive) responsibility: enforcement, not services.
b. The Relationship of Backlogs to Illegal Immigration
Estimating the relationship between multiyear adjudication backlogs and illegal immigration with some certainty is more of an art than a science and would require an agency with the data access and resources of a GAO to undertake the task. However, even without the benefit of full access to government data files and the ability to draw and examine a sample of immigration petitioners and intended beneficiaries, common sense allows one to speculate that some of a petition's beneficiaries whose cases have been pending before the INS (and now CIS) for a long time are already in the United States illegally.
More specifically, unreasonable delays in naturalization adjudications are likely to mean that many immediate families simply ''re-unify'' on-their-own—an act that in many ways is within the spirit if outside the letter of the law. Similarly, there is little reason to doubt that some, perhaps even many, among those waiting for green card adjudications might have done likewise—in the process involving the petitioning U.S. entities, many of whom are U.S. employers, in an avoidable pattern of deception and illegality.
Page 169 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
CONCLUSION
Illegal immigration has been properly targeted as one of our country's largest governance challenges. In fact, the President has stated his determination to do something about it. It seems to me that substantial investment of new government moneys to immigration services would provide two significant benefits. First, it would be the fastest, smartest, and least divisive way to reduce the size of the proverbial haystack of unknown individuals that DHS Secretary Ridge worries about. Second, it would simultaneously reestablish respect for the law and allow the immigration services' function to regain some of the integrity it has lost (and we all want it to have) and those who deliver the function to earn once more the confidence and reputation they seek and deserve.
From both migration management and good governance perspectives we should not tolerate such enormous adjudication delays. The fact that virtually all costs associated with the delivery of immigration services are ''recovered'' in the form of fees, makes explanations other than the low priority the service function receives from senior decision makers in the U.S. Government seem weak, even feeble. The function's bureaucratic location per se—within the Justice Department for more than 60 years or, now, within the DHS—does not seem to matter much. The President's budget request for FY2005 continues to give immigration services the same low priority.
Budgets, we learn in school, reflect what an organization considers more or less important. The facts speak for themselves. If this Subcommittee disagrees with the President's assigned importance to immigration services, and given the obvious correlation between absurd delays in adjudications and illegal immigration, it has the ability to and, I would argue, the responsibility to stand up and say so.
Page 170 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
You and your Congressional colleagues might go about making yourselves clearer on these issues as follows:
First, make certain through your oversight powers that the CIS is held equally accountable for its mandated responsibilities as the immigration enforcement bureaus;
Second, convey to the managers of CIS, and indirectly to the President, that they will be held to their commitments about better and more timely services and that excuses for failing to meet self-imposed targets and deadlines will be rejected?
Third, accept at least co-responsibility with the Administration for reducing and eliminating adjudication backlogs because (a) they keep immediate families apart, (b) induce employers to break the law, and, more generally, (c) undermine respect for and the integrity of the immigration system itself.
Fourth, put your shoulders behind better services in the immigration area by working with your colleagues in the relevant appropriations' committee to obligate the proper level of public resources to immigration services. Simultaneously, you should make it absolutely clear that you will not tolerate standards of excellence for that function that are less than equal to those you regularly demand from the DHS' enforcement bureaus.
Finally, this Subcommittee and this Congress must begin to consider that maybe, just maybe, the CIS is misplaced within a bureaucracy whose mandate and measurements of success are about hard-headed homeland security functions. Put differently, and looking once more at the four charts and the inexorable falling behind of immigration services for the last decade or so, should we not be thinking more about whether the CIS contributes anything unique to homeland security and the cost at which it does so?
Page 171 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Specifically, if immigration services can be delivered in as robust a way as possible (both in homeland security and program integrity terms) why not start thinking about removing the overall function from DHS? It is in fact entirely possible that creating a new regulatory agency (perhaps something akin to the Social Security Administration) that never loses sight either of its governance obligations or its responsibility toward its fee-paying clients—yet can be held directly accountable for its performance—might prove a better administrative vehicle that having CIS within DHS.
After all, immigration services are virtually completely self-funded and, I suspect that spinning them out of DHS will in fact generate ''savings'' of at least one sort—personnel will be able to focus exclusively on the new agency's mandate and its performance can be evaluated accordingly. The alternative is well known to us all: it often involves being detailed, temporarily re-assigned, or otherwise tapped for purposes other that what the function's mandate requires and what those who seek benefits have paid for: the timely adjudication of petitions for a benefit to which they have a presumptive right.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Dr. Papademetriou.
The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member, the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, for her opening statement.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
To the witnesses, thank you for your patience. I was delayed by another meeting on the other side of this campus. But I will ask unanimous consent to put my entire statement in the record.
Page 172 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jackson Lee follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SHEILA JACKSON LEE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
At our previous hearing on the Funding for Immigration in the President's 2005 Budget, I expressed concern over the fact that the FY 2005 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security strongly favors the Department's two enforcement bureaus over its benefits bureau. The Administration is requesting six times more for the enforcement bureaus than for the benefits bureau. It is requesting $10,214 million for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but only $1,711 million for the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrant Services.
It also is significant that the Administration is requesting an increase of $538 million for the enforcement bureaus but only is requesting a $58 million increase for the benefits bureau. For every additional dollar the Administration is requesting for the benefits bureau, it is requesting nine dollars for the enforcement bureaus.
I am not opposed to providing sufficient funding for the enforcement bureaus. My concern is that the Administration is not requesting adequate resources for the benefits operations. The Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrant Services (USCIS) has not been able to keep up with its work load, which, according to Director Eduardo Aguirre Jr., includes more than six million benefits applications each year.
Page 173 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
USCIS does an incredible amount of work. Director Aguirre testified that during the course of a typical day, his workforce of 15,500 employees will do the following:
Process 140,000 national security background checks;
receive 100,000 web hits;
take 50,000 calls at the Customer Service Centers;
adjudicate 30,000 applications for immigration benefits;
see 225,000 visitors at 92 field offices;
issue 20,000 green cards, and
capture 8,000 sets of fingerprints and digital photos at 130 Application Support Centers.
In addition to this, USCIS has to devote substantial resources to eliminating its backlog of more than six million benefits applications.
Director Aguirre assured us that the proposed FY 2005 budget amount for USCIS would provide him with the resources he needs. I have great respect for Director Aguirre, but I do not share his optimism on this matter. The proposed budget only allocates $140 million for backlog reduction. Even with the addition of the $20 million USCIS expects to receive from increased processing fees, this is not sufficient to eliminate the backlog. This is apparent when you look at recent operating expenses. During the three-year period from FY 2001 through FY 2003, USCIS's reported operating costs exceeded available fees by almost $460 million. Since the beginning of FY 2001, the number of pending applications increased by more than 2.3 million (about 59%) to 6.2 million at the end of FY 2003. This increase occurred despite additional appropriations beginning in FY 2002 of $80 million annually to address the backlog.
Page 174 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
I also am concerned about the fact that USCIS is raising its application fees. This may be necessary to cover the additional expenses of post 9/11 security checks, but it is a move in the wrong direction if the objective is to generate needed operating funds through fees rather than through the President's budget request. The Department of State relies heavily on fees to support its visa application operations, and its recent experiences show that this can be an unreliable way to provide necessary funding.
Since 9/11, the State Department has experienced a decrease in non-immigrant visa demand. This has resulted in significant revenue shortfalls in the FY 2003 and the FY 2004 Border Security Program budget. To compensate for these shortfalls, the Department has applied funding provided by supplemental appropriations: $46 million in FY 2003 and $109.5 million in FY 2004. The Department considered increasing the fees but refrained from doing this on account of concern that the increases could have an adverse affect on the public's willingness to travel to the United States, which would reduce the demand for visas even further.
