U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

31–098 PDF 2006

S. HRG. 109–698

EXAMINING THE NEED FOR COMPREHENSIVE

IMMIGRATION REFORM, PART II

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 12, 2006

Serial No. J–109–97

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

JON KYL, Arizona 

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina 

JOHN CORNYN, Texas 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts 

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware 

HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

MICHAEL O’NEILL, Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

BRUCE A. COHEN, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

Page

Cornyn, Hon. John, a U.S. Senator from the State of Texas ............................... 10

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 69

Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of California ................. 16

Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., a U.S. Senator from the State of Massachusetts ... 12

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 89

Kyl, Hon. Jon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Arizona .................................... 18

Leahy, Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont ............................. 2

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 91

Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alabama .......................... 13

Specter, Hon. Arlen, a U.S. Senator from the State of Pennsylvania ................. 1

WITNESSES 

Cutler, Michael W., Fellow, Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, 

D.C. ........................................................................................................................ 21

Gutierrez, Carlos, Secretary of Commerce, Washington, D.C. ............................. 4

Johnson, Benjamin, Director, Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, Washington, D.C. ............................................................ 24

McDonald, William F., Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and CoDirector, Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure, Georgetown University 

Law Center, Washington, D.C. ........................................................................... 26

O’Dowd, Niall, Founder and Chairman, Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, 

New York, New York ........................................................................................... 28

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 

Responses of Michael W. Cutler to questions submitted by Senator Kennedy .. 37

Responses of Carlos Gutierrez to questions submitted by Senator Kennedy ..... 50

Responses of Benjamin Johnson to questions submitted by Senator Kennedy .. 53

Responses of William F. McDonald to questions submitted by Senator Kennedy ....................................................................................................................... 56

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Chertoff, Michael, Secretary of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C., statement ...................................................................................................................... 67

Cutler, Michael W., Fellow, Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, 

D.C., statement and letter ................................................................................... 71

Gutierrez, Carlos, Secretary of Commerce, Washington, D.C., statement .......... 75

Johnson, Benjamin, Director, Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Law Foundation, Washington, D.C., statement ......................................... 82

McDonald, William F., Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and CoDirector, Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure, Georgetown University 

Law Center, Washington, D.C., statement ........................................................ 93

Microsoft Corporation, Jack Krumholtz, Managing Director, Federal Government Affairs, Washington, D.C., statement ....................................................... 106

O’Dowd, Niall, Founder and Chairman, Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, 

New York, New York, statement ........................................................................ 111

(1)

EXAMINING THE NEED FOR COMPREHENSIVE 

IMMIGRATION REFORM, PART II 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2006 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m., in room 

SD–226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Arlen Specter, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Specter, Kyl, Sessions, Cornyn, Leahy, Kennedy, and Feinstein. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ARLEN SPECTER, A U.S. 

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Chairman SPECTER. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee will now proceed with this 

hearing on immigration. And will you please start the clock on me 

like everybody else? 

It would be our preference to be conferring with the House of 

Representatives on the immigration matter as opposed to setting 

aside the month of August for hearings. And I do not believe we 

are engaging in dual hearings. But when the House announced the 

scheduling of hearings starting the month of August with the overtone of criticizing the Senate bill, it seems only reasonable to respond to have hearings to demonstrate the necessity to go beyond 

border security and to have a guest worker program and to take 

care of the 11 million undocumented immigrants. It is my hope 

that after we complete those hearings that in September we will 

move ahead to a conference and produce legislation. 

There has been a good deal of talk about a so-called trigger to 

have border security before we move ahead for the consideration of 

a guest worker program or to deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants. I think it is worth noting that in the Senate 

bill there are a number of delays. I think we should not get bogged 

down on semantics over substance, but ought to deal with what is 

the substance, not get bogged down on amnesty, which the Senate 

bill is not, because we provide for a fine, we provide for no criminal 

record, we provide for a long period of employment, the learning of 

English, so that there is no forgiveness and citizenship is earned 

under the Senate bill. 

We do have some built-in delays. For example, there will be no 

guest worker program under the Senate bill until after there have 

been appropriations for employer verification so that we will be 

2

sure that we are moving ahead on securing the border to eliminate 

illegals before we move into the guest worker program. 

It is also estimated that the regulations on the guest workers or 

on the 11 million will take at least 18 months, perhaps longer. So 

there is a built-in delay. And the 11 million or those of the 11 million who qualify for citizenship will be at the end of the line, and 

that line will take perhaps as long as 6 years. 

I do not often quote Senator Kennedy, but I told him I was going 

to do this. I do not often quote him in his presence. 

Senator KENNEDY. That is right. I can hardly wait to hear this. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman SPECTER. His comment, by the way, comes out of his 

time. 

But this is what Senator Kennedy said when we had the hearing 

last Wednesday at the Constitution Center: ‘‘So if there are those 

who feel a greater sense of satisfaction that we are going to move 

toward the enforcement first, that effectively was in the Senate 

bill.’’ So that is a concise statement that we may not be so far 

apart. 

I think there is the beginning of some amenity nationally. The 

recent issue of Time Magazine took up the supportive position on 

guest workers, pointing out that there is so much domestic consumption of illegal immigrant labor—housekeepers, nannies, gardeners, way above the farmers, the hotels, the restaurants that we 

traditionally talk about. And the Time Magazine article I think 

was right on target in identifying the underlying racism and xenophobia which really grips us despite our denial of it with the Chinese Exclusion Act going back to 1882 and the 1924 Immigration 

Act limiting immigrants from southern Italy targeted at Italians 

and with the limitation on Jewish immigrants when the Holocaust 

was on. So that when there is an effort to limit Chinese and Indian 

immigrants for legal status and HB–1, talented, well-qualified people, we see that the battle goes beyond legal versus illegal. 

Today’s hearing is going to be another effort, continuing effort to 

explain to the American people the importance of guest workers 

and the importance of not having a fugitive underclass of 11 million people. 

My red light just went on so I now yield to the distinguished 

Ranking Member, Senator Leahy. 

STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT 

Senator LEAHY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have done 

so much work on this—and Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, myself, and others have—that I am sorry to find that the election-year 

politics seem to have diminished the work the Senate has done to 

find a comprehensive solution to the Nation’s immigration problem. 

We have worked hard in the Senate. We created a bipartisan bill, 

delivered fair and comprehensive reforms, but since its passage, we 

have seen many in the Congress reject efforts to move forward and 

make progress, and notwithstanding what the Senate Democratic 

leaders have tried to do to get to conference. So instead, we end 

up with a series of after-the-fact hearings. Now, a few, like the one 

held by the Senate Armed Services Committee this week—and I 

3

know Senator Kennedy was at that were supportive of the Senate 

bill. We heard a powerful statement by General Pace—as those of 

us with Italian ancestry would say, General ‘‘Pa-chay’’—this week. 

The Chairman’s field hearing, again, attended by Senator Kennedy, 

last week, contributed to the record supporting the Senate bill. 

But then we see other hearings that have done nothing more 

than inflame the passions of anti-immigrant activists, and the lines 

seem clear. The anti-immigrant faction opposes a fair and comprehensive approach. They seem to abhor establishing a pathway 

to earn citizenship, and they seem to think it is going to help in 

upcoming elections. I would hope not. I think we reject the best of 

America and our values when we refuse to recognize all that immigrants bring and mean to this country. And I hope that fear and 

intolerance are not winning political strategies. 

It is unrealistic to think we can apprehend and deport every undocumented individual the administration has allowed into the 

United States. The reality is that our economy depends upon the 

labor of foreign workers. When Border Patrol agents are not spending time and resources apprehending people coming here to work, 

then they can work at really protecting the security of this country. 

I believe there is real merit to President Bush’s argument that 

if we increase the opportunity to come to the United States legally, 

we will reduce the demand for illegal entry. 

We are a welcoming, diverse country built and enriched by immigrants. My maternal grandparents came here from Italy. My paternal great-grandparents came here from Ireland. My mother learned 

English as a second language. My parents-in-law came here from 

Canada. My wife learned English as a second language as a firstgeneration American. And how proud they all were to come to this 

country. The distinguished Secretary knows what that pride feels 

like 

The opposition to providing bilingual ballots to bilingual American citizens, who are vested with the right to vote, is a particularly troubling part of this debate. Section 203’s guarantee of equality is not just for immigrants but for Native Americans and those 

who have long been citizens. The reality is that people who come 

to the United States embrace the English language along with patriotism, as my grandparents did, as my mother did, as my wife 

did. And America loses when we discriminate on the basis of national origin or language. Isolating ourselves and turning this country into a police state is not the way our Nation will remain the 

beacon of freedom and prosperity it has always been. Let us have 

faith in our traditional values. Let us show the strength and purpose needed to accomplish the comprehensive reform we need. 

It is critical that President Bush make good on his commitment 

to support the Senate’s work. I know how hard we worked to get 

that bill through. But without his active support and his steadfast 

dedication, the Congressional Republican efforts to derail comprehensive reform will succeed. I applauded the President for his 

statements earlier on comprehensive reform. I hope he will stay 

steadfast with that. If he does, we will pass it. If he does not, we 

will not. I hope he stays with us. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Senator Leahy. 

4

We are pleased to have as our first witness today the very distinguished Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez; born in Havana, 

Cuba, in 1953, came to the United States at the age of 7 in 1960; 

became a naturalized citizen in 1966; went to work for the Kellogg 

Company as a sales representative in 1975, and then became the 

youngest CEO in the history of that illustrious company. He has 

been the Secretary of Commerce since January of 2005, and he 

brings to the immigration issue a number of perspectives: 

First, as Secretary of Commerce, he is in a position to provide 

expert testimony about the employment picture in the United 

States, just what is necessary by way of immigrant assistance, 

what is necessary by way of a guest worker program, what would 

happen if we did not have immigrants in this country undertaking 

so many of the jobs. 

And then from his own perspective as an immigrant, he can tell 

us what it feels like to come from foreign shores and to become a 

part of the United States family and be such a distinguished citizen. And he can perhaps give us some insights as to the problems 

if we have an 11-million underclass of fugitives in this country, 

what that means to our society as a whole. 

So we welcome you here, Mr. Secretary, and we look forward to 

your testimony. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. May I proceed with the testimony, Mr. 

Chairman? 

Chairman SPECTER. Yes, you may proceed. Your full statement 

will be made a part of the record, and the floor is yours. 

STATEMENT OF CARLOS GUTIERREZ, SECRETARY, 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Thank you, Chairman Specter and Ranking Member Leahy and members of the Committee. I am very 

pleased to have this opportunity to discuss comprehensive immigration reform with you, and I want to thank you for your leadership and hard work on this important issue. 

I believe that immigration is probably the domestic social issue 

of our time and a key to our future economic health. The President 

has called for comprehensive reform that includes protecting our 

borders and recognizing the needs of our growing economy. 

Our reality is that our economy is growing faster than any other 

large industrialized nation. Our unemployment rate is below the 

average of the past four decades. 

Our economy, like other major industrialized economies, faces 

the challenge of an aging and increasingly educated workforce. 

