Hearing of the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee - Securing Our Borders Under a Temporary Guest Worker Proposal

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE IMMIGRATION AND BORDER SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE SUBJECT: SECURING OUR BORDERS UNDER A TEMPORARY GUEST WORKER PROPOSAL

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R-GA)

WITNESSES: PANEL I:

ROBERT BONNER, COMMISSIONER, UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY;

STEWART VERDERY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLICY, BORDER AND TRANSPORTATION SECURITY DIRECTORATE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY;

DONNA BUCELLA, TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;

PANEL II: DANIEL GRISWOLD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR TRADE POLICY STUDIES, CATO INSTITUTE;

MARGARET D. STOCK, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT, NEW YORK

LOCATION: 226 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having this hearing on-again another hearing on what I consider to be one of the most important subjects that Congress could possibly deal with in certainly a post 9/11 environment. But, as Senator Feinstein has pointed out, we've had serious long standing problems with our immigration system and we simply-the status quo was simply not acceptable.

I think, if there is one thing that we can all agree upon, it is that our current system is broken. In addition to the problems that Senator Feinstein mentioned, we have between eight and 10 million people living in this country illegally now, about six million people of them part of our workforce and we don't know for sure who they are. We don't know for sure what they are doing. And that is simply unacceptable in a post 9/11 world, inconsistent with our demands for homeland security.

I share with my colleagues and my constituents concerns about our current failure to enforce our immigration laws. I said many times I think the failure to enforce a law breeds disrespect for the law generally. And we are a country founded on the rule of law and the status quo in the area of immigration obviously cannot continue. I'm convinced that a temporary worker program will help us enforce our immigration laws by separating those who are in the country to work from those who have come in here to try to harm us.

As a former state attorney general charged with the responsibility of enforcing Texas law, I know that law enforcement is about setting priorities and making the best use of limited resources. In my view, the temporary worker program is a tool that would allow immigration authorities to focus our limited resources on those who are here to harm us, the smugglers, the drug dealers and the terrorists.

I am confident we can, if we put our minds to it and if we work long and hard enough-and it will be hard work-devise a temporary worker program that includes tough anti-fraud measures so we are able to confirm that temporary workers are who they say they are. It's crucially important that we prevent and deter fraud in any new temporary worker program that we devise and I'm committed to doing that.

Additionally, US-VISIT will be an extremely important tool to help authorities monitor entry and exit of temporary workers so they can return to their home country when their period of work expires. And, Mr. Chairman, while I understand we are principally concerned with enforcement of our laws at this hearing, I think we always need to keep in mind that we are bound by international treaties with, for example, Mexico and Canada, from which this country, I believe, benefits enormously in terms of trade and the stimulus to our economy. And, at the same time we deal with border security, we need to keep in mind that we need to not impair the free flow of legal commerce across our borders and so I hope that we will focus not only on security but also on the proper balance between security and our economy.

With that, thank you very much.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
SEN. CORNYN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to ask a few questions about the US-VISIT and how it interacts with the various databases that are used either for the Terrorist Screening Center or NCIC or otherwise. If I understood your testimony, Mr. Verdery, you indicated that is the purpose-one of the principal purposes of US-VISIT is to track people when they come into the country and when they leave the country and then permit the immigration officers, the DHS officials to then match those against various lists. Is that correct?

MR. VERDERY: Well, I won't want to oversell the exit part of it just yet. As you know that's going to be deployed over the next couple of years and I can get into that if you want but I wouldn't want to oversell what we have in place today on exit. It's two a pilots at one airport and one seaport and we'll be deploying it later. But on the entry side, sure, we want to check against the watch list and the criminal databases as people come in.

SEN. CORNYN: Well, I want to ask you a little bit more about that. But perhaps, Ms. Bucella, let me ask you as I understand the number of names on the watch list that your center employs is relatively modest, isn't it, compared to the number of-for example people on the NCI database. You're not there to check-the purpose of your organization is not necessarily to check people who are coming into the country with criminal backgrounds and otherwise but mainly to focus on suspected terrorists. Is that correct?

MS. BUCELLA: Yes, we are purely terrorism only-for suspected terrorists. The US-VISIT, if the individual has a name and that name is checked through the NTC and they do have the prints from US-VISIT, we are able to fill with the identification of the name if that name is in our database we are still able to assist even with the prints.

But currently in our database while we are consolidated we're not fully automated yet. That will be by the end of this calendar year.

SEN. CORNYN: Why I raise that issue because I want to make sure that we understand the magnitude of the challenge ahead of you and indeed ahead of us. And I think it's even bigger than perhaps those of us up here might imagine-certainly that's the case for me-because what we're talking about is at last testimony we had before this committee between 300,000 and 400,000 people under final orders of deportation that simply melted into the landscape of this country. We simply don't know where they are. We have about 80,000 people who are criminal absconders who have been convicted of a crime and we don't know where they are. And so I just want to make clear, just so I understand, and your testimony is clear, Ms. Bucella, the scope of your center is not to try to identify either of those groups, is that right?

MS. BUCELLA: Yes, sir. Terrorists only.