Meanwhile, $340 million is allocated for the US-VISIT program, which may turn out to be a waste of resources that could have been used elsewhere, such as for reducing the benefits applications backlog. I believe that we need to pay more attention to benefits operations and that we much use our resources more wisely. Thank you.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I will make some comments pertaining to my concern.
We had a previous hearing, Mr. Chairman, and I expressed concern over the fact that the FY 2005 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security strongly favors the Department's two enforcement bureaus over its benefits bureau. The Administration is requesting 6 times more for the enforcement bureau than for the benefits bureau. It is requesting some $10 billion for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, I believe, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but only $1 billion for the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrant Services, as I understand it.
Page 175 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
It also is significant that the Administration is requesting an increase of $538 million for the enforcement bureaus but only is requesting a $58 million increase for the benefits bureau. For every additional dollar the Administration is requesting for the benefits bureau, it is requesting $9 for the enforcement bureaus.
It is interesting, if I take my memory clock or I report back—and this is by no means, Mr. Bonner, a suggestion that we cannot do more with the Border Patrol funding and a number of other issues that I have worked on over the years, including professional development. But what I am suggesting is that we're in a partnership. And, frankly, Mr. Chairman, I recall the organizing of the Homeland Security Department, and if we were to delve into the congressional records, testimony and comments both in front of the Homeland Security Committee as well as in the Judiciary Committee, I made it very clear that my concern was in merging all of these various agencies and changing the INS for the better, would we not disenfranchise the benefits issue?
Just this past weekend, President Bush met with President Vicente Fox, and President Fox of Mexico came out and said, We have a deal, we're going to be working together to downplay the utilization of the US-VISIT Program at the border for some frequent visitors. Certainly I would say there is some merit to discussing that. I'm glad that the President, President Bush, restrained himself in the details because, frankly, I believe Congress and the Homeland Security Department should be intimately involved.
But the interesting point is that I know in their meeting—I would imagine that they must have had a follow-up of the big promise that the President made as it relates to the undocumented alien situation in this country. In order to begin to even look at a structure to deal with that, Mr. Chairman, even to look at it, you're going to have to have more resources, because right now as we sit in this hearing we have a 6-million-person backlog or question backlog or request backlog on benefits. And let me share some of this with you.
Page 176 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
U.S. CIS has done an incredible amount of work. Director Aguirre testified that during the course of a typical day, his workforce of 15,500 employees would do the following: process 140,000 national security background checks; receive 100,000 Web hits; take 50,000 calls at the customer service centers; adjudicate 30,000 applications for immigration benefits; see 225,000 visitors at 92 field offices; issue 20,000 green cards; capture 8,000 sets of fingerprints and digital photos at 130 application support centers.
But what we have not addressed is that as they are doing the current work, 6 million benefits applications remain in backlog, and someone needs to take a visit to the Texas center, one of the busiest in the Nation, and you will find still the scurrying to find lost fingerprints. Even as we utilize the new technology, we have never caught up, Mr. Chairman, with fixing this issue. And with the dialogue with President Vicente Fox and this whole issue of undocumented aliens and with our discussion about earned access to legalization, even the President's plan, which includes a flat earth program of guest worker and falling off at the end, but he does ask that everybody who's willing to come would be documented. Can you imagine overlaying that responsibility, which, as I understand it, should be within the next fiscal year, and not have additional resources for benefits?
I am delighted of the witnesses who have come for their testimony, but let me just say this: Even with the addition of the $20 million U.S. CIS expects to receive from increased processing fees, this is not sufficient, Mr. Chairman, to eliminate the backlog. This is apparent when you look at recent operating expenses. And during the 3-year period from 2001 to 2003, U.S. CIS reported operating costs exceeded available fees by almost $460 million—$460 million. Since the beginning of FY 2001, the number of pending applications increased by more than 2.3 million, about 59 percent, to 6.2 million at the end of FY 2003.
Page 177 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
There are a number of numbers that I'll use throughout my questioning, Mr. Chairman. Let me just conclude by saying this: I put these numbers on the record because I believe that you are sincere with these hearings on the budget, and this cannot be the hide-the-ball FY 2005 budget year when it comes to immigration issues. This cannot be the smoke and mirrors budget of 2005. If we're going to seriously reform the immigration system to answer the questions of those who are anti-immigration, anti-immigrants, and are pro-homeland security, then we're going to have to put our money where our mouth is. And even to begin talking about documenting anyone, this Department is going to need more monies.
And, finally, I would say that I always begin my comments, Mr. Chairman, that immigration does not equate to terrorism. We need all of the elements that are here before us this morning to work with us to ensure a safe and secure homeland, but to meet the values of this Nation, and that is that we are a Nation of immigrants and of laws. We are not doing ourselves a service, Mr. Chairman, unless this Subcommittee aggressively works to increase—or to make the record that we cannot function, we cannot be law-abiding, we cannot document, we cannot be secure without increased funding on the benefit side. And I would ask the Chairman to work with me, and I look forward to working with him.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Flake. He will leave early, so we will——
Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. I thank the Chairman. And I only have 5 minutes, so I would appreciate if you could answer as briefly as possible. I will try to ask quick questions.
Page 178 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. Bonner, you stated in your testimony that we only have—oh, I'm sorry. This was Mr. Danahey mentioned that we only have token control of the border. We spend about 6 times as much now as we did just 15 years ago on the border, and that's yielded us just token control?
Mr. DANAHEY. It's an improvement, sir, but I think we need to do more.
Mr. FLAKE. How many troops or how many—some say ''troops.'' Some say ''others.'' How many more people will we need on the border to seal it?
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Would the gentleman please turn on your microphone? Is it on?
Mr. DANAHEY. It is. Sir, I don't have a number right off the top of my head. I'd be happy to research that through our INS people to try to get you a better number. But from last year's testimony where I think we cited that local police were being used to supplement the Federal agents and Border Patrol agents up on the New York border, for instance, it, of course, takes away from other assets that the States need to perform their functions.
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Bonner, does your organization have a position on the President's plan, immigration reform plan?
Mr. BONNER. The guest-worker program?
Page 179 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. FLAKE. Yes.
Mr. BONNER. As we call it, the amnesty. We are intensely opposed to granting amnesty to people. That only serves to encourage more people to break the law. We discovered that in the 1986 amnesty, all it did was monumentally increase the numbers. Back then, they estimated 3 to 4 million people in the country illegally. Currently, that has——
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Bonner, could you give me your definition of amnesty?
Mr. BONNER. Amnesty, according to the dictionary, is when you—when an authority, such as a Government, pardons people for breaking a law.
Mr. FLAKE. Precisely. The President's plan, as I understand it, includes a penalty, a fine, and then movement to the back of the line or no pathway to citizenship automatically. Is that still an amnesty?
Mr. BONNER. It still is. Citizenship——
Mr. FLAKE. What would you call——
Mr. BONNER.—has nothing to do——
Page 180 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. FLAKE. What would you call the current situation? The current situation, it would seem, is a de facto amnesty. Would you argue with that?
Mr. BONNER. I would not argue that point. We have turned a blind eye to millions of people breaking our immigration laws.
Mr. FLAKE. In an effort actually to document those who are here, force them to pay a fine, and then put them back at least 3 or 6 years behind those in terms of seeking legal permanent residency or status, that's less of an amnesty than what we have now. Is that correct?
Mr. BONNER. I believe that most people are entering this country for the jobs. They're not entering to become citizens.
Mr. FLAKE. That's correct. That's my feeling.
Mr. BONNER. And so that carrot out there of, well, you can become a citizen way down the line, they don't care about becoming a citizen ever. They just want our money.
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Danahey, what—do you believe the President's plan is described well by Mr. Bonner?