The result is that we have jobs today that American citizens either are not willing to do or are not available to do. I continually 

hear from industries that they are having difficulty finding workers. 

In May, we had 4.1 million job openings in the U.S. with a large 

amount in the hospitality industry. 

As one example, when I was in Texas in June, Alan Simpson, 

president of the El Paso Restaurant Association and the Silver 

Streak hamburger chain, said, ‘‘When the unemployment rate is 

below 5 to 6 percent, it is a real challenge to staff restaurants.’’ 

5

So immigrants are not crossing our borders to look for a handout. 

They are seeking jobs that are available. 

I am encouraged that we are starting to reach some consensus. 

As you know, more than 500 of our Nation’s top economists recently sent a letter to President Bush and Congress stating that 

immigration has been a net gain for American citizens. And twothirds of American voters say they support bills that include a temporary worker program or path to citizenship, rather than one that 

focuses solely on border security. 

President Bush has called for comprehensive immigration reform 

to address the many complex issues involved. Everyone agrees that 

it is essential to secure our borders. 

The President has proposed increasing the number of Border Patrol agents from approximately 12,000 to more than 18,000, increasing the use of technology at the borders so we know who is 

coming through, and improving processes to become more efficient. 

We believe that worksite enforcement is also essential. There is 

an underground industry today built on producing false documentation for illegal workers, and employers have a hard time helping 

enforce the law because they are not sure which documents are reliable. 

The rules must be clear enough to hold businesses accountable, 

and we must ensure that businesses have the tools they need to 

follow the law. 

We need to create a temporary workers program. It would create 

a legal means for more workers to enter the United States for a 

limited time period to fill labor needs. And by providing a legal, enforceable way for immigrants to enter, we would take pressure off 

our borders. 

The President has called for a program to match willing immigrant workers with willing employers in jobs that no Americans 

have filled. And we need an expanded employment verification system, including biometric card identification for the temporary 

worker program. We have the technology today to use a person’s 

unique characteristics, such as a fingerprint, to lock in identity. 

When we have an effective employment verification system and 

we have a temporary workers program, the whole dynamics will 

change. 

Over time, it will become very unlikely that people will risk their 

lives crossing the border if it is well known that unless you have 

this temporary worker’s permit, unless you have this biometric 

card, you will not find a job. 

These are some of the most consequential things we can do to 

make our borders more secure, and they demonstrate the wisdom 

of comprehensive immigration reform. The biggest thing we can do 

for our border is to have a temporary worker’s permit for the interior of the country. 

The other reality we must confront is that we have 12 million 

people who are in the country illegally. The President has said that 

deporting 12 million individuals would not be wise, it would not be 

practical, and it would not be humane. 

The other extreme of the argument is amnesty. The dictionary 

defines amnesty as an ‘‘unconditional pardon—obliterating all 

memory of the offense.’’ The President does not support amnesty, 

6

and it is not accurate or fair to call his solution to the problem 

‘‘amnesty.’’ 

We are talking about having a hard-earned path to legalization, 

which would require meeting conditions such as people waiting 

their turn in line—which can take many, many years—paying 

fines, paying taxes, learning English, undergoing a criminal background check, and having a job. 

Very importantly, when immigrants take the Oath of Allegiance 

to become American citizens, they give up allegiances to other 

countries. They promise to support and defend our Constitution 

and to serve in our military if required. 

The process of becoming a U.S. citizen can take more than 8 

years. Nothing is guaranteed. So immigrants have to make a real 

commitment to this country, and stick it out, to earn citizenship 

and its associated responsibilities. 

The last important point that President Bush makes is that we 

are a Nation of immigrants and we must honor the great tradition 

of the melting pot. 

It is a false choice to think the immigration debate is a battle 

between America being a welcoming society and being a Nation of 

laws. We can be both because we are both. 

The United States’ ability to assimilate immigrants is our comparative advantage in this global economy. Mr. Chairman, many 

countries today, such as Japan, China, Germany, and France, are 

having significant demographic problems, and they are seeing that 

over time their populations will start to decline. And they have 

more retired workers than they have workers able to support those 

retirees. Interestingly, they are turning to immigration to solve 

their demographic problems, and we know, we have seen in the 

news recently, that they are not having much success with immigration. They do not have experience with immigration. They do 

not know how to deal with immigration. They do not know how to 

assimilate immigrants. 

We know how to do that. We have been doing it for 230 years. 

Now at a time when this debate has become so intense, I believe 

we need to understand that it is not only an issue to be resolved, 

but it is a tremendous opportunity to give us a competitive advantage over the rest of the world. Our ability to assimilate immigrants is a capability and a competitive advantage that we have 

that very few countries in the world have. 

What we need now is leadership and reasonable compromise in 

the middle of those two extremes. We need to be talking about the 

right mix of immigration reform that addresses all the issues. 

An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive because 

all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none 

of them will be solved at all. 

I ask you to commit to comprehensive immigration reform. The 

longer we wait, the bigger the problems we are passing on to a future generation. 

If we address the issues effectively, I am convinced that our children and grandchildren will be proud of what we did. 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I would be pleased to answer 

any questions. 

7

[The prepared statement of Secretary Gutierrez appears as a 

submission for the record.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. We 

will now begin the 5-minute rounds for members. 

I begin with the central point of the impact on the economy. Recently, more than 500 of the Nation’s top economists, including five 

Nobel laureates, signed a joint letter to the President and Congress 

stating that immigration has a net gain economically for America. 

Is there any doubt that the immigrants contribute to the economy 

and are an indispensable part of having a growing, expanding economy which benefits all American citizens? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Yes, Mr. Chairman, the estimates that we 

have seen is that the unemployment rate for undocumented workers is actually below the national average, which suggests that 

they come for one reason, and one reason only, and that is to work. 

Approximately—these are estimates—5 or 6 percent of our jobs are 

carried out by undocumented workers. So— 

Chairman SPECTER. And is their presence here and their contribution to the economy a net gain that ripples through to the benefit of all the rest of those of us who are in this country? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Absolutely. The owners of the businesses 

that have access to those workers in turn become consumers, in 

turn spend money in our economy. They invest in their businesses. 

The immigrants become consumers. There is a multiplying effect to 

our economy that every estimate I have seen suggests that is positive. 

Chairman SPECTER. Moving away from the guest worker program to the 11 million, and pardon me for perhaps interrupting, 

but moving to central point—each of us has only 5 minutes, and 

I am going to mind the time meticulously. Moving away from the 

guest worker issue, what is the impact on American society by having 11 million undocumented immigrants who become a fugitive 

class and who become an underclass? How does that affect our society in terms of a crime problem, in terms of the overall texture of 

American society? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. That is a very interesting question. I think 

that when we start getting to the ground level and understanding 

these 11, 12 million people, we are talking in many cases of children who are going to school today, because those 11, 12 million 

people have 3 million children. They were born here. They are 

going to school. They probably play Little League. They are in the 

class play. They do not know of any other country. They probably 

do not really realize that their parents have this problem with documentation, so they are part of the fabric of our society. Estimates 

that I see suggest that over 7 or 8 million of them have been here 

for more than 5 years. 

Chairman SPECTER. How about the impact of living in the shadows and being subject to deportation and being an underclass and 

being essentially a fugitive class? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Yes, which does not enable them or encourage them to assimilate, to learn English, to be part of society. 

As you say, the more this issue becomes one of enforcement only, 

we are driving them farther and farther underground. And what 

8

we want, even for our National security, is to drive them above the 

shadows so we know who they are. 

Chairman SPECTER. Mr. Secretary, now moving to the personal 

level, because you have quite a history as an immigrant, coming 

from Cuba at the age of 7 and becoming the chief executive officer 

and later Chairman of the board of one of America’s great corporations, you make the point that there is a real commitment to this 

country by the citizens. Senator Leahy talks about his own background. We all have a background to talk about. And just for a few 

moments, a few seconds about my father, he came here at the age 

of 18 from Russia. The czar wanted to send him to Siberia, and he 

wanted to go to Kansas. And as I jokingly say, it was a close call. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman SPECTER. He served in World War I very, very proudly, perhaps in the era before we had draft dodgers. Maybe he did 

not know anything about dodging the draft, but he was very proud. 

As an immigrant, what is the commitment of the immigrants to 

America? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. The feeling, it is hard to describe, that 

when you are welcomed by a society, welcomed by citizens, given 

an opportunity to improve your life, knowing that you have to play 

by the rules and you have to contribute. But once you have that, 

there is an unswerving loyalty to this country. 

I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, I have lost a lot of things in my 

life. I have lost pens. I have lost wallets. I have never lost my passport. And for me, that is probably my most prized possession. And 

I know many, many immigrants who feel the same way. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Senator Leahy? 

Senator LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I hear my grandparents in your voice. I know how much they have talked about it. 

I have gone back many times to the village in northern Italy where 

they are from and met the other relatives. And I know how proud 

my mother was. I know how proud my wife is for her citizenship. 

You have a remarkable story, and I am glad to hear your testimony 

in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. 

If the Congress is going to send a comprehensive bill to the 

President’s desk—and I think it is safe to say that three of us want 

to—we are going to need the President’s active participation in the 

process, because there is a big difference between the comprehensive bill that we passed here in the Senate and the House where 

there is strong opposition to a guest worker program and path to 

citizenship. 

Is the President prepared to get personally involved in this, to 

increase his involvement in this issue? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Senator, everything I have seen from the 

President is that he is deeply involved, deeply engaged, and providing great leadership in an issue that is of great importance for 

him. I do not want to speak for him, but I know that he is very 

committed and very engaged. 

Senator LEAHY. And he is going to have to stay that way. I know 

that in the meeting that Senator Specter and I and others had with 

him, he spoke of his own experience in Texas, and he got very—

I would say almost passionately involved in this. But it is going to 

9

require that same kind of passion if we are going to be successful 

in our efforts. 

For example, does the administration support the Senate bill as 

it is written? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, I believe that the Senate bill is over 

700 pages, and the Senate bill, the House bill, there are— 

Senator LEAHY. Well, maybe let me put it this way: We have basically a guest worker program and a path to citizenship. You support those concepts? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Yes, the President supports comprehensive 

immigration reform, and that is going to require a lot of commitment, a lot of compromise, a lot of dialogue to sort out some very 

complicated issues and come to an agreement as to that comprehensive reform that is best for our country. 

Senator LEAHY. Well, the reason I ask is that there has been 

some talk about compromise where you do border security measures first, and then once a secure border was certified—which could 

be years from now—then we could introduce guest worker and a 

path to citizenship. 

Do you support that kind of a one-two step, or do you support 

trying to do both together? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, clearly, the proposal from the President is comprehensive reform. One of the big challenges is how you 

execute that. How do we execute comprehensive reform? That execution can take on a lot of different avenues, but it needs to be 

comprehensive reform. How we execute, which I think is one of the 

big questions, is one of the big challenges, how we make it workable, how we execute is something that I would hope that we can 

sort out. 

