On the Mind Numbing Stupidity of Congress.
By Jon Sandor Posted in Immigration — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It appears to have come to the belated attention of members of the Senate that large numbers of people who are in the country illegally came here on a visa and then never left. John McCain attempts to correct conservatives on this point in this article, assuming as he does that we are ignorant of the facts.
McCain said conservatives who want to focus exclusively on securing America's borders are missing a major part of the problem: that 40 percent of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States are here because they overstayed their visas, not because they entered the country illegally.
Senator Ensign, who is a pretty good voice on conservative issues in general and also on immigration, can be found saying the same thing in an interview with Ed Morrisey.
.. I think it’s very important that the triggers, be real triggers in the bill and that we actually fund those triggers. We fund those types of programs before other of programs goes into effect. The funding has to be mandatory funding, not where it’s like a wink and a nod to future funding. We actually have to make sure that the funding is there to secure the borders and interior enforcement. People forget that about forty percent of the folks who are here illegally are people who came in legally then overstayed their visa ...
What makes this particularly frustrating and prompts the title of this piece is that (a) they are correct about the problem and (b) they passed a law to fix this problem in 1996!
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (warning – 750 page pdf) contains the following language;
SEC. 110. AUTOMATED ENTRY-EXIT CONTROL SYSTEM.
(a) SYSTEM.—Not later than 2 years after the date of the
enactment of this Act, the Attorney General shall develop an automated entry and exit control system that will—
(1) collect a record of departure for every alien departing
the United States and match the records of departure with
the record of the alien’s arrival in the United States; and
(2) enable the Attorney General to identify, through online
searching procedures, lawfully admitted nonimmigrants
who remain in the United States beyond the period authorized
by the Attorney General.
(b) REPORT.—
(1) DEADLINE.—Not later than December 31 of each year
following the development of the system under subsection (a),
the Attorney General shall submit an annual report to the
Committees on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives
and of the Senate on such system.
(2) INFORMATION.—The report shall include the following
information:
(A) The number of departure records collected, with
an accounting by country of nationality of the departing
alien.
(B) The number of departure records that were successfully
matched to records of the alien’s prior arrival in
the United States, with an accounting by the alien’s country
of nationality and by the alien’s classification as an
immigrant or nonimmigrant.
(C) The number of aliens who arrived as nonimmigrants,
or as a visitor under the visa waiver program
under section 217 of the Immigration and Nationality Act,
for whom no matching departure record has been obtained
through the system or through other means as of the
end of the alien’s authorized period of stay, with an
accounting by the alien’s country of nationality and date
of arrival in the United States.
(c) USE OF INFORMATION ON OVERSTAYS.—Information regarding
aliens who have remained in the United Staty beyond their
authorized period of stay identified through the system shall be integrated into appropriate data bases of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of State, including those used at ports of entry and at consular offices.
This law, as I say, was passed in 1996. The system mandated in it for tracking visa entry and exit, and maintaining a database of those who overstayed their visas, still does not exist.
You can go here to see the current status of this system, currently called US-VISIT. The entry tracking provisions are partly place. The exit tracking provisions are not. The database to identify those who have not left and are here on expired visas is not in place either.
The following is excerpted from a hearing of the House Committee on International Relations, conducted just last year, which observed as follows.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is called to order.
Today's hearing is entitled, ''Visa Overstays: Can We Bar the Terrorist Door?''
Since 9/11, it has become obvious that immigration generally and visa overstays specifically are things we no longer have the luxury to ignore. In fact, the 9/11 Commission made the following recommendation almost 2 years ago, and I quote:
''The Department of Homeland Security, properly supported by the Congress, should complete as quickly as possible a biometrics entry/exit screening system, including a single system for speeding qualified travelers. It should be integrated with a system that provides benefits to foreigners seeking to stay in the United States.
''Linking biometrics passports to good data systems and decisionmaking is a fundamental goal. No one can hide his or her debt by acquiring a credit card with a slightly different name, yet today a terrorist can defeat the link to electronic records by tossing away an old passport and slightly altering the name in the new one.''
Sometime later, the 9/11 Commission reported that, and I quote, ''modest progress'' has been made on this goal. Find out about that modest progress.
My concern is that once people enter the country through legitimate visas, they are often never heard from again, and we have no procedure for tracking them. The biometrics procedure described above is barely in place and far from uniformly applied, and even this important issue doesn't touch on the question of illegal immigration, a crisis that has not been tackled for years. But today's hearing will help us determine whether, or to what extent, visa visitors are tracked and the routine overstays of visas and how widespread it is.
