Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006
COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - May 25, 2006)
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4097, which is at the desk.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this amendment is one I believe is absolutely essential to the functioning of this comprehensive immigration reform plan which has been shaped over the last 2 weeks on the Senate floor. It is premised upon the concept of information sharing, and in a post-9/11 world this is the concept with which we have become familiar because the failure to share information between law enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities and other agencies of the Federal Government was one of the causes of the terrible disaster this country sustained on September 11, 2001.
This amendment strikes an appropriate balance between confidentiality of the records of the applicant for benefits under this bill and fraud detection. The compromise we have heard and which has been carefully crafted by a bipartisan coalition here will not in any way be unraveled or hurt by this amendment.
Finally, I believe an illegal alien will not be deterred from applying because of this amendment. This amendment does not remove confidentiality per se. It applies only after an application is denied and the need for confidentiality passes. The text is modeled after the Violence Against Women Act. And I ask my colleagues, if the limitation on confidentiality is OK in the case of women who are subjected to violence, why isn't it OK for workers who are simply here illegally?
This country's early experience--about 20 years ago now--with immigration reform shows that legalization or an amnesty program is a magnet for fraud and can be exploited in a number of ways. We know that this vulnerability can be exploited, not only by common criminals but also by terrorists. Three terrorists convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing obtained green cards through the 1986 amnesty, including New York City cabdriver Mohammed Abouhalima, who obtained a green card through the agricultural worker amnesty program. The New York Times has described the 1986 amnesty as ``one of the most extensive immigration frauds ever perpetrated against the United States Government.''
Within just a few years, it was reported that the Government had already identified almost 400,000 cases of possible fraud. One of the reasons there was so much fraud in the 1986 amnesty was because the law did not allow the Government to share information even after an application was denied. Yet the current bill contains the exact same text and the exact same flaws.
My amendment does not eliminate any confidentiality provisions in the bill. The workers who apply will be protected by the existing confidentiality provisions. My amendment simply allows the Government to share and use information once the worker's application and all appeals are denied.
As I mentioned, my amendment is modeled after the current legal protections provided in the Violence Against Women Act, which allows the Government to share and use information submitted in an application ``when the application for relief is denied and all opportunities for appeal of that denial have been exhausted.'' If the limitation is OK in that context, why is it not appropriate in this context?
I don't believe this amendment would deter any alien from applying for legal status. Illegal workers face deportation, a secure border, and worksite enforcement. We may hear some say that in order for undocumented individuals to come forward and take advantage of the legalization program provided by this underlying bill, we can't do anything that might cause them to second-guess or question whether they should come forward. But the fact is, I think there has to be a balance struck. I don't believe any illegal alien will be deterred from participating in the very generous provisions of this underlying bill because of concerns that if their application is denied, that information can then be shared with law enforcement personnel.
The fact is, the kinds of things we are looking out for are fraud--massive fraud--schemes which would be designed to undermine the very structure of this negotiated comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Paul Virtue, President Clinton's general counsel at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, testified before Congress that:
The confidentiality restrictions of law [in the 1986 amnesty] also prevented INS from pursuing cases of possible fraud detected during the application process.
That was before the House Judiciary Committee on March 4, 1999.
One of our colleagues who was then in the House of Representatives, Senator Schumer, was quoted in the New York Times in 1989 as saying:
One certain product of the agricultural amnesty program ..... is that in developing immigration policies in the future, Congress will be much more wary of the potential for fraud and will do more to stop it.
It has been said famously that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to relive it. I suggest to my colleagues that we should have learned something from the massive fraud in the 1986 amnesty, and we should not relive that in this bill today.
This amendment improves the current bill by preserving the confidentiality of applicants while allowing the Government to share information, perhaps to uncover massive frauds, criminal syndicates that are designed to try to circumvent the protections in this bill and gain access to our country and our immigration system in spite of massive criminal organized crime. I ask my colleagues, do we really want to grant impunity for fraud? Do we really want to invite criminals and those who would perpetrate such fraud to do so again when we have the very tools at our command which will allow us to strike the proper balance between prosecution for fraud and yet at the same time encouraging those who would benefit from this program to come forward?