Senator LEAHY. Well, I would hope we can, but I do not think 

you can do one without the other, and I do not think you can do 

one first and the other 1 years later. 

Incidentally, part of the Senate’s debate on comprehensive immigration reform includes a debate about whether English should be 

an official or a national language of the United States. I, along 

with others, feel that an official language is not only unnecessary 

but fails to recognize the multicultural heritage of our country and 

the legitimate needs of those who are learning English. 

I enjoy speaking French with my wife’s family, but they also all 

speak English, fortunately, because my French is not that good. 

The President has also expressed this belief. Attorney General 

Gonzales has as well. 

Can you tell me if the administration plans to continue its support of Executive Order 13166? That is the order that improves 

multilingual access to Federal programs and activities. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. I believe the administration has mentioned 

that there is support for extending and continuing the current law. 

On the English language— 

Senator LEAHY. On that one, if I could add just a second part to 

that, and you take the time you need, some members of the House 

of Representatives have expressed opposition to Section 203 of the 

Voting Rights Act which provides bilingual ballots. Do you agree 

with them on that? 

10

Secretary GUTIERREZ. As I mentioned, the administration has expressed support for the current law as it is written. This is interesting because the President has talked about English-plus, and I 

hate to get sidetracked on an issue. The President has said if you 

learn English, you can go from cleaning an office to running an office; you can go from picking agricultural products to owning a restaurant. 

So it is a very positive attitude. No one is against second languages. My goodness, I would hope that we would all somehow be 

bilingual. But what we have said is if we can convince people, encourage them that the best thing for their future is to learn 

English and to learn it well, I think that is the positive message 

here, is learn English, this is good for you, it is good for your future. But as the administration has said, we support extending the 

current law. 

Senator LEAHY. Including Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act 

which provides bilingual ballots? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. The provisions of the current law, yes. 

Senator LEAHY. Thank you. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Senator Leahy. Under our earlybird rule, those first to arrive are taken in sequence. Among the 

Republicans we have Senator Cornyn, Senator Sessions, Senator 

Kyl, and the Democrats, Senator Kennedy and Senator Feinstein. 

Senator Cornyn? 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN CORNYN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Senator CORNYN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Gutierrez. It is good to see you again, and thank you for visiting with me recently in my office about this important issue. 

As I told you then and I will repeat now, I support comprehensive immigration reform. As you know, Senator Kyl and I introduced a bill almost about a year ago now that addresses all of the 

various components that you have spoken to. And while there is 

some divergence among us here in the Senate about some aspects 

of that, I share your desire and the administration’s desire to get 

to conference and try to work out those details. 

As a businessman, you are, I know, committed in your business 

operations to actually having a policy that will actually work and 

can be implemented. And I think the biggest concern that some of 

us have is that we put the procedures in place, we appropriate the 

money, we hire the people, we train the people, we build the infrastructure that will actually allow comprehensive immigration reform to succeed. That is certainly my goal. 

I guess what is such a challenge about this issue is that people 

tend to approach it from different perspectives, some from a security perspective, and certainly there is that essential element, as 

you have noted; some from a workforce and an economic perspective, which you have addressed primarily this morning, and it is 

certainly that as well; some from a human compassion perspective, 

and it certainly is that as well. And I believe that we need immigration reform that addresses all of those. 

But while I believe that immigrants contribute to our society, our 

culture, and our economy, there are some of my constituents who 

11

are angry at the Federal Government for what they see as the Federal Government’s failures to address border security concerns and 

immigration concerns that have fallen on them in terms of their financial burdens, their tax burden, things like criminals who are 

housed at our jails and our prisons, that the Federal Government 

does not help pay for that housing and that incarceration. 

Health care costs, 25 percent of my constituents in Texas do not 

have health insurance, and a large number of those are undocumented immigrants who show up at emergency rooms, and so 

emergency rooms go on divert status where true emergencies have 

to go wherever they can find the help. 

And then, of course, there are education costs. 

In each of those three areas, the Federal Government is simply 

not—it has mandated those costs be borne, for good reason, but it 

has not stepped up and paid for them. And so I know you can understand—because I know you were just down in Texas talking to 

a number of my constituents as well, understand why people 

have—while they feel proud of our heritage as a Nation of immigrants, while they believe that we are better off for it, they are 

upset with the Federal Government’s failures in this area. 

Let me just ask you about the—and I would ask, Mr. Chairman, 

I have a statement which I would ask to be made part of the 

record, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SPECTER. Without objection. 

Senator CORNYN. Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Cornyn appears as a submission for the record.] 

Senator CORNYN. Let me just, in the minute and 16 seconds I 

have remaining, ask you about the guest worker program. One of 

the important things that has happened as a result of this debate 

on immigration reform is I think people have learned that it is a 

lot more complex, a lot less simple than they thought at first, and 

that simplistic solutions will not address our true needs. But I 

think it is important when we have a debate to use terms that are 

meaningful and not misleading, even inadvertently so. 

Sometimes we hear discussion about a guest worker program; 

other times we hear a discussion about a temporary worker program. Senator Kyl and I have endorsed in our bill a temporary 

worker program that would be based upon the principle of work 

and return, restoring the circular migration patterns that have historically existed between countries like Mexico and the United 

States that we feel would benefit our economy by creating a legal 

workforce that could provide workers, but at the same time provide 

a way for those workers to return to their country of origin, should 

they wish to do so, in a way that would allow them to bring their 

skills and savings back home that would help countries like Mexico 

develop its economy and create opportunities there. 

Would you comment on that issue specifically about a guest 

worker program or temporary worker program and how you would 

see that structured? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, the way I think about it is a TWP, 

temporary workers program, that is part of comprehensive reform, 

but it is not the only part of comprehensive reform. And I believe, 

as we were talking the other day, that there are probably workers 

12

who want nothing more than just being able to come, work, and go 

back home. 

One of the problems is that until we clarify the future, I believe 

they have all—they feel a bit reluctant to go back home because 

they are not convinced they will be able to get back in. So there 

is a temporary worker’s permit program that allows people to work 

temporarily, go back home, and that is probably all they want. But 

then there is the other side of what to do with those who would 

like a path to legalization that have developed roots in the country. 

And talking about one without the other I think misses the comprehensive nature of what we are thinking about. 

Senator CORNYN. We have to deal with both. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Yes, sir. 

Senator CORNYN. My time has expired. Thank you. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Senator Cornyn. 

Senator Kennedy? 

STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS 

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you, and welcome, Mr. Secretary you 

have an enormously impressive background and experience, and 

you come to this hearing particularly well qualified to talk about 

the economics of the undocumented in our society. 

Let me just add that, as I was listening to Senator Cornyn, our 

comprehensive immigration legislation, recognizes that there are 

responsibilities at the national level to help border communities in 

the areas of enforcement, education and others. It is important to 

know that we have those kinds of provisions in the bill. We are 

hopeful that our President will work with Mexico to try to develop 

a system where there is going to be less pressure on the border. 

We have worked very hard on the national security in this area 

and will continue to do so. 

I wanted to quickly review ‘‘The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration,’’ published by the 

National Research Council. I understand their conclusions are very 

similar to yours. The study found that, overall, an immigrant and 

his family contribute over $80,000 more in taxes over their lifetime 

than they consume in services. Also, every census since 1890 found 

that immigrants are more likely than U.S. workers to be self-employed. One analysis has shown that a third of all the start-ups in 

Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants and that between 1901 

and 1991, 44 of the 100 Nobel Prizes awarded to U.S. researchers 

were won by immigrants or their children, and that over 50 percent 

of engineering students in the U.S. and 40 percent of students in 

the natural sciences are foreign born. Most are legal immigrants, 

but many are not. 

Are those observations consistent with what the Department of 

Commerce review has? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Yes, Senator. 

Senator KENNEDY. We had an enormously interesting hearing in 

Philadelphia. Mayor Bloomberg talked about what would happen to 

the city of New York if they did not have immigrants working 

there. The undocumented that work there have contributed so 

much to the vitality and the economic strength of New York. 

13

We know from the Department of Labor that close to half of all 

the new jobs that have been created in this country over the last 

5 years have been done by immigrants. The economic contributions 

of immigrants are something we ought to know and understand. 

I just want to mention how moved I was by your testimony regarding the economic issues and the Department of Labor’s statistics, and also the very powerful testimony that we had from General Pace, who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When 

he was asked about the performance of immigrants in the service, 

he mentioned the number of Bronze Stars that were won by immigrants today in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think it was three Silver 

Stars that were won by immigrants. It might have been two, but 

I think it was three Silver Stars. 

He also commented on the percentage of immigrants that completed courses to advance to an infantryman and others were actually higher than other troops. Their performance in terms of discipline, bravery and courage were equal to any of the troops that 

he commanded. 

Does that surprise you at all? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. It does not, Senator. 

Senator KENNEDY. And we listened as well to Reverend Cortes, 

heads Esperanza, the evangelical group. He talked about their devotion to family, to parents and grandparents, to faith, to religion 

and their willingness to support one another. And he talked generally about the contributions immigrants are making to their community. 

In your experience, is this something that you have been aware 

of? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Yes, Senator, I have observed that. 

Senator KENNEDY. Well, I wanted to thank you as well. 

Secretary Guitierrez, over the course of these hearings, we have 

faced challenges in trying to have legitimate debate and discussion. 

For example, the House Immigration Subcommittee will hold a 

hearing on July 18th and the title of their hearing is, ‘‘Should We 

Embrace the Senate’s Grant of Amnesty to Millions of Illegal 

Aliens and Repeat the Mistakes of the Immigration Reform and 

Control Act of 1986?’’ I think you have helped us understand the 

economic contributions that immigrants make to our country. 

Thank you very much. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Senator Kennedy. 

Senator Sessions? 

STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF SESSIONS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF ALABAMA 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Secretary, thank you for coming. 

We appreciate your leadership, and I am certainly a great admirer of President Bush and the team he has put together and the 

economic record that you have achieved. And we are celebrating 

some of the good things that have happened as a result of that. 

Mr. Secretary, Americans do believe in immigration. They do affirm immigrants that are here. They do not hate immigrants. All 

of us have a heritage of immigration. But they are asking sincerely, 

consistently for over 30 years that we create a lawful system of immigration. 

14

You have expressed an affirmation of that, but, frankly, if you 

look at the budget requests of the administration, if you look at the 

prior record of this administration, we have not had a serious commitment to a legal system. The US–VISIT program, which is so 

central to what we will do if we are going to have a successful legal 

system, still does not have the exit system in place. And I am told 

that the budget request does not include sufficient money for that. 

That is not in your jurisdiction, but I would just share that. 

So the American people are rightly concerned. They saw what 

happened in 1986, and they are rightly concerned that we may 

make that mistake again. 

So I want to say to you and to my colleagues, comprehensive immigration reform is absolutely what needs to be done. I have felt 

that it was a complicated process and we should take more time 

to work it out. As we have gone forward, I have found out that it 

is even more complicated than anticipated and is going to take 

even longer, really, to put a system together that we can be proud 

of, that allows immigration into our country, but does so in a lawful way in which the United States acts in its own legitimate national interest. So I want to share those things with you. 