Mr. DANAHEY. I believe pretty close, sir, yes.
Page 181 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. FLAKE. Would you agree that today we have a de facto amnesty?
Mr. DANAHEY. At this point we do not.
Mr. FLAKE. We do not?
Mr. DANAHEY. I don't believe we have an amnesty program. We have a turnaround program.
Mr. FLAKE. But you said we're only making a token effort at the border.
Mr. DANAHEY. That's right.
Mr. FLAKE. But would that not be improved by actually registering those who are here and giving them an opportunity to go back home by legally crossing the border with the legal process?
Mr. DANAHEY. It would be a step in the right direction, sir.
Mr. FLAKE. That would be a step—the President's plan would be a step in the right direction?
Mr. DANAHEY. Yes.
Page 182 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. FLAKE. Thank you.
Mr. Cutler, are you familiar with the Bracero program of the 1950's?
Mr. CUTLER. Yes, to an extent.
Mr. FLAKE. When it ended, did we have a better situation or a worse situation in terms of illegals coming across?
Mr. CUTLER. To be honest, I really couldn't tell you that. But what I can say to you, though, is that we are not deterring illegal immigration, and it is not just because of the border. The problem is—and I always talk about an enforcement tripod. It stands on three legs: the inspectors enforce the law at ports of entry, the Border Patrol between ports of entry, but we need that third leg, the special agents from within the interior so that when people get past the Border Patrol, they have concern that they're going to be apprehended and ultimately removed from the United States. Right now there is no such——
Mr. FLAKE. That's right. I couldn't agree more.
In 1964, when the Bracero program ended, INS apprehensions increased from 86,597 to 875,000, over a thousand-percent increase in illegal immigration. When you don't have a legal program, a legal avenue for workers to come, they're going to come illegally, and that's the situation we have now. It's a de facto amnesty. Any situation to register those, I would submit, and give them an opportunity to go home—the average stay in Arizona for a migrant worker coming used to be about 2.2 years. It's increased to over 9 years today because there's no legal avenue for them to return home. We have the worst of all situations in Arizona. They come, they bring their families, and they stay. What used to be a circular pattern of migration is now a settled pattern, and we're doing nothing to stop it at the border. Even if we could seal the border, as some are advocating, even if we could, 40 percent of those who entered—or who are here illegally now entered the country legally. We've solved nothing. And so we have got to have a program to allow them to return home, I would submit. And Mr. Bonner's point that they're coming here for jobs is precisely right. We ought to recognize that, give them a program, and then allow those to return home. And then we can focus more resources on those who would actually come to do us harm.
Page 183 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
I thank the Chairman for indulging and putting me first, and I apologize for having to leave. Thank you.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now recognizes himself for 5 minutes for questions.
Mr. Bonner and Mr. Danahey, the applications chart that was given us by Dr. Papademetriou indicates that between 1990 and 2002, an increase in applications completed by the INS, now CIS, to be in excess of 3 times greater. Can you tell me if we have been able to remove 3 times the number of illegal aliens from the United States during that time, Mr. Bonner, on an annual basis?
Mr. BONNER. I don't know the exact figures, but I would be very surprised if we were removing even a fraction of the numbers that you're talking about.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Mr. Danahey?
Mr. DANAHEY. I agree with Mr. Bonner, sir.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. So, in proportion, we are, with regard to the service that's being rendered to the United States of America, whether it's—whether it's adjudicating applications or enforcing the immigration laws, in proportion, with regard to the statistics that Dr. Papademetriou has supplied and your experience, we are spending quite a bit more proportionally on the immigration side than we are on the enforcement side, would you not say, with regard to the results? Mr. Bonner?
Page 184 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. BONNER. Well, I think that you need to look at the overall picture in terms of what is best for this country, and I think that we can't ignore what happened on September the 11. There were only 19 people, and, you know, if you talk about, well, we're doing a ''pretty good'' job of enforcement, ''only'' 19 people caused thousands of American citizens to die and cost us billions of dollars, and I think that——
Mr. HOSTETTLER. But, relatively speaking, Mr. Bonner, with regard—the American people have a citizenship process, service process now, and they have a law enforcement side. If we are nowhere near completing the same, proportionally speaking, with regard to law enforcement and services, proportionally would you not say that we are spending—with regard to the service that's being rendered, we're spending a lot more on immigration services, not with regard to total dollars but with regard to the statistics, the actual results of the activity, we are spending a lot more on services than we are on law enforcement.
Mr. BONNER. I agree with you, and I think that we're overly generous as a Nation in providing benefits to people, and I think we need to—the point I was trying to make is that it's very important to protect our country. We can't—we cannot go on with open borders and then allowing millions of people to put in for benefits. We need to stop and take a look and figure out what's best for this country at this point in time.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Yes, sir.
Mr. Bonner, the budget request, as it was related to us at the Subcommittee in the last hearing from CBP, included increases in technology and sensoring cameras as well as UAVs. Do you believe—but not more agents. Do you believe that the Border Patrol needs more agents even as we increase spending in technology?
Page 185 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. BONNER. Well, absolutely. The technology is the eyes and the ears. There is no camera designed that will jump down off that pole and apprehend illegal aliens. That is up to Border Patrol agents. So it does no good. One of the things that they discovered back in the mid-1990's when they launched Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, CA, the sensors were going crazy, and they turned them off because they said it was demoralizing the agents because they couldn't catch all the people that were going around them.
Well, that's kind of silly, in my view, to have technology and not use it. I think it would be beneficial to know exactly how many people are getting by us because that would provide a true measure of the effectiveness of the Border Patrol and give us an indication of how many more agents it would take to bring that border under control.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Very good. One more question, Mr. Bonner. In January 2004, the President proposed a temporary worker program that you discussed earlier with Mr. Flake. Newspapers were reporting in January that the Border Patrol was conducting a survey of apprehended aliens to see whether they had heard about the President's proposal. Is that true? And if that is true, is the survey still being taken?
Mr. BONNER. It is true that in a number of areas they were taking the survey. It ended rather quickly. I'm not sure of the reasons. It became a political hot potato. Perhaps they didn't like the answers they were receiving.
Anecdotally, the agents in the field were relaying to me and others that many of the people that were coming across were making inquiries about the guest-worker program, about the amnesty.
Page 186 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very, very much.
Mr. Bonner, I've worked with the Border Patrol agents some years back on professional development and increasing the civil service ranking to hopefully assist you all in retention. I've literally walked the Southern border, and let me thank you for the graciousness of many of the Border Patrol agents that have shown me some of the areas and challenges that they face.
Tell me what you need to be really effective in terms of increased inspectors and Border Patrol agents in the United States as it might impact on the budget, what you really need to be at full capacity where you'd feel comfortable in terms of increased inspectors and Border Patrol agents. And, of course, we talk about the Northern border and the Southern border included.
Mr. BONNER. I think that really depends on the strategy that you pursue. If we continue to pretend that we can stop everything at the border, bearing in mind that 40 percent of the illegal—somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the illegal immigrant population comes in legally, but let's continue to pretend that we can stop everything at the border, it would take millions of Border Patrol agents. Really, we need to get a handle on the root cause of why people are coming to this country. We need to enact tough employer sanctions laws that take the burden off of the employer's back, put it on the Government's back where it belongs, for the Government to develop some form of counterfeit-proof identification that will allow an employer to recognize someone who has a right to work in this country and that will allow the Government to penalize employers who try and circumvent that——
Page 187 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Ms. JACKSON LEE. But if we were to look at a different strategy, let's just take your vision, not necessarily—I don't necessarily agree with it, maybe, but then what kind of increase would you think that we would need in either Border Patrol agents or inspectors?