This is no theatrical matter. As our witnesses know, at least one al-Qaeda-linked operative convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot obtained amnesty through a program intended for farm workers. In my home State of California, the crime problem and the pressure on public services, I might add, presented by noncitizens who are here illegally is astronomical, burdening local government and law enforcement in a way that might be just unimaginable to someone who is not from a border State, but this will soon become the reality of other States as well.
{Jump}
Mr. KRIKORIAN:
The first task is to know whether a foreign visitor actually left before his length of stay expired. We have no real way of knowing this now, given the complete breakdown of the comically inadequate, paper-based system of tracking the departure of foreign visitors via the I–94 form. And without knowing which foreign visitors have left, we have no way of knowing who has remained illegally.
The potential for true departure tracking exists in US–VISIT, the new biometric screening system for foreign visitors, which the Department of Homeland Security began implementing in 2004. The system records the entry of foreign visitors, authenticates their identity, and screens them against security databases. It has been fully implemented at air and sea ports, but in only a very limited way at land ports. If the program is allowed to proceed as planned, the exit recording system will eventually require visitors to ''check out'' as they leave. By matching the recorded entries against the exits, DHS would be able to determine which visitors have overstayed their visas and become illegal aliens. In addition to providing ICE with enforcement leads as soon as an alien overstays, it is expected that the act of recording entries and exits, together with increased enforcement activity and the imposition of penalties for visa violations, will help dampen the temptation to overstay.
US–VISIT is still a work in progress, with fewer than one-fourth of foreign visitors now screened and enrolled upon entry, and only a handful on exit (DHS is currently relying on a passenger manifest-based system and pilot exit programs in a few airports to record exits). Mexicans and Canadians are exempt from enrollment, leaving a significant gap in the screening activity. This policy is partly due to infrastructure limitations and partly due to the Bush administration's deference to constituencies who benefit from minimal screening policies, such as the travel industry, the immigration bar, and businesses dependent on cross-border trade. Funding for more port inspectors and infrastructure improvements, such as port re-design, would make it much easier to expand the number of visitors who are covered under US–VISIT, enhancing security, deterring illegal immigration, and facilitating legitimate travel and commerce.
If and when the exit-recording function of US–VISIT is ever fully implemented, then aliens identified as overstayers should be added to the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. In that way, if they are ever arrested for a crime or pulled over for a traffic stop, they could be held by local police and then turned over to DHS's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This could become a key component of interior enforcement. Although no hard figures exist, with perhaps 4 million visa overstayers living in the United States, there is no question that tens of thousands of them are arrested or pulled over in traffic stops each year. Traffic stops and arrests are a significant opportunity to apprehend those in the country illegally and we should take full advantage of it.
While adding visa overstays to the criminal database would help reduce illegal immigration, one may still wonder if it would ever be useful against terrorists. In fact, two of the 9/11 hijackers were pulled over in traffic stops in months preceding the attacks. In the spring of 2001, the plot's ringleader, Mohammed Atta, received a traffic ticket in Broward County, Fla., for driving without a license. He had, by this time, overstayed his visa on his previous visit to the United States between June 2000 and January 2001, though the INS at Miami International Airport allowed him back into the country. Had a system of carefully tracking overstays and placement of names into the criminal database been in place, then we potentially could have averted the 9/11 attacks.
As I say, the information that 40% of illegal’s are guilty of overstaying their visas appears to have the status of a talking point, one which is being used to justify the necessity for “comprehensive immigration reform”. The reality is that Congress passed legislation mandating a fix for this problem eleven years ago. It is rather audacious of them to essentially point out that they have failed in the execution of their duties in this fashion, and to now tell the country that the implementation of laws passed in 1996 is contingent on us accepting such things as Z and Y visas in 2007.
One last point. As part of the debate over the current immigration bill, S. 1348, Senator Vitter proposed this amendment to be a trigger for the visa programs.
(6) The U.S. Visit System: The integrated entry and exit data system required by 8 U.S.C. 1365a (Section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996), which is already 17 months past its required implementation date of December 21, 2005, has been fully implemented and is functioning at every land, sea, and air port of entry.
(Do note that the implementation date of the system has at this point already slipped from 1998 to December 2005, and failed once again to meet even that timetable.)
This amendment was defeated by a vote of 49-48. The participants in “the bargain”, including Senators Graham, Kyl, and McCain, all voted to defeat it. Keep that in mind and reread McCain’s comments at the start of this blog. This entire process is a shell game.
But the people now informing us of the visa overstay problem were in Congress in 1996 and passed legislation to "correct" this problem.
It's like this. I have a leak in my roof. I pay a roofer come and do repair work. Then I notice that the roof is still leaking. I talk to the roofer about it, and he tells me "Hmm, looks like you got a hole in your roof. You need to get that fixed. I can do if for you, for a price. A big price."