The Senate bill, in my opinion, unfortunately, does not meet the 

test. I am pleased, as I understand the President has never explicitly endorsed that bill. It should never become law. As I have documented, there are loopholes after loopholes after loopholes that just 

cannot be part of an effective plan. So we have a real problem. 

That is the reality. It is not an easy thing to fix. 

I would like you to point out a couple of things. We are going to 

have to deal compassionately with the people that are here illegally. I do not dispute that. I do not minimize the fact that they 

came here illegally and in violation of our law. That should not be 

encouraged in the future. But we need to treat them compassionately. 

But we need to also talk about the future of our immigration policy. How many people does this country and this economy actually 

need and can sustain and assimilate? We need to ask what qualities we should look for and whether or not language should be a 

factor in the mission not just the citizenship path. 

So I would first ask you, Have you considered and studied the 

Canadian plan, the point system that Canada has? And I met with 

their Immigration Minister recently. They are very proud of it. 

They think it is good. They continue to refine it. But they would 

never alter that plan. There is nothing like that in our bill, and I 

have heard nothing from the administration on that subject. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. I believe—and I am not an expert on the 

Canadian plan. I believe they have done a great job on high-skilled 

immigration, and they have a certain number of requirements. One 

of our realities, of course, is that as a society we have moved on. 

We have grown. We have taken new types of jobs. We are not willing to take the types of jobs that we may have been willing to take 

100 years ago or 50 years ago. So the marketplace needs lowskilled today, as well as high-skilled. But a lot of it is what is the 

marketplace— 

Senator SESSIONS. Let me interrupt you there. We have had serious discussions about this. We had at least one Committee hearing 

15

that discussed it. I think the pro-immigrant witness, Chamber of 

Commerce or whatever person, agreed—they all agreed that lowskilled workers tend to draw more from the economy than they put 

in and high-skilled workers increase benefits to the economy. They 

all agreed with that. 

You have heard of Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation, I 

suppose, the architect of welfare reform. He says this is not going 

to solve our demographic problems because it is going to add to financial burdens because we are bringing in extraordinary numbers 

of low-skilled workers without high school degrees. 

When you look at the benefits to the economy, you see that those 

benefits tend to be driven by the immigrants who come and have 

skills that allow them to prosper and get here and reach their fullest potential. 

Have you considered that sufficiently? And I would just add, 

other professors that we have had—Professor Chiswick from the 

University of Chicago, Andrew Sum—all say the same thing. Have 

you thought about that? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, I would just say, as you know, there 

is a recent letter from 500 economists supporting the benefit of immigrants to our society. We need high-skilled workers. They make 

a great contribution. Our marketplace needs low-skilled workers as 

well. Most of the immigrant generations that have come to our 

country have been low-skilled. The first generate is low-skilled. But 

because they come to work, because they come in search of a 

dream, they work very hard to ensure that their children are not 

low-skilled. 

Senator SESSIONS. I would just say one thing, Mr. Chairman. In 

Mr. Johnson’s testimony, whom we will hear in a little bit, I was 

noting his testimony is very, very strong in favor of less skilled 

workers in immigration. He notes, though, immigration has raised 

the average wage of native-born workers by 1.1 percent during the 

1990s—1.1 percent during the growth period of the 1990s. He goes 

on— 

Chairman SPECTER. Senator Sessions, how much more time 

would you like? 

Senator SESSIONS. Thirty seconds. He also adds, ‘‘Among nativeborn workers with a high school diploma or more education, wages 

increased between 0.8 percent and 1.5 percent. Among native-born 

workers without a high school diploma, wages declined by 1.2 percent’’—during the 1990s. 

Now, my understanding of the law of supply and demand, if we 

have a high demand for labor, why haven’t the wages gone up more 

than 1 percent, or even fallen for low-skilled workers? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, the statistics I see, Senator, show 

that average household income—and that includes everything, benefits, salaries, the impact of lower taxes—has increased in real 

terms by 13 percent since the President took office. Our unemployment rate is at record levels below the average of the past four decades. More Americans own a home today than ever before in our 

history. The numbers I look at suggest that our economy is in a 

period of prosperity, and we have this gap because we are growing, 

because we are moving on, because we have fewer high school 

dropouts than we did 10 years ago, because we are evolving, and 

16

we do not have enough people to take these low-skilled jobs that 

our economy needs. 

I think it is one of those simple realities. 

Senator SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. But I 

really think you need to study the reality of those numbers more 

carefully, and I do not think they will be as supportive of the position you have taken as you may think. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Senator Sessions. 

Senator Feinstein? 

STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, good morning. I would just like to begin with a 

thank you on behalf of the Governors of Oregon, California, the 

Congressional delegations of both States for the conference calls 

last week and for your action on our fishing emergency. Very much 

appreciated. And I think we are in pretty good shape in the appropriation bill so far, and we will probably move another amendment 

on the floor. But I want to thank you, and thank you for agreeing 

to call Senator Cochran. It is a real problem, as you know, so I 

want to begin with that. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Thank you. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. I want to just share with you my views as 

somebody that represents the State with the largest number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, and share with you something that 

Alan Simpson said. Alan Simpson was the Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee for a number of years. Some of us had the 

pleasure of serving with him on this Committee. And he said very 

recently that he felt that one of the big mistakes made back in 

1986 was that the bill eliminated any national identity provision 

which would have allowed employers to quickly identify the legal 

status of a job applicant. 

I thought a lot about that and made a proposal for an orange 

card, and I want to just spend a moment on it with you. 

I think that the Hagel-Martinez scenario, which I voted for, is 

not really workable because it creates another subclass of people, 

at least 5 million people. And we do not have the ability to deport 

11 or 12 million. We do not have the ability to deport 5 million. 

And we have industries that are dependent on this labor. 

It seems to me that the best way to approach this is with an 

identity document that is biometric, for everybody that is in the 

country now that is working, that you are able to say them, This 

is your identifier, it legally entitles you to work. And it is also 

coded with numbers so that the earned legalization takes place, 

and that those people who are here the longest have the opportunity to receive a green card when that green card list is expunged, that they pay their fine, part of the fine to get the orange 

card, so they earn it. They commit to learn English so they earn 

it. They pay another fine with the green card so they earn it. 

I find one of the most disturbing things in this whole battle is 

this cry that this is amnesty. And it is not. What we are trying to 

do is say people should earn the legalization and that you are here, 

17

your labor is needed, we want you here, we do not want you living 

in the shadows, but you earn it. 

And if we could only get that across to people, I think in an important way, and with that document you can then end the document mills. I can tell you places in California where you can buy 

forged Social Security cards, forged green cards, forged driver’s licenses for as little as $15 to $20. And I can tell you, you cannot 

tell the difference. So for the employer it is extraordinarily difficult 

to know. 

So I proposed this. I did not win it on the floor, but I am hopeful 

that it might be further considered, because I also think for security reasons it is important to document and know who are in this 

country. And I do not think you can say to people, well, you have 

to leave and you can stay. You have to treat a population as a 

whole. 

I think the Senate bill is far preferable. I think it needs work. 

It is a very big bill. Some of the visa categories need to be cut back 

on because it is too many new people. But I think for the first time 

we have an opportunity to do this balanced bill, and then I think 

it works. 

Some of us, and I am one of them because my State is so big and 

there are so many people that depend on it, we have this huge agricultural industry, the biggest in America, that cannot function 

without this labor. And I am increasingly concerned about that. 

Just one other comment, and then I would like to hear your 

thoughts. 

I would be one that would say have the border enforcement go 

into play and have a brief hiatus for the rest of the bill to go into 

play, and then hopefully we can make inroads on the border fence, 

get the additional Border Patrol, the additional National Guard 

people in place—not for certification, but to be able to give people 

on the California, the Arizona, the Texas borders some sense of security. I think that is really important. 

My State had a proposition in 1994 called Proposition 187. It 

passed overwhelmingly, more than 60 percent of the vote. It passed 

and it was unconstitutional. And I am a very strong believer that 

immigration has to be orderly so that it can be—the schools can accept people, the workforce can accept people, there is housing for 

people. And in California, if it comes too far, too hard— 

Chairman SPECTER. Senator Feinstein, how much more time 

would you like? 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Oh, sorry. Could I allow him just to comment 

for a few seconds? I did not mean to go on so much. 

Chairman SPECTER. You have a few seconds, Mr. Secretary. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Thank you. 

Chairman SPECTER. Take whatever time you need. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Thank you, Senator, and thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Senator, what you said, which I think is so important, is I think 

we have two big challenges here. One is designing a system that 

is comprehensive, that makes sense, and the other one is executing 

it. And if we design a wonderful system that is not workable, 10 

years from now we are going to say, well, either the system did not 

work or we did not enforce the law. But what we will find is that 

18

we designed something that was not practical. And you are so 

right. Whatever we do, let’s make sure it works, that it is practical, 

that it is pragmatic. 

So the execution, we have a massive challenge in getting everyone together to talk about comprehensive reform and designing a 

plan. But then I think the real work starts, which is how do we 

execute. And getting that right I think is going to be where we 

make the difference. 

So I agree, I think you are right on that. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Senator Feinstein. 

Senator Kyl? 

STATEMENT OF HON. JON KYL, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE 

STATE OF ARIZONA 

Senator KYL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, welcome. I will associate myself with the remarks 

that Senator Cornyn made to you. I know that you visited, and I 

am looking forward to visiting with you. But our view is that the 

comprehensive solution is ultimately the only way that we are 

going to resolve all of the problems. And I usually talk about four 

specific things: securing the border, enforcing the law—including at 

the workplace—a temporary work program, and dealing with the 

people who are here illegally. It may well be that some of the people who are here illegally will go into a temporary worker program. 

Sometimes there is a distinction between future flow, as the term 

is used, and also the people who are here illegally. 

And that is what I would like to get your thoughts on because 

your testimony certainly suggests—and what you just said to Senator Feinstein confirms that—you view the employee verification 

system a critical component to the workability to whatever comprehensive reform is. And we certainly agree with that. 

So the questions have to do with how to deal with this problem 

of document fraud, what kind of document people should have to 

ensure that in the future everyone will be working legally. And 

part of that, it seems to me, has to reflect the fact that it is very 

difficult for employers to be the enforcement agencies here, that experience demonstrates that you cannot expect some employer to be 

able to hold up the Social Security card and the driver’s license and 

say, well, this is fraudulent, and then have the ability to enforce 

that by saying, no, you cannot have a job. It is unrealistic to expect 

that. And that goes to the workability part that you talked about. 

It has got to be a workable program. 

So the employee verification system, it seems to us, needs to be 

simple to use and the determination of validity or eligibility should 

not be on the employer but on the Government. And it is really a 

function of two key things. Does the individual have a legal status—citizenship, green card, temporary worker under a new temporary worker program, whatever that status is? And is the Social 

Security number attached to that a valid number? And, secondly, 

is the individual standing in front of you applying for the job the 

person who has that Social Security number? 