Mr. BONNER. Under my vision, where you have employer sanctions laws that are enforceable, you could probably control the remaining elements because you would remove 99 percent of the people who are coming across our borders of those millions of people. And you would be left with terrorists and other criminal——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. So you're not here today to ask for any increased compensation for Border Patrol agents, no increased numbers of inspectors? I just want to know——
Mr. BONNER. That's not what I said. I said——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well, then tell me——
Mr. BONNER. In an ideal world——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. But I'm trying to get to the bottom line. What is the number——
Mr. BONNER. Well, if we're continuing to pursue the current policy, I think that at a minimum you need to be adding at the rate that they were adding a few years ago, a thousand agents per year.
Page 188 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Ms. JACKSON LEE. That's what I'm trying to get at, and we'll work with that. Obviously, you have a difference as to the strategy, but we're looking at numbers now, and we're trying to be as responsive as we can. And so those are the numbers that, under the present structure, you are needing more assistance. Is that my understanding?
Mr. BONNER. Absolutely.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me also just ask you a quick question, and I heard your comments to the Chairman and to Mr. Flake. I calculate—and when I say ''I calculate,'' based on numbers that have come to my attention—that there may be between 8 and 14 million undocumented individuals in this country. Are you saying that we have the capacity to deport 14 million people?
Mr. BONNER. I believe that if you have laws that are enforceable for employer sanctions that people will go home. The reason they are here is for the jobs, and if the job spigot is turned off, they will go home, because their only other alternative is to sit and beg in the streets, in which case our police, our local police would arrest them for vagrancy, and then they would be deported. But I think that most of them would just simply go home.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well, I think you have a very large vision about that, and I would venture to say to you that 14 million who have put down roots, built houses, paying taxes, whether it's sales taxes, children in school, are absolutely not going to do that. So I think we vigorously disagree, but I appreciate very much your comments on the Border Patrol.
Page 189 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. Papademetriou, thank you so very much. Give me a response to this idea that we are spending more for enforcement than we are for benefits, and what do we need to do in this budget year? You heard my consternation, and if you have better numbers than 6 million—I don't think the debate is on that question, but help us understand whether we are really in an equity as it relates to benefits and enforcement. And thank you for your testimony.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Thank you. Thank you very much, Congresswoman, and I couldn't agree more with your statement and the thrust of your questions.
There is some fundamental difference that makes any comparison, with all due respect, Mr. Chairman, between the resources that we invest on the one part of the function and the other one essentially invalid. First of all, the services function is largely self-funded. The governmental resources that go into the function are but a fraction of the numbers that you see. So there is a big difference over there as to who is paying. You're going to have to compare not the $1.7 million to the—billion to the $10 billion, but whatever it is that comes out of our pocket, the public's pocket, with what comes out of the public's pocket for the $10 billion. That's a real $10 billion. This is just a fraction of $1.7.
The other part that makes that comparison suspect, in my view, is that in a sense we are comparing not apples and oranges but I think apples and widgets. We have not established that if we do more in the one area we necessarily will do better in the other area. The two are completely disengaged. We may not be doing well in terms of enforcement—and at some fundamental level I do not disagree with my colleagues on this side of the table. But, in reality, what we're talking about is let's continue to put resources there. Be smart about the methodology. You called it strategy. We all need to realize that we don't have, you know, all of the money in the world. But, also, begin to address the issue of services if for no other reason because it breeds illegality. It contributes to that aid to 12, 14 million people. We don't know exactly how many, but it contributes to that number. And we can bring that number down relatively with no cost to the Treasury. This is very, very significant.
Page 190 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Let me give you an off-the-top-of-my-head, back-of-the-envelope, whatever you will, Madam Ranking Member, estimate of what it might take to remove people, because I am absolutely convinced—I have been in this business long enough to be fully convinced—that what you are saying, that these people are not going to leave is absolutely right.
How long does it take, in terms of investigation, to actually—investigative resources, to actually trace down a number of people? How long—how many people does it take to actually go and pick them up? How much jail time does it take in order to prepare them for their hearings——
Mr. HOSTETTLER. The Chair is going to have to cut you off, Dr. Papademetriou.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Sorry.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. If he could just summarize, Chairman?
Mr. HOSTETTLER. There's a question, I think, that was—the question was: Do you agree with the Chairman that we're spending too much on immigration services with regard—and I think you answered that question. I appreciate that.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. My apology.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. And we're going to have another round of questions, and we will definitely—if the lady, gentlelady wants to address that issue, we will definitely get into that issue. But we're going to move on now to Mr. Smith of Texas.
Page 191 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for again having a hearing on such an important subject, and thank you, too, for your selection of the witnesses who are here today, who are all experts in their fields.
Mr. Papademetriou, I don't mean to ignore you, but most of my questions are going to be addressed to the other witnesses.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. I expected that, sir.
Mr. SMITH. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, we've heard some figures today about the number of people who are in the country illegally. The census, I believe, increased their figure after the 2000 census from 8 million to 11 million, but I just want to make the point again that the census only counted people who are in the country permanently, which is to say 365 days a year. If you were to today take a count of all the people who are in the country illegally, it could well be twice as many because of the people who are here for a short term. So the problem, I think, is probably greater than many of us realize.
I assume, Mr. Bonner, Mr. Danahey, and Mr. Cutler, that we are all in agreement that we think we ought to reduce illegal immigration. Is that correct? Okay.
Let me ask you if you feel that the following programs or proposals would, in fact, reduce illegal immigration. Do you think the States issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants is going to reduce illegal immigration? Is there anybody that thinks that it will.
Page 192 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. BONNER. No.
Mr. DANAHEY. No.
Mr. CUTLER. No.
Mr. SMITH. Is there anyone who thinks that the issuance of matricula cards is going to reduce illegal immigration?
Mr. BONNER. No.
Mr. DANAHEY. No.
Mr. CUTLER. No.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. And, Mr. Danahey, you may disagree here, but, Mr. Bonner and Mr. Cutler, do you think that a new guest-worker program is going to reduce illegal immigration?
Mr. BONNER. No.
Mr. DANAHEY. No.
Mr. CUTLER. No.
Page 193 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. SMITH. Okay. Mr. Danahey, a while ago I may have misunderstood, but the proposed guest-worker program by the Administration would allow people in the country illegally to stay for 6 years, perhaps more, to work, to bring in their families. Do you honestly believe that these individuals are going to be inclined to return to their home country after those years, after their families are here and after they're working?
Mr. DANAHEY. Sir, I would say that they're going to be inclined to try to stay here any way they can once they become comfortable and integrated into our society.
Mr. SMITH. And do you think that none of these illegal immigrants are going to be taking jobs that are—that could be worked by Americans? And when I say ''Americans,'' I'm talking about citizens and legal immigrants as well.
Mr. DANAHEY. Yes, sir, they would be taking jobs that could be filled by U.S. citizens.
Mr. SMITH. And yet you said a while ago, I thought, that you thought that the proposed guest-worker program was a step in the right direction. How could it be a step in the right direction if it is taking jobs away from Americans and if it's going to encourage people to stay in the country rather than go home?
Mr. DANAHEY. It's a step in the right direction in at least we know who is here and where they are. As far as taking jobs away, et cetera, I hadn't looked at that broad of a——
Page 194 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. SMITH. Okay. Don't you think if we make it attractive for individuals to stay in the country illegally that it's like to encourage more people to come into the country illegally?
Mr. DANAHEY. It would.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. Thank you.
Lastly, what single thing do you three feel that we should do to—what's the most important single thing we could do to reduce illegal immigration? Mr. Bonner, let's start with you.
Mr. BONNER. As I've stated previously, I think the single most important thing we could do would be to reform our employer sanctions laws. Turn off the job magnet.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. I agree with that.
Mr. Danahey?
