Congress: Hearings

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) held four hearings in March 1999 on various aspects of immigration. The March 4, 1999 testimony focused on temporary protection, the March 11 testimony on the economic impacts of immigration, March 18 on illegal immigration, and March 25 on skilled workers. For more information: http://www.house.gov/judiciary/6.htm

Economics. About one-third of the immigrants admitted to the US in the 1990s did not complete high school, compared to 15 percent of immigrants admitted in the 1970s. Rep. Smith said that "Some 300,000 legal immigrants without high school educations arrive each year...[even though] nine out of ten new jobs will require more than a high school education."

Over half of these low-skilled immigrants are in five of the largest US metropolitan areas in the country: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco/Oakland, Miami and Chicago. About 40 percent of California's immigrants have fewer than 12 years of education, as do 50 percent of the immigrants in Texas.

Some testimony focused on broad changes in the US labor market. For example, it was argued that only 700,000 of the almost 12 million new jobs created during the Clinton expansion went to the half of the population aged 25 and over that has not attended college, and that many non-college educated US workers simply drop out of the labor force: two-thirds of the 56 million adults (including retirees) aged 25 and over who are not employed or looking for work have no college education. The number of US jobs filled by those without high school diplomas has been decreasing, from 31 million in 1970 to 19 million in 1998.

Employment to population ratios in 1997--the percentage of a group employed or looking for work--were 79 percent for those with a college degree or more, 72 percent for those with some college, 62 percent for those with a high school diploma, and 40 percent for those who did not finish high school. Several of those testifying attributed the declining employment ratios for US-born high-school dropouts to the presence of similar immigrants.

The employment ratios for women who did not complete high school rose slightly between 1970 and 1990 from 33 to 35 percent in California. A recent study estimated that about 30 percent of the rise in earnings inequality between 1967 and 1997 in California was due to the rise in earnings for the college educated, while 24 percent of the increase in inequality was due to the immigration of low-skilled workers.

In 1997, about 25 percent of US adults 25 and older had a college degree, 25 percent have some college education, 33 percent are high school graduates with no college education, and 17 percent did not complete high school.

Illegal Immigration. INS officials testified on March 18, 1999 that it inspects over 500 million persons--two-thirds non-US citizens--who enter the US through 200 air, land and sea ports-of-entry. About 85 percent of all entries are at land border ports-of-entry.

The INS has been ordered by Section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to match records of arrival and departure from the US in order to detect nonimmigrant overstayers, but noted that Mexican visitors with Border Crossing Card (BCC) who remain within 25 miles of the Mexican border and stay less than 72 hours do not need I-94 entry/exit cards, and that Canadians do not need an I-94 form or a BCC.

According to the INS, exclusions for Canadian and Mexican BCC visitors means that the INS collects arrival and departure information in its Non-Immigrant Information System on only about 10 percent of foreign visitors to the US, that is, I-94 data was entered for 50 million visitors who arrived at air and sea ports in FY98. The INS noted that overstay rates in FY97, the most recent data available, "show a high degree of fluctuation in apparent overstay rates by nonimmigrant class, month and country of admission that renders the data incompatible with the assumptions used in the overstay methodology" that was used to estimate that 40 to 50 percent of the unauthorized foreigners in the US had entered legally, and then overstayed.

The INS has until March 30, 2001 to develop an automated entry/exit system. In a test of an automated I-94 system in Philadelphia with selected US Airways flights, 99.6 percent of the 50,896 entry-exit records matched, i.e., about 214 travelers did not leave as required.

The Visa Waiver Pilot Program permits nationals of 26 countries to visit the US for business and pleasure without visas; some 14.5 million foreigners entered the US under the program in FY97. The INS Passenger Accelerated Service System (INSPASS) had 80,000 frequent travelers enrolled in INSPASS in December 1998.

DOS officials testified that it adjudicated 7,300,000 nonimmigrant visa applications in FY97, approving about 80 percent and denying visas to 20 percent of nonimmigrant visa applicants. The most common reason why applicants are denied nonimmigrant visas is because they have not been able to overcome the presumption of the law that they are intending permanent immigrants.

The INS estimates that there are 221,000 foreign-born residents incarcerated in federal, state or local facilities; the Federal Bureau of Prisons testified that there were 33,250 non-U.S. citizens in federal prisons in October 1998; non-US citizens were 28 percent of persons in federal prisons, a stable level. The 15,400 Mexican citizens in federal prisons were 46 percent of non-US citizen prisoners, followed by 4,400 Colombians. About 51 percent of non-US citizen prisoners were serving sentences for drug convictions and 21 percent for immigration offenses--the average sentence was 90 months. The average daily cost of incarceration was put at $52.

Smuggling. Sociologist Ko-Lin Chin of Rutgers University interviewed 300 smuggled Fujianese immigrants who arrived in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many were held in so-called "safe houses" by an arm of the criminal enterprise which brought them here.

Peter Kwong testified that: "It is my belief that international human smuggling networks are the driving force of illegal immigration. They dictate the size of illegal immigrant influx into this country. In concert with America's greedy employers, they have reduced America's working standards to a 19th-century level... The presence of illegal workers has enhanced the power of the employers who pit them against the legal workers, damaging the working conditions for all of them." Kwong recommended stepped-up labor law enforcement and by giving legal immigrant status to those who testify against smugglers.

The refugee system is based on non-return of foreigners who are already in a country and would face persecution if returned, not on rescuing people from danger and bringing them to safety, for example, refugee resettlement is voluntary, while non-refoulment is a commitment made by nations signing the Refugee Convention.

Some of the testimony urged the US to use some version of a skills or points test to select immigrants. The first hearing explored the evidence that unskilled immigrants harm U.S. workers by displacing them and depressing their wages.