SEN. CORNYN: Mr. Verdery, ultimately is it the goal of the US- VISIT program to be able to do that? To identify those people so that they can be deported or denied re-entry into the United States or reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities?

MR. VERDERY: Yes, of course. The integration of the immigration databases will allow an inspector to know if somebody has been deported or is under a deportation order. Of course, as you mentioned, the problem we have now is that there are a large number of people who are in the country who are not trying to leave, they're here, and we obviously have initiatives in place to try to reduce that number with a priority towards the criminal aliens, as you mentioned, who are under deportation orders. But, yes, the integration of the databases will make it possible so that if somebody were to leave having had a deportation order and then try to come back in, we'll know about it and they won't be admitted entry. It happens today.

MR. BONNER: Let me just-just to sort of press this out a little bit. If you're coming in internationally into the United States, we have advanced passenger information, the passport number, the name, the biographic and that sort of thing. Every one of those people are run through NCIC. We arrest-we've already arrested about 5,000 people coming in through our ports of entry, our airports because they are wanted in the United States. Okay, so they're run through NCIC based upon name and biographic. If there's a hit, we know it before they arrive.

Now, what US-VISIT does is it gives us a biometric capability, and that is somebody comes in with a false identity-it gives us two things: one, it tells us that the person that was issued the visa at the State Department is in fact the person who's presenting himself to our inspectors at the ports of entry because we've matched them biometrically. And the secondly there is a database-and this is the IDENT database basically, that those prints, those two inkless prints are scanned through when somebody presents themselves at JFK or LAX or Atlanta or wherever it is, those are run against that database, and that database does have anybody who has entered illegally and subject to a deportation order because INS did take those two prints, and it also has-and I don't want to say it has everything in the world in it, but it also does have the wants and warrants that the U.S. Marshall uses in terms of people that are criminally wanted. So a large group of criminals.

SEN. CORNYN: Let me ask you a little bit about what you just said because my time is limited. You make a good point that where US- VISIT has already been implemented at airports there is the possibility to cross-check the various databases, assuming a name is on the database with the entry of that person into the country. I guess what I was thinking about primarily is places where you US-VISIT has not yet been implemented but which is mandated for the end of this year, for example, at the 50 of the busiest land-based ports in America, a number of which happen to be in my state, the 1200 mile border between Texas and Mexico. But is it fair to say just sort in summary that we still have a lot of work to do?

MR. BONNER: Yes, sir.

SEN. CORNYN: To get all these names on the databases so that then the biometric entry and exit program can identify those people as they're coming in and going out?

MR. BONNER: A lot of work and lot of deployment of equipment of course too.

SEN. CORNYN: Well, let me just make a little bit of a pledge here, and I know, as I mentioned in my opening statement, that we are principally concerned about the security of our nation. That's job number one, no doubt about it. But at the same time we've got to recognize that we have important economic relationships with other countries. For example, across all of the major ports in my state of Texas, Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo and el Paso, a 1 percent decline in border crossings cost that region $76 million in sales and about 1,500 jobs and a decrease in gross state product by $1.2 billion. That's a 1 percent decrease in border crossings.

And I hear a lot, and I suspect Senator Feinstein and other border state senators hear from our constituents, their concern while we improve our security efforts which is a goal they share, that we not ignore the economic impact and that somehow we find a way to marry these two objectives together to keep a strong economy in these areas and to protect our nation against terrorism and those who want to do us harm. But I worry a little bit because of course the next deadline for implementation of the US-VISIT program is December of this year.

Can you tell me, perhaps, Mr. Verdery, we'll start with you, how are you going to do that by December 31st?

MR. VERDERY: It's going to be a lot of work but we have a very good team in place to do it and we have set the structures in place that make it manageable and one of those, as you know, is our decision as an initial matter to exempt border crossing cardholders from processing in US-VISIT on a routine basis. And that's the overwhelming bulk of repeat travelers for --

SEN. CORNYN: I don't want to interrupt you, but my understanding is you don't have a contractor in place yet.

MR. VERDERY: No, the RFP is on the street, there are bidders in place and the award is due I believe in about three weeks or four.

SEN. CORNYN: And that contractor's going to get it done by the deadline of December 31st?

MR. VERDERY: Working with us. They will be-it's an umbrella contract. They'll be taking direction from Undersecretary Hutchison and the program office and CBP for specific ports. But they will be able to get in place the infrastructure, the RF technology we need and also the enhanced processing and secondary that would have-a US- VISIT capability is secondary for visa holders or for others such as BCC holders who are referred to secondary for some reason.

SEN. CORNYN: Please understand I'm not being critical but I do think it's important for us to understand the magnitude of what's in front of us here so we can provide you the resources that you need in order to be successful. But we also need to be realistic about this and make sure it's an approach that takes into account the entire context. One thing I've learned in Washington DC, people don't necessarily, just because they haven't been there, understand what life is like along our border between Mexico and the United States where people cross back and forth on a daily basis.

They have family members on both sides of the border, and there's an enormous amount of economic benefit on both sides of the border from being able to go back and forth relatively easily. And we're talking about legal travel back and forth, not terrorists. And so I just want to make sure we understand the challenge that lies ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.