Mr. DANAHEY. I agree with Mr. Bonner, and also tighten border security as best we can.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. And, Mr. Cutler?
Page 195 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. CUTLER. Well, I have to agree with Mr. Bonner, but come back again to the lack of interior enforcement, because this is all about interior enforcement. And there's one fast thing if I just might get this in.
Mr. SMITH. Sure.
Mr. CUTLER. We're talking about identifying people by putting them through a process of giving them the ability to work in the United States. We won't be really identifying the criminals or most of them, because if you look at the pressure that we're under right now to handle all these applications—and I spoke about some of the pitfalls we have as of today. Imagine when someone walks into a crowded office and they say, ''What's your name?'' and he gives them a name, provides no documents to support who he claims to be, what will the immigration authorities do? And most likely, under the pressure of the weight of the paper and the flow of the people, we will wind up creating almost a witness protection program, if you will, for people who shouldn't even be here.
Mr. SMITH. You reminded me of a final question to ask you all, and that is, don't you think if we had a guest-worker program that made it easier for people to get into the country, stay in the country, perhaps get a job in the country, that that might not be an attractive vehicle to would-be terrorists? Mr. Cutler, do you believe that's the case?
Mr. CUTLER. Absolutely. These folks are very sophisticated, and they look for the holes in the system. And if you look at the 19 terrorists, each one of them found where there were those openings and went right through it.
Page 196 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Danahey, don't you think a prospective terrorist would want to take advantage of a program like that?
Mr. DANAHEY. Absolutely, sir.
Mr. SMITH. And, Mr. Bonner?
Mr. BONNER. They would either take advantage of that program or—to me it's—the notion that people—that criminals are going to come forward and register just doesn't ring true with me.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. Thank you all for your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. Sánchez, for 5 minutes.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I apologize for missing your oral testimony, but I did review the written testimony.
A question for Mr. Papademetriou—is that the correct pronunciation?
Page 197 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. Wow, for a Latina girl, that's not bad, right?
I'm interested in knowing with respect to the visa backlog that we're currently experiencing, interested in knowing what your thoughts are on if we would dedicate a substantial portion of the monies allocated on immigration issues to reducing the visa backlog, how might that improve our ability to know who's in this country and our ability to have improved homeland security?
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Thank you, Ms. Sánchez. The two are perfectly consistent with each other. Whatever the analogy that you prefer will work here. By increasing the efficiency in delivering services, we reduce the possible number of undocumented migration; therefore, we make the job that people who enforce our laws have to do a bit easier.
We also return some—and I suspect a very substantial proportion—of pride, if you will, and esprit de corps and all that to an agency and people who are good, but they're completely disheartened. I don't know the last time that you folks have had an opportunity to speak with the rank-and-file, you know, that deliver services over there, but this is not exactly a sense on their part that this is a priority of any Administration. And with all due respect, Mr. Chairman, this is not about Republican or Democrat. It's not about people who head this agency. The fact is that we need to do something dramatically different.
Page 198 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
I propose here something that is radical enough, which is take CIS out of DHS. We'll lose nothing. In other words, whatever it is that we need to do in terms of program integrity can be done from outside of the agency, particularly now that we're creating interoperable databases, where we're creating all sorts of common standards—for all of those things, all of these services can actually be performed from outside of the agency. And let's have an agency, perhaps akin to the Social Security Administration, that knows what its job is day in and day out: to deliver services for those people who qualify, to actually give value for the people who pay the money.
You may find out that you will not have to actually subsidize that agency, the same way that you have been doing for the past 20 or 30 years, in large part because nobody is going to say, okay, you 1,500, you're now going to have to stop delivering services, and you're going to have to do special registration, which is what happened a year ago.
So fundamentally, the relatively smart things—small things that are smart can make a big difference in the delivery of services.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. Amazing that an agency that actually gets resources allocated to what the majority of its functions should be.
A follow-up question very briefly. In your opinion, what would be the financial impact or what would be the necessary funding in order to do as they are suggesting with some other guest-workers programs, et cetera, of deporting the estimated 8 million undocumented workers in this country and also, with a new guest-worker program, setting up some kind of worksite—you know, not surveillance but monitoring of a new guest-worker program? What might that do to the agency?
Page 199 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. It would probably sort of turn the agency and spin it apart. The money will be extraordinary. Just a back-of-the-envelope estimate, if we actually remove—apprehend and remove 500 people a day—I'll make it easy—and if there are 400 days in a year, even though I know that's not the number, and if there are 10 million people—Mr. Smith suggested that there were 11 then, a figure I never heard before.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. It seems to go up according to people's convenience.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. But the point is that even if we have 10 million people it will take 50 years—50 years—and tens of billions of dollars to remove just these people. And that assumes that in the next 50 years we are not going to get a single new unauthorized person in the country, just a mere multiplication.
So I think that we have to think smartly. Maybe we can disagree as to whether the President's proposal is the right one. The President actually, you know, shot a starting gun and said let's start thinking together about it. Maybe his idea is not enough. I suspect it's not. But it is a starting of a conversation which we have refused to have in this country.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. Thank you very much for your testimony. My time has expired. I will yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sánchez follows:]
Page 200 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LINDA T. SÁNCHEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
INTRODUCTION
I'd like to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member Jackson Lee for bringing the Members of this Subcommittee together to discuss funding for immigration in President Bush's budget. This is the second time we've had a hearing on immigration and the President's budget in the last two weeks. I, for one, am glad that we are making immigration an issue that is important enough to warrant two hearings.
Every Member of this Subcommittee and all of our witnesses know that our immigration system is broken, and badly in need of comprehensive reform. I felt at the Subcommittee's last hearing on President Bush's budget and I still feel today that neither the President's immigration principles nor his budget are going to fix all of the problems that plague our nation's immigration system.
PRESIDENT'S IMMIGRATION PRINCIPLES
Let's start with the President's temporary worker program. It will not stop the steady flow of illegal immigrants into this country because it doesn't solve one of the biggest causes of illegal immigration—separated immigrant families. The President's immigration plan has absolutely no provisions to reunify immigrant families. So, thousands of immigrants each year will continue to cross our borders illegally to be with their loved ones.
Page 201 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Another problem with the President's plan is that it has no earned legalization provisions. The President expects the 8 million hard-working undocumented immigrants in our country to sign up for his temporary worker program, subject themselves to second-class status during their brief stay in our country, and then stand in line to be deported. That is not going to happen. And even if by some chance it did happen, a deferred deportation program with no hope for the future is not the solution to our immigration problems.
My fellow Democrats and I have on many occasions let the President know that if he is serious about immigration reform that he should support the DREAM Act and the AgJOBS bill. The President hasn't supported these bills and by doing so has proven that his immigration principles are in fact an attempt to woo the Latino vote, not an effort to help immigrants improve their lives in this country.
We've also introduced immigration principles of our own that address the fundamental problems with our immigration system that the President's plan fails to address. The Democratic principles reunify families by reducing the visa backlog and allowing families to remain together while they work to earn legalization. Our principles also give hard-working, law-abiding immigrants in this country a chance to earn legal status and continue to contribute to our economy and our communities. The President's immigration principles leave immigrants trying to better provide for their families out in the cold, and his budget doesn't do much better.
THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET
The President's budget also proves that he is not committed to helping immigrants. The President's FY '05 budget increases by hundreds of millions of dollars so-called immigration enforcement programs while neglecting immigration service and citizenship programs.
Page 202 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
We all agree that we need to enforce our immigration laws and make sure that our border patrol agents have the resources they need to make our borders safe, orderly, and secure. These resources are vital for securing our homeland. However, if we want our country to be fully secure, we can't neglect other equally vital immigration concerns like reducing the visa backlog, providing better, more efficient immigrant services, and promoting citizenship. But the President's budget neglects these other important immigration reform issues.