19

You have suggested that for the temporary worker program a biometric identification system would be appropriate and workable, 

and with that I totally agree. 

Here are the two basic questions that I have—and the technology 

is here for the larger employers. You can have, for example, a 

swipe-through easy reader that does not cost that much money. 

Somebody says, well, how about the really small employer, you 

know, the beautician or whatever? Put one in every post office. 

They do not cost that much money, and a beautician does not hire 

that many people in a year, and go down and just swipe it through 

there. 

Anyway, the two key questions are these: With the illegal population that is here, many of them are going to be eligible for and 

desirous of participating in a temporary worker program along 

with the future-flow workers. So let’s leave aside the question of 

those who are here illegally and not appropriate for the temporary 

worker program—the elderly retired person, the young person, 

whoever may be able to stay here on some other conditions, leave 

aside what those conditions are. And then also the individual who 

goes to the employer and says: I am not a temporary worker. I 

have my—today—fake driver’s license, fake Social Security card. I 

don’t need a temporary worker card. So that person is going to 

have to be verified, too. 

The questions are these: Should all people who apply for a job 

have the same basic document so that we are not distinguishing 

between those who allegedly—or admittedly are in a temporary 

worker program as opposed to those who claim they are not? And 

should the biometric feature be added to that particular identification so that all workers would have—all employers and workers 

would have the advantage of that? In other words, what is the best 

way to make it work for all people who try to get a job so we are 

not discriminating against anyone, the employer is not discriminating when he asks for the identification? Should the documentation be the same, in other words, for people who are clearly in the 

temporary worker program, as well as all other employees? And 

should there be any distinction between the people who are here 

illegally today that participate in the program versus the so-called 

future flow? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, I happened to bring a biometric card 

with me, and my staff just reminded me I had a visual aid here. 

I think the first step is to ensure that we legalize and bring out 

from the shadows those who are here. Those who are citizens have 

a way of proving they are citizens in a legal way. What we want 

to do is eliminate the illegal behavior. 

If we give every temporary worker a biometric card that cannot 

be forged, cannot be tampered, and we make it very clear that if 

you are going to hire someone, a temporary worker, and they do 

not have one of these—and you can verify it. We have a national 

database to verify—that you will be in serious trouble as an employer, not a fine, not a slap on the wrist, but that there will be 

a meaningful fine. 

And I think over time the word will spread among undocumented 

workers that, you know, if you do not have one of those cards, do 

not risk it, do not go in under the dark of night, do not hire coyote, 

20

do not even try to cross the desert, because it has become very 

clear that that system works. And if you do not have that card, you 

are not going to get a job. 

So, ironically, this temporary worker’s card is probably the single 

biggest thing we can do for the border. People will not cross the 

border if they know they cannot get employed on this side. I think 

that is the first step to really getting a grip on the people who are 

crossing over. 

Senator KYL. Mr. Chairman, if I just might follow up, would we 

all have the same type of card, anybody who is applying for a job? 

Because if you just have it for the so-called temporary worker, a 

lot of people may continue to say, ‘‘I am not a temporary worker. 

I am entitled to be here.’’ And they do not have that card. They 

still have their counterfeit driver’s license or Social Security card. 

And how is the employer to make the distinction? 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Well, there is a national database. There 

is the Basic Pilot Program, a national database to confirm that people are who they say they are. And I believe that those who are 

here legally and those who are citizens and those who have the 

right to work have documentation to prove it. 

I think the problem we have it that those who are in the country 

illegally—and that is where we should go. And in terms of whether 

we should expand beyond that, I think that is something that can 

be worked out in the design of the bill. My sense is that what is 

really important is to make sure that temporary workers have one 

of these, and that will make a huge difference on the border. 

Senator KYL. Thanks, Mr. Secretary. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Thank you, Senator. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Senator Kyl. 

Secretary Gutierrez, thank you very much for your enlightening 

testimony. Senator Kennedy had called attention to the title of the 

hearing in the House next week, which is captioned—and I just 

borrowed this card from him—’’Should we embrace the Senate’s 

grant of amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and repeat the mistakes of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986?’’ I hope 

they call you as a witness. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. I hope so. 

Chairman SPECTER. So that you can set them straight that it is 

not amnesty for the reasons you have eloquently testified here 

today, and that we are not repeating the legislation of 1986, as you 

have articulated with a sound reason, with a biometric card, and 

that in dealing with the millions of, they say, illegal aliens, we are 

taking the only rational course to deal with the problem. 

If somebody has a better idea, we are ready to here it in the conference. We would welcome a better idea if somebody has one. But 

you have laid the logic on the line and you have laid your experience on the line and your example on the line. And for that we are 

very appreciative. At a minimum, if I find they have not invited 

you to testify, I am going to send them a copy of your testimony. 

Secretary GUTIERREZ. Thank you. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. 

We now turn to our second panel: Mr. Michael Cutler, Mr. Benjamin Johnson, Dr. William McDonald, and Mr. Niall O’Dowd. 

21

Our first witness is Mr. Michael Cutler, who joined the Department of Immigration and Naturalization, the Immigration and Naturalization Service in October of 1971 as an immigration inspector; 

has worked as a criminal investigator, special agent; dealt with organized crime law enforcement. He left the INS in February of 

2002 and is currently a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank; a bachelor’s degree from 

Brooklyn College in communications, arts, and science, and he has 

been an expert witness at nine Congressional hearings. And among 

his areas of expertise are the nexus between immigration and national security and the impact of immigration on the criminal justice system and strategies to combat illegal immigration. 

We are especially interested in your testimony, Mr. Cutler, as to 

how we deal with the creation of—or permitting the continuation 

of a 11-million underclass of what essentially are fugitives under 

our existing laws. We appreciate your being here, and as you see, 

the time clock is set at 5 minutes, and we look forward to your testimony. Your full statement will be made a part of the record, and 

do not start the clock until Mr. Cutler starts to speak. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL W. CUTLER, FELLOW, CENTER FOR 

IMMIGRATION STUDIES, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. CUTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One second. I think I 

have the wrong paperwork. I am sorry about that. 

Chairman SPECTER. Take your time. It will be faster. 

[Pause.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Reset the clock, please. 

Mr. CUTLER. Okay. Thank you for your forbearance. 

Chairman Specter, Ranking Member Leahy, members of the 

Committee, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor and a privilege to 

be afforded the opportunity to testify before this Committee on an 

issue that is arguably among the most critical issues confronting 

the United States today. So many areas of concern are inextricably 

linked to illegal immigration that when we seek to regain control 

of our Nation’s borders and restore integrity to the immigration 

system, we will be impacting everything from the economy, education, the environment, and health care to criminal justice and national security. 

As I have stated at previous hearings at which I have testified, 

‘‘A nation without secure borders can no more stand than can a 

house without walls.’’ It is important, however, to understand that 

our Nation cannot gain control of its borders until and unless we 

recognize that we need to do more than focus on the borders of the 

United States. We need to think of immigration as a system of 

many components, all of which are critical to the success of the others. A well-designed airplane that is missing a wing will not get off 

the ground. In order to soar into the sky, all of the components of 

the airplane must function properly. So, too, all of the components 

of the immigration system must be made to work effectively and 

in coordination with the other elements of the immigration system. 

It has been estimated that approximately 40 percent of the illegal aliens who are present in the United States today did not run 

our borders or evade the Border Patrol but, rather, strolled through 

a port of entry and then disappeared into communities throughout 

22

our Nation. The terrorists who attacked our Nation on September 

11, 2001, in fact, all entered the United States through ports of 

entry and then counted on their ability to evade detection by the 

former INS. While much attention has been paid to the lack of secure borders, little attention has been paid to the need to have adequate numbers of special agents for ICE enforcing the immigration 

laws from within the interior of the United States. At present, 

there are roughly 3,000 special agents employed by ICE carrying 

out this critical mission. ICE needs to do more than enforce the 

laws that prohibit an employer from knowingly hiring illegal aliens 

and seeking to apprehend the hundreds of thousands of alien absconders. Clearly, these two missions are important, but when you 

consider the fact that according to a recent GAO report on the crisis at USCIS this is a major vulnerability that threatens national 

security but is not being addressed. ICE needs to work in close coordination with USCIS to make certain that the system by which 

various immigration benefits, including the granting of resident 

alien status, and United States citizenship has real integrity. The 

‘‘9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel’’ noted the fact 

that in order to attack our Nation, the terrorists not only needed 

to first gain entry into our country, an obviously critical issue, but 

they also needed to be able to embed themselves in our country and 

have the ability to travel around the Nation and across our borders 

as they prepared to attack us. When the United States provides an 

alien with resident alien status or when we naturalize an alien, we 

are providing him or her with the ‘‘key to the kingdom.’’ 

If we were able to make the borders of the United States utterly 

impassable to illegal aliens but then do little, if anything, to detect 

and combat immigration benefit fraud, thereby providing immigration benefits to aliens who are not entitled to such benefits, we as 

foolishly as the homeowner who, fearful of having his home burglarized, invests considerable effort and money on buying strong 

doors and locks for his doors and windows and takes other such 

measures, but then hangs the key to the secure locks on the outside doorknob, making it simple for anyone passing by to gain 

entry to that house. 

The huge illegal alien population present in the United States 

has a significant impact on the criminal justice system and on national security as well. While it is extremely difficult to provide a 

firm number as to the number of illegal aliens who are involved in 

serious criminal activities in the United States, I believe we can 

get a sense of the magnitude of the problem by considering statistics that I am familiar with. At present, it is estimated that some 

30 percent of the inmate population in Federal correction facilities 

are identified as being foreign born. From 1988 until 1992, I was 

assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence Division of DEA in New York. I conducted a study of DEA arrest statistics and found that nationwide some 30 percent of the defendants 

arrested by DEA for crimes related to narcotics trafficking were 

identified as being foreign born, while in New York it was estimated that nearly 60 percent of the defendants apprehended by 

DEA were identified as foreign born. Those statistics remained constant for more than 5 years, and the 30-percent figure back then 

is virtually the same today as it was then. Additionally, a GAO reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:36 Dec 05, 2006 Jkt 031098 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\31098.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
23

port issued in April of 2005 found that in 2004, 27 percent of the 

Federal inmate population was comprised of criminal aliens. And 

the same report pegged the cost to the Federal Bureau of Prisons 

for incarcerating criminal aliens at some $1.2 billion. This same report found that on the local and State level for fiscal year 2003, 

some 147,000 criminal aliens were in custody. 

Additionally, there have been studied that show a relationship 

between a wide variety of crimes that are committed to support terrorism. Drug trafficking in particular has come to be associated 

with this fund-raising objective, but other crimes, including mail 

fraud, arson, and identity theft, also help fill the coffers of terrorist 

organizations and organized crime groups. Often aliens who come 

to the United States fleeing not only the grinding poverty and perhaps tyrannical government of their homeland often find that when 

they come here they also encounter the same criminals who were 

preying upon them in their home countries. 