Unfortunately we can't report Congress to the Better Business Bureau. But we can and should fire them. The Boston Tea Party was held over a lot less.
That means we don't have to round up and deport 12MM illegals. Heck, we can start with 4.8MM who should be much easier to find because we have a paper trail on them. Round them up. Ship them home.
Then we can figure out what to do with the 7.2MM who wandered through the desert.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
what you laid out, Jon (which is an accurate account of how the 1996 legislation is a mirror image of the Vitter Amendment). As has been pointed out again and again, the contemporary Senate is filled with intellectual lightweights. It really is hard these days to distinguish rank stupidity from deception in that once august body.
But your point is valid, regardless of motive, and as the Foghorns decry visa overstays we need to keep in mind the legislation has been on the books to help ease the problem for more than a decade.
Excellent blog and recommended.
The answer is: [drum roll]... BOTH.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
and all the more reason Sen. Grahamnisty has to go.
the pathway to a permanent minority, and I mean minority...
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
instead of congress playing a shell game?
Part of your information is incorrect though, the date for implementation has been moved by each congress since the law was initially passed as was similar legislation for biometric tracking for those entering from our southern border.
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
Strange,
It is not a pass the buck blame game of Congress vs POTUS. They both are lacking in desire and drive concerning the influx of illegals. But, look at the POTUS response to fighting al Qaeda. He did not hesitate or wait for the Congress before detaining them and interrogating them at gitmo. USSC did rule for him to get approval from Congress, and he got it. My point is for that particular type of enforcement he has the desire and drive to lead. With the illegals he is not so driven.
"We should scrap this “comprehensive” immigration bill and the whole debate until the government can show the American people that we have secured the borders -- or at least made great headway."
Fred Thompson
it's too no win....
BUT
Without new laws being passed by congress DHS clearly has been given the authority to find creative ways to circumvent congressional interference in such areas as workplace enforcement. This bit of info from the ICE website says it better than I can and I think it sums up a lot of what GWB has pushed for in terms of a better bang for the buck from government operations in all areas...
Criminal Prosecutions vs. Administrative Fines:
In the past, administrative fines often proved to hold little deterrence value for violators. Many employers came to view these fines as simply the “cost of doing business.” Administrative fines were ignored, not paid in a timely matter or mitigated down over several years.
In criminal cases, ICE is often pursuing charges of harboring illegal aliens, money laundering and/or knowingly hiring illegal aliens. Harboring illegal aliens is a felony with a potential 10-year prison sentence. Money laundering is a felony with a potential 20-year prison sentence. ICE has found these criminal sanctions to be a far greater deterrent to illegal employment schemes than administrative sanctions.
I will concede to the being driven part though... DHS/Chertoff has gotten favorable rulings in court so far that congress did inadvertently give him authority to overrule the courts that could squelch many of the legal battles being fought currently over fence installation issues and the building of the observation towers/radars on the border...
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
Yes, Congress has moved the implementation date several times over the years. That is part of the point I'm making. They may pass a bill this month with great sounding language on enforcement in it, just as there was very tough and very specific language in the 1996 law. But based on their past performance its unwise to believe that whatever they say will occur on time, if ever. Apart from the provisions they themselves want, which will be take effect instantly.
As the Sessions amendment indicated, the most recent "deadline" has already been missed. And that was already several years past the initial date required by Congress in 1996.
that it's likely the deadline (18 months) for implementation of the amnesty provisions will be kept in place while the schedule for building that fence/wall/barrier gets moved back annually, too, along with the tracking system?
We've traded our National Sovereignty for cheap roofing and yardwork.
They are all lying to us, NO enforcement provisions will ever be put in place, and there will be no real requirement to pay any sort of fines or taxes. The great hue and cry will go up about how unfair it is to require these poor immigrants to have to pay. The government itself will pick up the tab.
It's all an act. All but a very small handful of those elected give a snot about what you and I want.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
I have some prime beach front property here in South Dakota for sale too, Mr. McCain!
Wubbies World, MSgt, USAF (Retired):
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("An argument is a sequence of statements aimed at demonstrating the truth of an assertion.); }
All you need to do is to put a closing quote after the word assertion, like so:
assertion".}
1965, 1986 and 1996 were all "then". This is "now".
You know, like, the government is different now. They understand the issue, where "then" they were just flailing at it. "Now", this bill will really accomplish something.
Or some such crap like that there.
Suppose I was a Member of Congress. Suppose I was a congenital liar, thief and con-man who thought I could convince people of absolutely anything every time I opened my mouth. But I repeat myself. See sig.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.