For example, the President seeks $281 million more for DHS's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in FY '05 than he did in FY '04. This is the largest funding increase for any Bureau of DHS that the President seeks in his budget. On the other hand, President Bush has proposed only an additional $60 million for visa backlog reduction. The President proposed a $500 million initiative to reduce the visa backlog by 2006. However, the President's visa backlog reduction initiative so far has been a complete failure. This is obvious considering we have over 6 million visas yet to be processed and the numbers of backlogged visas are showing no signs of reducing. Furthermore, many U.S. citizens are waiting 10+ years to be reunited with their families. This includes thousands of Americans who have to wait 22 long years to reunite with their family members in the Philippines.
I am glad that the President is willing to spend funds to reduce the visa backlog. Unfortunately, the $60 million increase in his FY '05 budget is inadequate to make the necessary changes to a visa processing system that needs massive reform.
If we fail to reform our visa processing system and significantly reduce the backlog, immigrants will continue to break our laws to get into this country. The more our laws are broken, the less secure we are as a nation. So, if we want to fix our immigration system and truly be secure we must make backlog reduction and comprehensive reform as high a priority as enforcement, border security, and detentions and deportations.
Page 203 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
CONCLUSION
I thank all of the witnesses on our panel for being here today. I am looking forward to hearing testimony from some of the people on the front lines of homeland security and involved with coordinating immigration across our borders. Thank you all for taking the time out of your schedules to give us your thoughts and expertise.
I thank the Chair and Ranking Member for the opportunity to express my views. I yield back.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. We'll have a second round of questions.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. King.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate all your testimony and response to these questions, and as the pieces get filled in here on our immigration policy, a number of things accumulate in my mind as I sit here and listen, and one of them is—I'll reference a statement that was made here by the gentleman from Arizona in reference to roughly 10 years ago the statement was made that about the average stay for an illegal in the country was 2.2 years and now it's about 9 years. And if I'm going to quote him, I will say that the quote is this: ''There's no legal avenue for them to return home.''
Page 204 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
And I direct my question to Mr. Bonner. Is there any restriction to anyone returning home under any circumstances or under what circumstances might that statement have validity?
Mr. BONNER. Nothing stops anyone from leaving this country. We're not handcuffing these people and forcing them to remain here. They're remaining here of their own free will.
Mr. KING. In fact, then, there's every legal avenue for every illegal to return back home, maybe with the possible exception of if they've committed a felony of some type and we've got them incarcerated for that. But those who have broken no other laws than our immigration laws, they all have a legal avenue to return home.
Mr. BONNER. Absolutely.
Mr. KING. Thank you. I appreciate that clarification and that being in the record. And I'd also state that they do come here for jobs. We recognize that. That is the magnet. And they stay here for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the difficulty to return home. One of them is the cost to come back here. But another one is—and it's not something that gets stated here very often, and that is that they like prosperity, the jobs, and the longer they're here, the more comfort they have and the more likely they are to stay.
I would challenge also even doing the math and the calculation on how long it would take to deport illegals, that number being pick your own, but 11 million plus. They came here on their own, and they can—many of them go back on their own if we have good domestic enforcement. And, let's see, I would—okay. If we have—and I'd direct this question to Mr. Cutler. If we have roughly 12 to 14 million illegals, why would we prioritize a tight budget to send our resources, our precious border control and internal enforcement resources instead into immigration services? And I hear that discussion here in this panel that there's not enough money spent to move people through the process. Why would that be our priority if we have 12 or 14 million illegals here, why wouldn't we use that money instead to enforce our borders and enforce our domestic enforcement of our immigration laws?
Page 205 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. CUTLER. I agree that the enforcement has to get the money, but the one thing that I would suggest, you know, I spoke about these people that work at the processing centers to weed out the fraud. We need more people there because I think it would help with the fraud aspect as well as with the service aspect, giving some kind of integrity to this program.
One of the other problems that I'm hearing about is that right now where placement travel documents—alien cards, re-entry permits—are being done, the paperwork is being done, without looking at the files. So we, in effect, may be giving our documents improperly to impostors, enabling the aliens that want to travel freely across our borders to do precisely that.
So I think we need to do more with intelligence; we need to do, I think, better coordination between service and enforcement from the perspective of having some kind of integrity. I know that the gentleman to my left, Mr. Papademetriou, was talking about spinning it off as a separate entity, the service side. But we've got to coordinate both activities, in my belief, so that there's integrity. The idea that we would give out alien cards without looking at the files to make certain that the person getting the card is the person who should be getting the card and we're issuing the documents makes no sense, just as it makes no sense that US-VISIT doesn't fingerprint and photograph people from the visa waiver countries. So the folks we know nothing about we continue to know nothing about.
So there has to be a strategy where we coordinate service with enforcement, but I think enforcement is really critical, especially now that we're fighting a war on terror.
Page 206 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Cutler, and that was a point that needed to be emphasized.
A direct question to Mr. Bonner, and that is, I believe the President gave his guest-worker speech on January 6th. What was the impact on illegal border crossings? Was there any impact there at the number of illegal border crossings on our Southern border after the President's January 6th speech, or just prior to it, as we anticipated that speech?
Mr. BONNER. The last numbers I have seen took us up through the middle of last month, and in certain parts of the country, notably our Border Patrol's San Diego sector, apprehensions were up 35 percent; in Tucson, they were up 31 percent. So, yes, there was a dramatic increase.
Mr. KING. And when you convert that percentage into numbers, what—how many numbers is that?
Mr. BONNER. Off the top of my head, I don't remember. Bear in mind, the most significant number is the number of people who get by us, and we have never tracked that, unfortunately. But those are those 8 to 16 million—whatever the number is—million people living in your State and other States throughout this country. We're simply not effective at stopping illegal immigration.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Bonner.
Page 207 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair will now extend for a second round of questioning. Mr. Danahey, this question is for you. In this testimony, written testimony, Mr. Cutler suggests that there are too few special agents to effectively enforce the immigration laws of the United States. Do you agree with his contention? And has FLEOA examined how many agents the ICE would need to effectively enforce the immigration laws in the interior? And if so, how many?
Mr. DANAHEY. Sir, we are looking at between 1,500 and 2,000 additional INS agents in order to be a starting point to see if that would impact the enforcement of the laws.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. To see if it would impact the starting point. All right. Very good.
My question is to you, Mr. Bonner. Now, you made an interesting statement earlier. It could be an unfortunate statement in the results that happen as a result of the policy that we've had in place for many years that would result in this potentially happening. But the discussion has been made about the billions of dollars that would be necessary to remove illegal aliens who are currently in the country, but in its 1997 executive summary, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform underscored the importance of worksite enforcement, finding that ''Reducing the employment magnet is the linchpin of a comprehensive strategy to deter unlawful migration.''
Page 208 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
You made a statement earlier that a vigorous employer sanctions program would result in a lot of people on the streets and local police would pick them up for vagrancy. So it would not necessarily be 50,000 ICE agents in the interior to find out where all these people are living, in their homes, in their apartments, and that sort of thing. But if we got rid of—according to the Commission, if we got rid of that linchpin, or if we created that linchpin, I guess, then a lot of this would—the linchpin, by its very definition, would cause a crumbling of this problem of illegal immigration, would it not?
Mr. BONNER. Absolutely. And what I stated earlier is that most people would freely leave. They would go back to their country of origin. They would not simply sit around on the streets. I believe that this is the converse of the ''if you build it, they will come'' theory. If you tear down that stadium, they will leave. If you take away the job magnet, they'll go home.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Mr. Danahey, that being the case, if you agree with Mr. Bonner, these extra 2,000 agents, would you suggest that we focus on employer sanctions, that we focus in that area to best leverage the capability that we would have if we had another 1,000 or 2,000 agents in ICE?