It is also worth considering that when you have a large illegal 

population, a series of businesses spring up in the communities 

that support that population that is not only helpful to the illegal 

alien who is simply looking to get a job in the United States, but 

also to members of organized crime groups, violent gangs, drugtrafficking organizations, and, indeed, terrorists. And among these 

enterprises are money remitters, private mail box services, and 

fraudulent document vendors. It is also important to understand 

that in an effort to hide in plain sight or embed themselves in our 

country, criminal aliens and terrorists often take relatively pedestrian jobs to help pay their day-to-day expenses and to provide 

themselves with an effective ‘‘cover’’— 

Chairman SPECTER. Mr. Cutler, how much more time will you 

need? 

Mr. CUTLER. Just about another 30 seconds, sir. I am sorry. 

The thing to remember is that someone once said that an effective spy is someone who would not attract the attention of a waitress in a greasy spoon diner. You could expand on that statement 

and state that an effective terrorist is also somebody who would 

not only not attract the attention of the waitress in a greasy spoon 

diner but might be that waiter or waitress. 

That is why it is important that ICE not only focuses on seeking 

to find illegal aliens who are employed at supposedly high-value secure venues, such as airports and nuclear power plants, but also 

as a matter of routine to enforce immigration laws on a random 

basis. 

The final thing that I want to say is I also believe we need to 

have better foreign language training skills given to our agents 

who are enforcing the immigration laws throughout the United 

States. 

Chairman, I want you to know that I think that legal immigration is a wonderful thing for our country. It is wonderful for the 

aliens who come here and America gains by it. My concern is that 

we have many illegal aliens whose identities are unknown to us 

and whose purposes are unknown to us, and that is what keeps me 

awake at night. 

I look forward to your questions. 

24

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cutler appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Cutler. 

Our next witness is Mr. Ben Johnson, Director of the American 

Immigration Law Foundation’s Immigration Policy Center. He has 

been in the field for some 15 years. He has written extensively on 

the police and the challenges of illegal immigration; has his law degree from the University of San Diego and studied international 

comparative law at Kings College in London. 

We appreciate your being with us today, Mr. Johnson, and the 

floor is yours. 

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN JOHNSON, DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION POLICY CENTER, AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAW FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Judiciary Committee, for this opportunity. 

The current immigration debate is over how we respond to an 

immigration system that everybody acknowledges is broken. The 

question in Congress has come down to this: Do we pursue an enforcement-only strategy and focus only on the best way to keep people out? Or do we adopt a more comprehensive approach that includes new enforcement strategies but also improves our ability to 

let people into the country legally? I would argue that for the last 

15 years, we have been trying the enforcement-only strategy, and 

it has been an utter failure. 

Since the early 1990s, the border enforcement budget has more 

than quintupled. It went from about $600 million to now spending 

more than $4 billion a year on border enforcement. During the 

same time, the number of border agents has nearly tripled. And 

what do we have to show for that? The pace of undocumented immigration to the United States has increased. Apprehension rates 

are down. More people are dying every day at our Southern border. 

And the business of human smuggling and document fraud has 

been transformed from a relatively small operation into a billiondollar enterprise. 

Now, I would agree completely that an enforcement strategy has 

failed in large part, or at least in part because we are fixated on 

fortifying the Southern border and have ignored other critical components to the immigration enforcement, like an effective employment verification system or the need for more personnel and training to deal with the delays and backlogs at various immigration offices. But even with significant improvements in our enforcement 

strategies and our adjudication capabilities, stanching the flow of 

undocumented immigration will remain a Herculean task unless 

and until we reform the legal channels for admitting people into 

the country legally. 

The bottom line is that immigration is not just a law enforcement issue. It is a valuable resource to our economy and our labor 

force, and we have to start treating it like a resource and managing 

it on an ongoing basis. The ability to use our immigration system 

to supplement and fill gaps in our labor force across the skill spectrum is one of the principal reasons the United States has been 

25

able to create the most diverse, most dynamic, most flexible workforce the world has ever seen. 

In the last 15 or 20 years, our economy has been radically altered because of the high-tech globalized world that we live in. In 

response to this, Congress has made dramatic changes to our trade 

policies, our banking policies, our telecommunications policies. But 

Congress has yet to make a concerted effort to align our immigration policies with this new economic environment. In fact, in many 

areas we are going in the opposite direction. While more and more 

countries are spending billions of dollars to attract foreign studies 

and high-skilled workers, the United States is making it more difficult for foreign students to enroll in U.S. universities, more difficult for highly skilled immigrants to come to the United States. 

And at the other end of the skill spectrum, where we have undocumented immigration, there has been a lot of controversy over 

whether in this new economic environment there are some jobs 

Americans are less interested in and whether we need immigrants 

to fill these jobs. 

But the truth is it is not an insult to the American worker that 

we have fewer and fewer people in our labor force who are in the 

market for jobs that require very little education or training. Our 

labor markets are attracting younger, less educated immigrant 

workers because our labor force is getting older and it is getting 

better educated. In the early 1960s, over half of U.S. workers were 

high school dropouts. Today, only about 15 percent of U.S. workers 

are high school dropouts. We should be proud of that fact, but we 

have to recognize that this success means we have fewer workers 

who are looking for jobs that require no education or training. So 

we are doing what we have always done. We are turning to our immigration system to fill the gaps in those labor markets. 

Unfortunately, while we have been encouraging workers to get 

an education and improve their skill sets in this new knowledgebased economy that we are creating, we have not been creating 

more channels of legal immigration to replace those workers. 

Today, in a labor force of over 150 million workers, we have 5,000 

permanent visas available for foreign workers in less skilled occupations. We can debate about how many workers we need in this 

country, but 5,000 is nowhere near the kind of demand that this 

economy generates in less skilled workers. And outside of agriculture, the only temporary visa we have for less skilled workers, 

the H2B visa, is only available to seasonal employers. For companies that employ less skilled workers and operate year-round, we 

have no temporary worker program for foreign workers. 

So, because essentially we have no legal channels of employmentbased immigration for these workers, they either come illegally or 

they attempt to come through the already overburdened familybased system, a system that already requires people to wait 5 to 

7 years to be joined with their spouses and children. 

In this environment everybody loses. Families are separated, and 

workers are expected to wait years for jobs that are available 

today. Nobody should be surprised that when we close the front 

door on these families and workers, they look for a way in the back 

door. 

26

The real challenges we face today stem from the fact that we 

send two message at our border: ‘‘Help Wanted’’ and ‘‘Keep Out.’’ 

And the byproduct of this schizophrenia is that law enforcement 

agencies, businesses, and families are stuck between a rock and a 

hard place. In short, we have created an unsustainable contradiction between U.S. economic policy and U.S. immigration policy, and 

economics is winning. We can either continue to spend billions of 

dollars in an immigration enforcement battle with our own economy and our own labor force, or we can create an immigration system that is not only good at keeping people out but effective at letting people in. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. 

Our next witness is Mr. William McDonald, Georgetown University Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Deputy Director 

of the Institute of Criminal Law at their Law Center. He has written extensively in the field of immigration and crime control. His 

educational background is a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame, 

master’s in education from Boston College, and a doctorate in criminology from the University of California at Berkeley. 

Thank you very much for joining us today, Dr. McDonald, and 

we look forward to your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM F. MCDONALD, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, AND CO-DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE OF CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE, GEORGETOWN 

UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. MCDONALD. Chairperson Specter and members of the Committee, it is an honor to be here today. I would like to point out 

for members of our audience that I am an Irish American. 

I have been studying the connections between crime and immigration since 1996, and I was informed the other day, when I was 

asked to speak, that it would be useful if I would touch upon several issues, only one of which I think I have time to address, and 

that is, statistics regarding the criminality of illegal immigrants. 

But first I would like to make some general observations. 

Although we are a Nation of immigrants, Americans have always 

worried about the criminality of the next wave of immigrants. 

There have been many studies in the United States and abroad 

that have addressed the question of the criminal of immigrants. 

And while they are by no means unanimous, there is a remarkable 

degree of agreement among them regarding one important finding: 

the criminality of the first generation of immigrants, those who actually migrate, is less than the criminality of the native born. Public fears about immigrant criminality have usually not been borne 

out by research. 

I mention this literature on immigrant criminality because there 

is little reason to believe that the findings would be substantially 

different for illegal immigrants, assuming that the data were available, that would allow us to make the necessary statistical controls 

for age, sex, economic status, and immigrant status to do a valid 

study. 

27

Because of the difficulties of getting proper data, studies of comparative criminality of illegal immigrants are rare and inconclusive. Anyhow, the critics of illegal immigration are not interested 

in knowing whether illegal immigrants are more or less criminally 

inclined than the native born. For them, any crime committed by 

an illegal immigrants represents a crime that would not have happened if the Government had been in control of immigration. 

I turn now to the question of the statistics on illegal immigrants 

who commit crimes. In 1989, the Immigration Subcommittee of the 

House Committee on the Judiciary asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service the following question: What percentage of the 

individuals incarcerated in specific cities are illegal aliens? The answer was simply: We do not know; the data do not exist in anything like usable form. And since that time, things have not really 

gotten much better. 

Before proceeding, I must warn you of a terminological quagmire 

that surrounds this issue. There are technical legal definitions involved that cause confusion. The basic distinction to keep in mind 

is between criminal aliens and illegal immigrants who commit 

crimes. Criminal aliens have been around since the beginning of 

the country. They are noncitizens who have committed crimes, either before or after they have entered the United States. Illegal immigrants did not exist until the Federal Government began regulating immigration in the 1870s. 

Not all criminal aliens are illegal immigrants. A legal immigrant 

who commits a crime while in the United States becomes a criminal alien. Some criminal aliens are deportable, depending upon the 

crime they have committed. In the late 1980s and 1990s, responding to complaints from the States about increasing numbers of 

criminal aliens in State and local prisons, Congress added to the 

terminological confusion. In 1986, it mandated the INS to conduct 

expeditious proceedings for aliens convicted of deportable criminal 

offenses. In 1988, it created a new category called ‘‘aggravate 

felon.’’ 

In 1994, it introduced the concept of ‘‘undocumented criminal 

aliens’’ in connection with legislation to reimburse the States for 

the costs of housing illegal criminal aliens. This reimbursement 

was only for the costs of housing illegal criminal aliens incarcerated in State and local prisons, not for legal criminal aliens. Only 

the former were regarded as the Federal Government’s responsibility. 

It was in that connection that a few studies were done to try to 

estimate the number of illegal criminal aliens in State and local facilities. The Urban Institute did a major study and came up with 

some references. 

The kind of estimates that the Urban Institute produced have 

not become institutionalized in any of the annual reports of which 

I am aware. The Bureau of Justice Statistics produces an annual 

report on the number of inmates in prisons but does not mention 

anything about this. The Office of Immigration Statistics of the Department of Homeland Security publishes an annual report, does 

not mention anything like this. We simply do not have that data 

available to us, 

28

Finally, when studies have looked at deportability, they find 

many criminal aliens are not deportable. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McDonald appears as a submission for the record.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Dr. McDonald. 