I have heard some suggestion that the only way we are going to encourage people to come forward is if we make doing so an unequivocally positive experience. In other words, it is all carrot and no stick. But I would suggest that the most practical way to deal with the current situation is for a combination of carrot and stick--the carrot being, obviously, the offer of the great benefits and very generous benefits provided by this underlying legislation, but the stick has to be things such as worksite verification. Ultimately, I believe that is the linchpin of the success of this entire program. Not even border security represents the linchpin for the success of this comprehensive immigration reform plan because 45 percent of illegal aliens currently in the United States entered legally, like the three convicted bombers of the 1993 World Trade Center explosion. But we need a combination of border security, worksite verification and enforcement, and employer sanctions for those who cheat, in order to dry up the attraction of those who want to come to the United States to work. But in doing so, we can provide a good balance for those who are here and who Congress is in the process of determining should be available for certain benefits under this bill, but I believe do so in a way that would prevent and make far less likely the massive fraud which undermined the 1986 amnesty.
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Mr. CORNYN. I have enormous respect for the knowledge and passion the Senator from Massachusetts brings to this issue. He is reading more into the amendment than certainly I intend. I would like to explain that.
First of all, I don't want to get into an argument with him today about what is and what is not amnesty. We have had that debate. We will leave further discussion of that for another day.
I agree with the Senator that what undermined the 1986 amnesty, which I think we both agree was amnesty, was the proliferation, as he said, of fraudulent documents. He acknowledges, and correctly so, coming here now 5 years post-September 11, that it is important all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies communicate with one another in a way that protects the American people.
He talks about tamper-proof documents. This bill does not provide for such tamper-proof documents. In fact, it maintains the current regime of allowing people to prove their eligibility to work by showing some combination of up to 20 different documents. That is where fraud has such great potential. We know there are document mills, there are criminal organizations that will generate a passport, a Social Security card, a driver's license--you name it. Some of the quality of their work is very high, and it easily passes for a valid document. But we do not have that tamper-proof document in this bill, and I hope in the conference committee we will agree among ourselves that is an essential part of this comprehensive immigration reform.
What I am getting is, if someone used a fraudulent document to apply for the benefits under this bill, and they are denied the benefits under this legalization program, that information ought to be shared with the FBI and with, potentially, the CIA in cases where their jurisdiction is invoked. This has the opportunity not only to lead our law enforcement personnel to shut down these fraudulent document mills, but also potentially to crack criminal syndicates engaged not only in generating false documents but trafficking in persons, in drugs, in guns, and even potentially terrorist organizations.
It is absolutely critical we have the Department of Homeland Security able to share that kind of information with the CIA and the FBI. It is important we bring down those stovepipes that prevented the information sharing that might have prevented September 11.
I am not suggesting a good-faith mistake in an application for the benefits under this bill would result in deportation. To the contrary. I am glad to hear the Senator from Massachusetts say, if you lie, you lose, you get deported. I believe we need to have a commonsense availability of this information--not on a widespread basis; we are not going to publish it on the Internet. But law enforcement ought to be able to share in some of this information on a case-by-case basis in a way designed not only to root out and prevent crime and punish crimes that already have been committed but potentially protect America against future terrorist attacks.
I cannot for the life of me understand why this is controversial, particularly coming up as we are on the fifth anniversary of September 11.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Massachusetts, but looking at the page he refers to on page 38 of the bill, it says:
Not later than October 26, 2007, every document, other than an interim document, issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security ..... shall be machine-readable and tamper-resistant. .....
I certainly applaud that aspirational goal. I would just note that just within the past few days, though, we have postponed the implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative card for another 18 months. There is no certainty that will happen by that date. What happens in the interim?
Let me just provide a couple of examples.
In 1995, Jose Velez, was found guilty of immigration fraud after he filed fraudulent applications under the 1986 amnesty. Let me just parenthetically note, in talking to Emilio Gonzalez, the current head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, he tells me there is still litigation over some of the cases covered by the 1986 amnesty--still in litigation.
But getting back to Mr. Velez's case, he said the task force that brought down Velez resulted in the guilty pleas or convictions of 20 individuals who together are responsible for filing false legalization applications for in excess of 11,000 unqualified aliens. Between March of 1988 and January of 1991, Velez and his coconspirators submitted approximately 3,000 fraudulent applications.
In connection with the 1986 legalization program, there were 920 arrests, 822 indictments, and 513 convictions for fraud and related criminal activity.
I would just return to something I said at the outset.
What we are talking about in this amendment is essentially the same language contained in the Violence Against Women Act.
The language in that act, which was designed to protect battered women and family members, states that the confidentiality provisions end ``when the application for relief is denied and all opportunities for appeal of the denial have been exhausted.''