Mr. DANAHEY. I think that would be part of it, sir. We also have the students coming into the country. We also just have people coming into the country. And I think those are also issues that we have to address.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. And when you say students with regard to illegal immigration, you mean students that come here legally and have been processed legally but overstay their visa, violate the terms of their visa, their stay here?
Page 209 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. DANAHEY. Yes, or they'll come in and they just don't go to school.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Okay. Very good.
Mr. Cutler, in your testimony you discuss the immigration application process. How common, in your opinion, is fraud in the immigration process, in the application process, I should say?
Mr. CUTLER. Fraud is rampant. I did marriage fraud investigations. I was also an examiner in the unit that interviewed people when they got married to determine if they were living together.
I think that if we simply look at the idea of employer sanctions, by itself it won't solve the problem. And fraud is the reason that it won't. The people that want to work illegally in the United States—or work in the United States legally will become involved in fraud schemes in order to get the requisite documentation that will enable them to work. So that the guy that knows that he can't get a job because he's an illegal alien may well not leave, but he may well go to a marriage arranger and get residency based on a fraudulent marriage.
So we really—again, this goes back to what I'm saying. You need to have a coordinated effort, a multi-pronged approach, where you go after each vulnerability in turn. And I think 2,000 more agents would be fine, but I don't think it goes far enough. And I think we need better coordination now that we've merged—we're in the process of merging Customs and Immigration.
Page 210 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
For example, I understand they're no longer teaching Spanish language to the new agents at the academy. Now, a large percentage of the illegal alien population is solely Spanish-speaking. So we need to do more with language training. We need to—and not just Spanish, I think especially in this day and age we need strategic languages. But we need to approach this looking at the overall problem. You know, this whole thing is like a sealed balloon. If you push one end, it's going to bulge at the other. If you say we're not going to hire illegal aliens, yes, a lot of folks may well pack up and go home. But the more resourceful people and the criminals are going to say, okay, what do I have to do now that they've thrown this other hurdle in my path, whether it's marriage fraud, whether it's fraud of getting labor certification that they're not entitled to. Where the rubber meets the road is where the agent goes out and knocks on a door and makes the inquiries and makes the arrests. So we need to look at fraud. We need to look at how many agents we're assigning to the various task forces, whether it's the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, where I spent many of my years, whether it's the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The point is the work is there that needs to be done, but it's labor-intensive and we really need those agents in the field from within the interior.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you. Excellent point, Mr. Cutler.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much.
Let me continue, Mr. Papademetriou. You did not finish. I wanted you to continue giving us some very important instructions, and the reason is this is a budget hearing. We've got to quantify where there are weaknesses in the budget as it is making its way through the legislative process in the House and the Senate.
Page 211 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
I've already heard from Mr. Bonner, who has gone on record to suggest that he could use 1,000 more Border Patrol agents. The question, of course, is how we would use them, and that's the philosophical question. But I think the real issue, if we begin to part the waters on this budget, it's whether or not we've got enough in each budget line item, how we translate this to the appropriations process.
So you were beginning to relay to me a very realistic scenario, and that is the amount of money to remove people. And I categorize it somewhere between 8 to 14 million, and I think those numbers are questions. But you began with investigation, jail time, and why don't we just pick up where you left off.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Thank you.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. And if you've got a figure in hand, you need to share that with us as well. You've already qualified what you think—how you think you came to it.
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Right. The figure that is an easy figure to get to is how long it would take, simply on the basis that 400 days in a year times 500 people removed per day is 200,000, 50 years to do 10 million illegals.
Now, I don't know anything about what's going to happen, in other words, at which point momentum shifts and some of the things that my colleagues here may or may begin to happen.
Page 212 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
In terms of numbers, if you need a number that will basically tell you whether the CIS needs an extra $200 million from Government funds, or 300 or 150, I think you should—with all due respect, you should ask Mr. Aguirre to come here and propose a 3-year plan to you and what it would cost to bring down the backlog in adjudications to something that will be much more acceptable, perhaps a million rather than 6 million, and then hold him and the Administration accountable for that.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me—as you well know, we are looking at the US-VISIT program, and let me quality my statement on the record by saying that I've had the privilege of visiting the Houston Intercontinental Airport, and the people who are utilizing the US-VISIT program are doing a very good job. I've had the pleasure of visiting the Miami Airport as a Member of the Homeland Security Committee, both visiting to look at the US-VISIT—the implementators of this program are finding it easy to adapt to and are working very hard on it.
My understanding is that $340 million has now been allocated for the US-VISIT program, which the judgment is still out. And let me just throw this back to you. What could we do in benefits and really impacting on immigration reform utilizing those dollars maybe in a more effective way than what we now have?
Let me give my complaint on the US-VISIT, and then if you would answer, and that is, we're collecting data. We're taking pictures, we're taking fingerprints, we're matching, but we're collecting data. And I think the question is the utilization of that data and whether we can effectively be preventive that way or maybe some other ways which I'm very, very enthusiastic about, and that is the point of leaving the particular nation, the particular country that you're leaving, effectiveness on that end, which I think Mr. Bonner would hold to on the 19 that we had come in here on the tragedy of 9/11. Effectiveness in holding them back before they even got here might have worked better than what we even try to do on that border.
Page 213 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
So would you comment on utilizing the $340 million allocated to US-VISIT for some other purposes?
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. Thank you. Let me start with your very last comment. There's a basic principle in enforcement that basically says we can defend ourselves better the further away the person who wishes to come here illegally or wishes us harm is from physical borders. So your point about trying to do more and more things away from the border including before people get on airplanes or other conveyance vehicles is an extremely important one.
Three hundred and fifth million is a lot of money. If you multiply that by 3 years, you will do substantial damage. You will make significant inroads into any backlogs that we have, particularly if they're accompanied by systemic changes in the way that we do this.
Everybody seems to be focusing on employer sanctions, and in a sense your question allows me to go there for a second. Let me just put a very simple proposition here. Employer sanctions were invented in Europe. Europe has enforcement resources, whether it is at their labor department, at the border, or elsewhere, that are multi-pulse on a per capita basis, multi-pulse, 5, 10, 20 times as much as what we invest in them. Their illegal immigration, net illegal immigration, goes up at roughly the same amount as the U.S.—half a million people. Germany's underground economy grows at an estimated—that's government estimates—5 to 7 percent per year, fueled primarily by unauthorized immigrants.
So if we think even for a moment that enforcement is the answer, I would respectfully submit that enforcement may well be part of an answer and may be a valid part of an answer, if it is part of a comprehensive answer that includes doing smart things, such, again, as defending our borders before people get to them, such as spending money to give benefits to people that have paid for them and have earned them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Page 214 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Sanctions is not a panacea. We have seen this since the time that we actually put that law on the books in 1986.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I hope that—I'm not sure out of this hearing whether we'll have an opportunity for collaboration. You have your viewpoints about enforcement and other issues, but this is a hearing on the budget. The Budget Committee is meeting, and I know that I'm going to be attempting to impact them. I would only say to you on the record that where we can write a joint letter, where there is agreement on some of the issues, I would encourage us to do so, and I'd like our staff to get together and to do that. I know that you would have an opportunity to write a single letter, because there will be issues of disagreement. But I can't imagine that we are not interested maybe in some common ground on providing resources. There were some inspector issues that I think were being made, a training issue with Mr. Cutler, language issues, resources there. And we might, if you will, scrutinize the budget and be able to find ways of joining in a joint letter on some of these and then we'll be free to express ourselves differently on an individual basis.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Or either as the Chairman and the Ranking Member, you certainly have that privilege.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady, and I agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying that the budget allocates a large sum of money in overall discretionary spending. In the appropriations process, we can look and ask of the appropriators and our colleagues to look at these issues that we have found today, especially as a result of your questioning with regard to increasing the number of Border Patrol agents and ICE agents that would be necessary. And so I look forward to working with you on this very—these very important issues, especially as we get closer to the appropriations process.