Our final witness is Mr. Niall O’Dowd. He came to the United 

States in 1979 and soon began his first business, an Irish-American 

newspaper in San Francisco. In 1985, he moved to New York where 

he founded the Irish American Magazine and later the Irish Voice 

newspaper. In 1992, he founded a group called the Connolly House 

Group, which has been involved in the Irish peace process. He has 

been awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, University College-Dublin, in recognition of his work on Irish issues in 

America. 

We appreciate your being here, Mr. O’Dowd, and look forward to 

your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF NIALL O’DOWD, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, 

IRISH LOBBY FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM, NEW YORK, NEW 

YORK 

Mr. O’DOWD. Thank you very much, Chairman. My name is Niall 

O’Dowd. I am Founder and Chairman of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. I am also founder and publisher of Irish Voice 

newspaper and Irish American Magazine, the two largest Irish 

American publications. 

I am a native of Ireland, once undocumented, but now a very 

proud American citizen. 

I have lived the immigrant dream in America since coming here in 1979. I started a newspaper with less than $1,000 in 1979 in 

California and made a success of it. Currently, I employ 22 people 

in New York City running both my companies. 

But I come here representing the 50,000 Irish undocumented in 

the United States and the millions of Irish-Americans who are 

looking for a resolution to this issue. 

Since the inception of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform 

last December, we have held scores of public meetings across the 

United States attended by thousands and have held two lobbying 

days in Washington, D.C. A total of over 5,000 Irish-Americans 

from across the United States came to Washington for both lobbying days. 

The facts are clear to us. Without immigration reform, the Irishborn community in the United States will no longer exist, and one 

of the greatest contributors to the success of this Nation will be no 

more. 

Our neighborhoods are disappearing. Our community organizations are in steep decline. Our sporting and cultural organizations 

are deeply affected by the lack of legal immigration. 

Meanwhile, our undocumented community is under siege. They 

can no longer travel to Ireland, even when family tragedies occur. 

Their driver’s licenses will not be renewed, which means mothers 

cannot drive their children to school. The day-to-day struggle of living illegally in America has taken a heavy personal toll on them. 

I submit that they deserve better. 

29

Everything they have worked years for in America, building their 

own American dream, is now falling around them, and I submit 

that America will be the big loser. 

I know that hundreds of these immigrants, Irish construction 

workers, worked with little more than their bare hands to try to 

uncover bodies at Ground Zero after 9/11. 

Irish labor union members and construction crews were among 

the first on the scene, and they tried frantically to save lives working alongside rescuers who included thousands of Irish American 

fire and police workers. 

No one was calling them Irish illegals then. 

They did no more than previous Irish generations. As President 

Bush has stated, ‘‘Throughout our history America has been greatly 

blessed by the innumerable contributions of the Irish.’’ Unfortunately, the contribution of Irish-born may be about to end. 

If the Irish antecedents of Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, or 

Ronald Reagan were trying to enter the United States today, they 

would have to do so illegally. 

The sad reality is that there is simply no way for the overwhelming majority of Irish people to come to the United States legally at present. 

So when people say to me that the Irish should get in line to 

come here, I tell them there is no line we can join. There is no way 

the vast majority of our people can come legally to America. 

The figures for the Irish bear this out. Of the almost 1 million 

green card visas given out last year, about 2,000 went to the Irish. 

Since 1995, in the diversity visa program, which was intended in 

part to help old seed countries, Ireland has been successful in obtaining one-half of 1 percent, or 2,800 visas out of over half a million. 

Such realities, however, have not stopped thousands of Irish 

doing what generations have done since they served in George 

Washington’s army—coming to America and living the American 

dream like generations before them. 

I can tell you about Mary, who is 36, whose brother was killed 

in a car crash a few months ago, and she had to listen to his funeral down a phone line because she cannot go home and grieve 

with her family. She is now a registered nurse, a proud homeowners, and intends to marry soon. Hospitals would snap her up 

in a moment if she became available. She deserves her American 

dream. 

Then there is Brian, who is 32, a contractor, who was among the 

first to go to Ground Zero because he was working nearby. Brian 

continues to believe in his American dream. He has six Americans 

working full-time for him, and he looks forward to the day he can 

take his new wife back to Ireland and meet the families they have 

not seen for years. 

Eamon, who is 38, came over from Armagh in Northern Ireland 

14 years ago. There were no jobs in his town because of the Troubles, and the only recruiting was being done by paramilitaries. 

Here Eamon now runs his own roofing company and employs six 

persons legally. 

30

So many others I know have grandchildren their grandparents 

have never seen or live in daily fear of being deported or, worse, 

a family tragedy back in Ireland which could end their lives here. 

These are typical stories of the Irish undocumented here in 

America. They ask for just one thing—the opportunity to live their 

American dream like so many generations of Irish before them. 

My deepest desire, and that of millions of Irish-Americans 

around this great country, is that their wish can be granted. With 

your help I believe it can. 

Thank you very much indeed. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. O’Dowd appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much, Mr. O’Dowd. 

We now begin the 5-minute rounds of Senators’ questioning, and 

beginning with you, Mr. Cutler, you gave statistics as to the foreign 

born, but did not indicate any breakdown between those who had 

legal status as citizens contrasted with those who were illegal immigrants. Do you have any breakdown of that or any judgment as 

to how that would break down? 

Mr. CUTLER. Well, it is interesting because Professor McDonald 

made the same point. In all of my research—and I have reached 

out to other organizations and analysts and so forth—incredibly, 

our Government does not track that statistic, and I think it is an 

important issue, because this is a measure of one of the resources 

that we need for effective immigration enforcement, and yet there 

is no delineation. 

Chairman SPECTER. Mr. Johnson, you testified that we have had 

15 years of just an enforcement strategy and little result. The title 

of the House hearing for next week talks about the failure of the 

1986 employer verification system, but they did not have the technology which is available today. And the statistics show that only 

four enforcement actions were initiated last year, so that there has 

not been much of an enforcement policy to judge what could happen. 

Contrast what this legislation coming out of the Senate has with 

respect to Border Patrol, some fencing, some virtual fencing, employer verification. Wouldn’t the projection be that it is going to be 

effective if carried out and implemented as directed in our Senate 

legislation? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, the Senate legislation is nothing like the 1986 

Act. The failure of the 1986 Act was that it dealt with or attempted 

to deal with a population, the undocumented population that existed at the time, but it did nothing to respond to why that undocumented population had been created. It did nothing to provide a 

way for workers to come into the United States legally, particularly 

less skilled workers. It did not do anything to provide a temporary 

program for those workers to come in. It did not do anything about 

providing more permanent green cards for those workers to come 

in. 

The solution was we will grant some folks an amnesty and then 

we will expect employers to be enforcement agents, and that strategy will not work. You need to have improved channels of legal immigration, and I think the Senate should be commended for recognizing that and trying to develop an immigration policy that will 

31

assure we will not create another pool of undocumented immigrants 10 years from now. 

Chairman SPECTER. Dr. McDonald, I am not suggesting in the inquiries about crime that immigrants are any bigger burden than 

anybody else when it comes to criminal conduct. What we are looking for here is some judgments as to how we deal with 11 million 

undocumented immigrants and whether we do not relieve some of 

the pressures on law enforcement if they are motivated to come out 

of the so-called shadows, if they are not a fugitive class, and if they 

are recognized as being in a position to earn status as a guest 

worker, maybe going back, or if we expand the number of green 

cards, get on the citizenship line, albeit at the end of the line. 

What would you say about the Senate bill and trying to deal effectively with eliminating this underclass and fugitive class? 

Mr. MCDONALD. Well, that is a difficult question that goes beyond the more focused question about criminality. I would like to 

restrict my remarks to that part of the issue. I admire what that—

I am not an expert on the immigration law. It does appear to me 

that this bill is not the same as the IRCA bill in 1986, and the biometric measures seem enticing. What worries me is the huge number of small-time employers of illegal immigrants, just neighbors 

who hire them to do the lawn and things like, they are never going 

to use the biometric measures. 

Chairman SPECTER. Dr. McDonald, let me interrupt you because 

I want to ask one question of Mr. O’Dowd before my time expires. 

You cited two very prominent men—President John Kennedy and 

President Ronald Reagan. 

Mr. O’DOWD. Yes. 

Chairman SPECTER. I know your views that our country has been 

immeasurably strengthened by the immigrants. Would you care to 

expand upon that? 

Mr. O’DOWD. Well, I think that if you look at any area of American life, the Irish-Americans have contributed greatly. Eugene 

O’Neill, people like that have contributed so much to the arts and 

theater here. 

I think the fact is that, from our point of view as a community, 

it will be America’s great loss if Irish-born people can no longer 

come to America legally, and it is something that I know you have 

seen the people here who have come all the way from New York 

this morning. They went to Miami last week. They are people who 

feel very, very, very strongly about this issue that the Irish-born 

people who have contributed so much in this country should not be 

prevented from coming here legally. Unfortunately—and I do not 

think that was the intent of the laws, but that is the effective nature of the law right now. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you very much. 

Senator Kennedy? 

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much and welcome. I want to 

just take a moment to personally welcome Niall O’Dowd. For all of 

us who are mindful of Northern Ireland’s enormous progress, its reduction of violence, and its desire to move from the bullet to the 

ballot, we must recognize this gentleman here, who was absolutely 

indispensable in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. You all acknowledged the great role that our friend and former colleague, 

32

George Mitchell, played, but Niall was an enormously important 

figure as well, in the earliest days of developing the ceasefire and 

the support for the figures that demonstrated courage at a key 

point in the evolution. We are still hopeful that those institutions 

that were established at the time of the Good Friday Agreement 

are going to be up and running so that we are going to have the 

beginning of real democracy in the North. I know you could talk 

about that as well, but we will do that at another time. 

The depth of his support is well understood by all of us on this 

Committee. We welcome our good friends here today, and thank 

them for joining us. They joined with us in Philadelphia and they 

joined with us in Miami. I do not see many of the Miami group 

here, but I cannot let the moment go by without welcoming Kelly 

Fincham as well, and thank her so much for all that she has done. 

We have seen dramatic changes in immigration law. Prior to the 

1965 Act, we had about 30,000 Irish that were coming into the U.S. 

Those numbers dropped to about 20,000 afterward. The 1986 Act 

was really something different. That Act focused on those that were 

here undocumented and employer sanctions, something I never 

thought was going to work and voted against. 

What we were trying to do in the 1965 Act was to eliminate discrimination that existed in the law. However, way that that legislation was developed worked in a very dramatic and significant way 

against the Irish. 

Now, we are seeing the elimination of the diversity program. 

There were only several hundred that took advantage of the diversity program last time, and now we are changing it from requiring 

a high school education to requiring a much higher degree of academic achievement and accomplishment. In other parts of the bill 

we provide visas to the highly educated and this change will reduce 

access to the program. 

