Transcript

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, sat down with The Washington Times yesterday to discuss the immigration debate in Congress this year. This is a partial transcript:

Q. What is the fate of last year’s bill, and how do you see the immigration debate this year?

A. Border security and internal enforcement of our immigration laws, and specifically the employer-sanctions law, are the key to making the country safer, as well as preventing the Congress from repeating the mistake of Simpson-Mazzoli 19 years ago — it’s now 20 years ago, because that was 1986.

Simpson-Mazzoli was based on the flawed premise that we would solve the illegal-alien problem by granting those presently in the country amnesty and not having an employer-sanctions program that would turn off the magnet for new illegals to come across the border. And it didn’t work because employer sanctions were not enforced. So, I think 2 million illegals at that time, now the minimum estimate is that we have 11 million illegals.

And the talk of an amnesty program — the president denies his program is amnesty but I don’t think people will go home under his program if they get their temporary cards here — the talk of an amnesty program has increased the flow of illegals across the border. In 2004, there were an additional half-million.

In my opinion, the two big provisions of the bill in terms of increasing security on the border and the employer verification of Social Security numbers plan, plus increasing the fines, have got to be done and have got to be funded before Congress should even consider a guest-worker program.The border security program is based on the fence and also giving the local law enforcement officers in the 29 border counties the authority to enforce the immigration law, which state and local police do not have at the present time.

I would like to see that done nationwide, but if it works in the counties where the problem is most acute, I think we will be able to get the support to have it go nationwide. …

The verification of the validity of Social Security numbers is an essential tool to curtailing employment of illegal aliens, particularly in low-skilled, labor-intensive businesses where they congregate, like agriculture, hotels and restaurants, construction, landscaping and the like. And because a goodly number of the bad actors who hire the illegals are able to so reduce their labor cost that they either put their competition who’s doing it right out of business or drag down the wages that are paid to legal aliens and U.S. citizens, that unless we do get tough with the people who are hiring lots of illegal aliens, we’re not going to solve the problem, even with the fence and even with the sheriffs having the arrest powers for immigration violations in those 29 border counties.

And coupled with the verification is an increase in the fines, starting with an increase from $100 apiece on the first offense to $2,500 apiece, so that the fines actually act as a deterrent rather than simply being viewed as paying the fine as a cost of doing business.

I am very disturbed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce invited Mexican Foreign Minister [Luis Ernesto] Derbez to Chicago to attack my legislation and to attack me by name. And I sent a letter to him, which I did not release to the press, and I got a letter back, which I am giving to you, which admits that the Chicago speech that Derbez gave was organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

They should be ashamed of themselves because essentially what they are doing is saying that it’s OK to use fake Social Security numbers. I don’t think that anybody who is in business ought to be condoning the use of false documentation. If they continue promoting speeches by Mexican government officials, then maybe they ought to register as an agent of a foreign government under the law.

Q. Was expanding to mandatory basic pilot program your first choice for enforcement for internal verification in the recent bill?

A. That’s my first choice. As you know, a year ago, I was in the midst of fighting to get the Real ID Act passed. One of the things that was very helpful in that is the fact that there were 380,000 valid North Carolina driver’s licenses with the same Social Security number, which was nines all the way across. And that’s just in one state, and it’s a medium-sized state. It’s not the biggest or the smallest state in the union. And if you have 380,000 people who say they either don’t have a Social Security card because they can’t get one because they’re an illegal alien or they, quote, “lost it,” unquote, so they get the same number on their license, this shows how the Social Security numbers have been abused.

And one of the reasons why the Social Security Administration is now sending out annual Social Security statements to all of us with active accounts is so that we can verify whether or not somebody is using our Social Security numbers.

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