Page 215 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Very good. I'm going to be contacting the budgeteers, but I welcome you to do that, but I look forward to working with you on the appropriations process.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank the witnesses very much.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Iowa for 5 minutes.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonner, you made a reference to, I believe, the safety of the lives of American citizens in your testimony, and I didn't—I didn't catch the early part of that and the details, so I'd just ask you this question: Is there any data out there that you're aware of, or anyone on the panel, for that matter, that can let us know how many American citizens die each year at the hands of illegal aliens?
Mr. BONNER. I don't know that there is such data. We know that our prisons are full of criminal aliens who have committed all manner of crimes against our people, but I don't know that anyone, be it Department of Justice or even the States, break it down and say that this murder was committed by an illegal alien. But I'm sure that it's a very substantial number.
Page 216 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. KING. Thank you.
Anyone else on the panel want to take a shot at that? Mr. Cutler?
Mr. CUTLER. Back in the last 1980's, early 1990's, I was the INS rep at the Unified Intelligence Division at DEA. We found that 60 percent of the people arrested by DEA in New York were foreign-born, 30 percent nationwide.
Now, I don't know exactly how many people die every year because of drug trafficking and related crimes, but that number is significant. I would imagine it goes into the tens of thousands nationwide. So it certainly—I think it's a proper statement to make, that we lose more people each and every year because of criminal activities committed by aliens operating within our borders than we lost of 9/11. It would be a multiple of the many—of the number of people that were lost.
Mr. KING. And it would be also your opinion that we could extrapolate a number, provided it was qualified by those—some of those statistics that you've given us?
Mr. CUTLER. Yeah, you know, it's the whole problem of properly analyzing data, and—but I think you could certainly come up with an approximation.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Cutler.
Page 217 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. PAPADEMETRIOU. I only deal with the numbers that I know, sir. I do not know this number.
Mr. KING. Thank you.
Also, Mr. Smith, asked the question: What is the most important thing we can do? And Mr. Bonner's response was turn off the jobs magnet, and I think there was at least significant concurrence across the balance of the panel on that. And some of those things we might—we talked about were employer sanctions, internal enforcement, adding to the resources of those kind of things. And I'm going to ask you a question here.
We have a program that's been enacted by Congress called the SAVE program, System for Advanced Verification of Employment, and it started out a five-State voluntary pilot program, and now Congress has, through bipartisan action, enacted the SAVE program to now cover all 50 States. In fact, the enactment is in this following December.
At that point, an employer will be able to enter in a Social Security number, I assume a green card number or other type of work permit identifier, and verify they have an individual employee as here to work legally.
Now, when that happens, when it's 50 States and it's all enacted—and we may have a kink or two to get out of that, but at that point, I'm going to ask you about what you think the impact of turning off the jobs magnet if we would then enact legislation that would remove the Federal deductibility for tax purposes of wages and benefits paid to illegals and then gave the assistance of the Internal Revenue Service at your service to help enforce our internal domestic laws, what would be the impact then on turning off the jobs magnet and voluntary deportation, so to speak, if we dried up that job market by letting the IRS help enforce this as well as our Border Patrol and our internal security? Mr. Bonner first.
Page 218 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. BONNER. I think it's a start, but as I understand the SAVE program, it's voluntary, so that would have to change. I mean——
Mr. KING. Excuse me, Mr. Bonner. It's with that assumption that it would still be voluntary but an employer could verify that employee to be—with a positive verification that they are legal, and then they would simply lose the tax deductibility of the wages and benefits paid. So it might be voluntary, but they could be audited by the IRS and have to pay then the interest, penalty, and principal on tax avoidance.
Mr. BONNER. I think that that measure, while it might be a start, would not really go far enough to discourage people from hiring illegal immigrants. I think that more needs to be done in that respect. I think you need INS enforcement agents, special agents, criminal investigators, call them what you will, going around ensuring compliance much the way the IRS enforces the tax code, selective enforcement but it makes everybody else sit up and take notice that, you know, it's not a good thing to be out there violating these laws because Joe down the street lost his business because he was hiring illegal aliens.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Bonner. Before I move this to Mr. Danahey, I would add that we're looking at at least a $40 billion revenue incentive there by some numbers that we have.
So, Mr. Danahey, your opinion?
Mr. DANAHEY. Sir, that might increase the numbers that just look for employers that aren't going to bother taking those benefits out. Also, that's going to put an additional burden on the agents of the Internal Revenue Service, because they'll be working with the same numbers that they are to perform their current mission.
Page 219 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
Mr. KING. Thank you.
Mr. Cutler?
Mr. CUTLER. I think it's a step in the right direction, but I think that we also need to coordinate with the Labor Department, and I think also, as I had suggested when I made my remarks, I believe that we should be hiring compliance officers. You might want to think about hiring retired law enforcement folks because they can hit the ground running a little bit more quickly than somebody coming into this cold, whether it's retired annuitants or retired police officers. But I think that the idea of having compliance folks who don't carry guns, don't get the same 6(c) retirement program, which is costly, the hazardous duty retirement program, could become a force multiplier. But the only cautionary note that I still have to sound is that if we make it much more difficult for illegal aliens to seek employment and be successful at it, they will go into areas of fraud. So we have to understand that that balloon is going to get squeezed on one end, it's certainly going to be bulging at the other end. You know, the thing comes back again to interior enforcement and coordinating so that we're coming at it from more than one direction.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Cutler, and since Mr. Papademetriou deals only with facts and I'm out of time, I'm going to yield back to the Chairman. Thank you. [Laughter.]
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentleman.
Page 220 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
This hearing room has got to be turned over to another hearing at 12 noon, and so we are going to have to stop at this. But I very much appreciate the gentlemen for your attendance today and for your contribution to this discussion.
Before I close, I would just like to tell specifically Mr. Bonner and Mr. Danahey, every Member of this Subcommittee, as well as the Congress as a whole, very much appreciates the work that you do and that the members of your various agencies to enforce the laws as Congress has passed. And we appreciate that. We understand the limitation of resources that you have. We understand from time to time your frustration, but we very much thank you for your service and we hope that help is on the way to help you do more good things.
So with that, I——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, if you would yield, I just want to add my appreciation as well to the two gentlemen, but also to the many, many agents that are out there on the front lines. We appreciate the work that they do, and since I have seen Mr. Cutler on a number of occasions, your 30 years is much appreciated, and you were the INS agent, but let me say that your fellow colleagues are still doing the very best that they can do, and we appreciate it.
Mr. CUTLER. I am proud of all of them, and I appreciate the kind remarks.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. The business before the Subcommittee being complete, we are adjourned.
Page 221 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
[Whereupon, at 11:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE TO MICHAEL T. DOUGHERTY, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
LeeQA2A.eps
LeeQA2B.eps
RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE TO DANIEL B. SMITH, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR CONSULAR AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
LeeQA3A.eps
LeeQA3B.eps
LeeQA3C.eps
Note: Rep. Lamar Smith presented post-hearing questions to the Honorable Eduardo Aguirre, Jr. A reply to those questions had not been received by the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims at the time this hearing was printed.
Page 222 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 2
(Footnote 4 return)
According to Webster's dictionary, amnesty is ''the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals.''
(Footnote 5 return)
CIS is responsible for adjudicating petitions for naturalization, permanent residence, refugee and asylum status, and non-immigrant entries.