I am going to be short on the time, unfortunately, but could you 

tell us, Niall, a little bit about how people feel, first of all, about 

the criminalization of immigrants. We have heard a good deal 

about this issue. What is your sense about the extent of the criminality in immigrant communities, the commission of serious crimes, 

the abuse of the welfare system, failing to play by the rules? I 

would like you to talk about that. I have another question and only 

a couple minutes left here. 

Mr. O’DOWD. Well, briefly, there is not a single person I know 

in the Irish community who is against having a secure border in 

America. There is almost, I imagine, no criminality in the community itself that I would know of. Irish people that come to America 

come here to work, and they come here to build a life and build 

their own American dream. So I think they are not direct issues 

that affect them as much. But I think overall that they feel very 

strongly that a lot of the statistics are hyped up to make this seem 

a lot worse than it is in terms of the contribution of illegals or of 

undocumented Irish to this country. 

Senator KENNEDY. Let me ask you to talk about how it feels to 

be undocumented. I am interested in the fear of deportation, the 

separation of family, the real dangers of depression and sense of 

desolation. What does this do to individuals that are attempting to 

be a part of the American dream, to play by the rules, to make a 

33

contribution, and devoted to their religion and members of their 

family? 

Mr. O’DOWD. I think it is a devastating thing. We had a case, 

as I mentioned here, of Mary, who is one of our chief operators at 

the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. Her brother was killed in 

a car crash in Ireland about 3 months ago. She could not go home. 

She has made her life here. She has been here 16 years. She is a 

registered nurse. She had to listen to her brother’s funeral down 

the phone line, and you can only imagine the impact that had on 

her and her family at home. 

That is, unfortunately, an all too common theme. People are 

waiting for that dreadful phone call from Ireland that someone has 

died or that their parents are ill. We have numerous cases where 

people have to make a horrific decision between staying here and 

keeping their hope alive of living the American dream or having to 

go back to Ireland and basically end everything here because of a 

family emergency. And these are people, as you say, who have 

made huge contributions to this society. 

I go back to Ground Zero. We figure there were about 300 Irish 

construction workers who went to Ground Zero that morning, who 

spent the next 7 or 8 days digging up bodies, helping as much as 

they could. And the point I made was nobody was calling them illegal then because of what they did. And I think if you look at the 

number of Irish who died at Ground Zero, you will see what a great 

tradition and a heroic tradition they represented. 

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you. My time is up. 

Chairman SPECTER. Thank you, Senator Kennedy. 

Senator Sessions? 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you very much. As we go forward, I 

think the concerns that the American people rightly have and I 

have is many of these complex questions are not amenable to being 

settled in a secret conference Committee appointed by the leaders 

of both Houses without much or virtually any input from the American people in the process. So I am very nervous about that. That 

is why I think that this hearing and the one you had previously, 

Mr. Chairman, was good. It allows us to discuss some of the complex issues. 

Mr. O’Dowd, you make some points here that I am surprised at. 

You said if John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Eugene O’Neill 

were trying to enter the United States today, they would have to 

enter illegally. You say, ‘‘The sad reality is that there is simply no 

way for the overwhelming majority of Irish people to come to the 

United States legally at present,’’ and that out of a million green 

cards given out last year, only 2,000 went to Irish. Why? Why don’t 

we fix that? I tell you, there is nothing in this bill that fixes that. 

Mr. O’DOWD. No. 

Senator SESSIONS. So what could we do to draft a comprehensive 

bill that would allow people with the family and historical connection to have a better chance, some better chance than this to enter 

the United States? 

Mr. O’DOWD. I think my organization is primarily concerned 

right now with the undocumented Irish who are here, and certainly 

the Senate bill would work very much in their favor. 

34

Senator SESSIONS. Well, we have got to get beyond just that 

problem. We are going to treat those people that came illegally 

somehow in a compassionate way. I am not sure what we are going 

to do, but we are going to do something. 

Mr. O’DOWD. Right. 

Senator SESSIONS. But we have got to think about drafting a 

comprehensive bill. Let’s draft one that is comprehensive, that 

deals with the problems that you just raised. Now, you tell me how 

we want to fix that. Do not be just a team player now with the 

crowd. You tell me what you can do. 

Mr. O’DOWD. Well, I think up until 1965, obviously, Europeans 

were able to emigrate legally to the United States in much higher 

numbers than they are now. And, clearly, if you have a specific 

plan, like there was in the late 1980s—there was what was called 

‘‘old seed immigrant countries’’ that got a certain amount of visas 

through two programs. One was called the Donnelly visa after Congressman Donnelly. The other was called after Congressman Bruce 

Morrison, Morrison visas. They were certainly very acceptable, but 

they were unfortunately time-limited. They only lasted 3 years. But 

the Irish community at the time developed hugely as a result of 

those. 

So it is a question of fairness more than anything. We do not 

want to take visas off anyone. We do not want to be seen to do 

that. But we do want a system where we would get an equal opportunity to come here as much as any other country. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Time is so short on all these 

issues, and, Mr. McDonald, you gave in the appendix a quote which 

I thought was interesting. The one in 1911, the first one you lead 

with was interesting. It said we do not have more crime among immigrants, but ‘‘the coming of criminals and persons of criminal tendencies constitutes one of the serious social effects of the immigration movement.’’ The current ‘‘law is not adequate to prevent the 

immigration of criminals, nor is it sufficiently effective’’ to deport 

criminals. That is still the truth today, isn’t it? 

Mr. MCDONALD. Things have not changed much. 

Senator SESSIONS. So would that be your suggestion on what we 

should focus on, how to identify people before they come with criminal tendencies and to be able to identify those who are here that 

commit crimes and deport them more efficiently? 

Mr. MCDONALD. I think the attempt to identify people with 

criminal tendencies is a dream. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, tendencies, but records. A lot of people 

that come, they apply at the embassy and they do check some of 

their records. I do not know how adequate that is. 

Mr. MCDONALD. A record of serious criminality I suppose could 

be a criterion for exclusion, but it would have to be true serious 

criminality, not the sort of thing that the Congress created when 

it created the category of ‘‘aggravated felon.’’ If you look at the lists 

included in that category, it is clear that you do not have to be a 

felon and the crime does not have to be aggravated. It is just a 

laundry list. So I— 

Senator SESSIONS. You mean that two from Honduras that applied to come to the United States and one had a series of minor 

crimes and one was valedictorian of their class, the one with the 

35

crimes ought to have the equal right to enter as compared to the 

other? 

Mr. MCDONALD. How minor? 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, we cannot accept everybody, so why 

shouldn’t we select those that have no criminal history as opposed 

to those who have a criminal history? Whose interest are we representing—the United States or the person who would like to 

come? 

Mr. MCDONALD. Sure, but I think the standard should not be 

minor crimes. Minor crimes cover an awful lot of territory. Serious 

crimes, sure. 

Senator SESSIONS. All right. Mr. Cutler, my time is about up, 

and I did not get to Mr. Johnson, who does a great job in making 

his presentation. Thank you for those good numbers I made reference to. 

I would just ask you, Mr. Johnson, if the wages of native-born 

workers without a high school diploma have declined in the 1990s, 

wouldn’t that indicate we do not have a labor shortage for unskilled workers? 

Mr. JOHNSON. No, sir. The reality is that wage inequality is an 

issue that we have been dealing with since the 1970s, and maybe 

even before, and it really had, you know, very little to do with immigration. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, let me ask this question: If there is a 

shortage of low-skilled labor in America, doesn’t the economic reality indicate their wages will go up? And why have they not gone 

up if there is not— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Again, they have not gone up because of the issues 

of wage inequality. We are in a time now in a knowledge-based 

economy where we put a high premium on people who have education and training. And we have been paying people who do not 

have a lot of education and training less and less since the 1970s, 

before we had large waves of immigration. 

It is too simplistic to say supply and demand, the more people 

come means that the price goes down. Take an easy example. We 

have today a copy shop on every corner, Starbucks everywhere, and 

yet people line up every day to pay more than we have ever paid 

for coffee than at any time in the history of the country because 

demand has kept pace with supply. So if the demand for less 

skilled workers is keeping pace with supply, then the impact on 

wages is not going to exist. It is competition that drives down 

wages, and that is my point. We do not have a lot of competition 

with immigrant workers because immigrant workers come in to fill 

gaps in our labor force. They come in at the low end of the skill 

spectrum and the high end of the skill spectrum, and the U.S. 

workforce is right there in the middle. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I think you would agree that Professor 

Borjas at the Kennedy School at Harvard who has written a book, 

‘‘Heaven’s Door;’’ Professor Chiswick of the University of Illinois; 

Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation; and Andrew Sum, I believe at Northeastern, would disagree with you. 

Mr. JOHNSON. They would disagree with me, and they would also 

disagree with David Card and Giovanni Perry and Dr. Feinberg at 

36

Brown University. I mean, you get ten economists in a room, you 

are going to get ten different answers. 

Chairman SPECTER. Senator Sessions, how much more time 

would you like? 

Senator SESSIONS. My time is up. 

Chairman SPECTER. Senator Sessions, thank you very much. 

Mr. Cutler, Mr. Johnson, Dr. McDonald, Mr. O’Dowd— 

Senator SESSIONS. You have been very generous, I have to say. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman SPECTER. Well, we have exceeded the time limit to 

some extent, but not a whole lot, and we very much appreciate 

your coming in. We are going to continue these hearings to analyze 

further the respective positions of the Senate and House on the immigration issue and inform the American people that we are very 

serious about border enforcement and employer verification. We are 

also very serious about a guest worker program and very serious 

about dealing in a human, realistic way with 11 million undocumented aliens. And your contribution has been very substantial, so 

we thank you, and that concludes our hearing. 

[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

[Questions and answers and submissions for the record follow.]

37


31098.001
38


31098.002
39


31098.003
40


31098.004
41


31098.005
42


31098.006
43


31098.007
44


31098.008
45


31098.009
46


31098.010
47


31098.011
48


31098.012
49


31098.013
50


31098.014
51


31098.015
52


31098.016
53


31098.017
54


31098.018
55


31098.019
56


31098.020
57


31098.021
58


31098.022
59


31098.023
60


31098.024
61


31098.025
62


31098.026
63


31098.027
64


31098.028
65


31098.029
66


31098.030
67


31098.031
68


31098.032
69


31098.033
70


31098.034
71


31098.035
72


31098.036
73


31098.037
74


31098.038
75


31098.039
76


31098.040
77


31098.041
78


31098.042
79


31098.043
80


31098.044
81


31098.045
82


31098.046
83


31098.047
84


31098.048
85


31098.049
86


31098.050
87


31098.051
88


31098.052
89


31098.053
90


31098.054
91


31098.055
92


31098.056
93


31098.057
94


31098.058
95


31098.059
96


31098.060
97


31098.061
98


31098.062
99


31098.063
100


31098.064
101


31098.065
102


31098.066
103


31098.067
104


31098.068
105


31098.069
106


31098.070
107


31098.071
108


31098.072
109


31098.073
110


31098.074
111


31098.075
112


31098.076
113


31098.077
114

Æ


31098.078