I would suggest, if that language is good enough for the protection of women against whom violence has been committed, isn't it good enough for a worker who is simply out of status?
This amendment is not designed to undercut the compromise or the overall structure of the plan that is on the floor. This is designed to make it work. I want to make sure we are committed not only to comprehensive immigration reform but that we are actually going to make it work. That is all this amendment does.
I ask for the support of my colleagues.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it really boggles my mind we are having a debate over such a commonsense and straightforward amendment coming up on the anniversary of 9/11. To say the Department of Homeland Security cannot share information about potential fraud and crime and potentially disclose organized criminal activity and potentially even terrorist activity because of the provisions of this underlying bill--I cannot believe we are having that debate.
But we are.
Hopefully, our colleagues will join us in accepting this amendment which will reconcile this bill with other provisions of the law that we have amended and reformed over the last few years, which have improved information sharing between our intelligence community and our law enforcement agencies, which have made us safer. I don't think it is any accident that while there have been terrorist activities taking human life in places such as Madrid and London and Beslan and other places, we have been fortunate enough to avoid another travesty such as occurred on September 11. Part of it is because of information sharing.
This amendment would not deter any alien from applying for legal status. If we are going to say that once that application is denied for whatever reason that it can't be used to investigate potential crimes and fraud and potential terrorist links, that doesn't do anything to encourage or discourage people from coming forward. This is somebody whose application has already been denied. They already have come forward.
If we are going to have any criteria at all for taking 12 million people and moving them from an illegal status to some sort of legal status, we ought to be willing to enforce that criteria. That requires access to information and facts that will inform whether or not an individual satisfies the criteria that Congress has put in place.
I suggest to my colleagues that the American people are profoundly skeptical of taking 12 million people from undocumented or illegal status and all of a sudden putting them on a path to legalization and citizenship. That skepticism comes from many different directions. One of those is because they saw the tremendous fraud associated with the 1986 amnesty. The language here is precisely the same as was contained in that legislation.
What we are saying by refusing to adopt this amendment is, we haven't learned any lessons, either from the mistakes that were made in the 1986 amnesty and the fraud that occurred in connection with that, or from the terrible tragedies of 9/11.
There is not a lot more that can be said about it that we haven't already said. I hope my colleagues are listening. I hope they will consider this carefully. I hope they will consider the fact that all we are doing is something that is contained in established laws such as the Violence Against Women Act. This does not undermine the ability of people to take advantage of the benefits of this program. What it does is help make that program work, work for people who are actually qualified to receive the benefits of the program while eliminating those who are not and those who engage in fraud and criminal activities to facilitate the immigration into this country of people who are not legally authorized to be here.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I think we have said about all there is to say. Maybe we said it several times. I appreciate the Senator from Massachusetts pointing out page 362 of the bill. This is a voluminous bill, but my reading of this bill says that the section the Senator quoted only applies to the applicant and that application. In other words, if somebody fills out an application and is denied, then a criminal prosecution investigation may be had only against that applicant, but there are limitations which prohibit its distribution to third parties for purposes of investigating an organized crime syndicate or potentially terrorist links. There seems to be no commonsense reason why we would limit the availability of a document and that information, when it could well root out crimes involving hundreds and maybe even thousands of instances of fraud.
I believe the amendment strikes a balance. It is not designed to undermine the compromise that we have heard so much about. Indeed, this is to make sure that the underlying bill actually has a chance to work and isn't undermined by the fraud that has been so well documented underlying the 1986 amnesty but, rather, to fight that fraud and help build public confidence that we are serious about making this work.
Much of the problem with the 1986 amnesty was that it granted amnesty to 3 million people. The tradeoff was supposed to be effective work site verification to make sure that people who are qualified to work legally could work and those who were not could not and to sanction employers who cheat. But unless we have a system in place that will actually make it work, then all of the discussion about a comprehensive plan is a ruse. It will not work.
While I do have some differences with the Senator from Massachusetts about what this comprehensive immigration reform plan ought to look like, I trust we will be able to work on that some more when we get to conference with the House. My goal is to actually make sure it will work. He and I share that common goal, I believe. The amendment I have offered helps make that more likely.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the provisions in the underlying bill are the same as those contained in the 1986 act that was the subject of so much fraud. I suggest that while we are all entitled to our own opinion, we are not entitled to our own set of facts. The facts are that the same provisions in this underlying bill are in the 1986 act. We can do better, and we can make this work. We can avoid the 400,000 fraudulent applications that tarnished the concept behind the 1986 bill.
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