Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The consideration of S. 1685 is a positive step toward resolving a concern that many Americans have as relates to ensuring the complete and accurate employment of those who are able and should be employed in a legal manner. The basic pilot is a temporary, voluntary program for electronically verifying the employment authorization of newly-hired employees. The bill, S. 1685, would extend the program for another 5 years.

The objective of employment verification is to ensure that American employers hire workers who are authorized to work in the United States. Under the basic pilot, the employer examines the documents of a newly- hired employee and then transmits the pertinent information electronically to an office of the Social Security Administration. The SSA office compares the information with its records. In the case of a foreign worker, the SSA office will pass the information on to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The BCIS compares the alien's employment data with immigration records to determine whether he or she is authorized to work in the United States. If BCIS confirms that the alien employee is authorized to work in the United States, it issues a confirmation number. If BCIS determines instead that the new employee is not authorized for employment in the United States, it issues a tentative nonconfirmation number. Procedures are

available to permit either the employer or the employee to contest a tentative nonconfirmation before it becomes final, at least allowing procedures of due process so that those who would insist that they are allowed to work here would have the opportunity to protest any denial and to be able to provide information to prove that they can work here in the United States.

The basic pilot is an effective employee verification program that makes it easier and safer for employers to hire foreign workers which makes it easier for lawful foreign workers to find employment.

Section 405 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 required the Attorney General to submit a report on the basic pilot to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. The report was done by the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University. The Institute identified a substantial number of implementation problems. It concluded, among other things, that the basic pilot was a good program, but that it was not ready yet for larger-scale implementation. Consequently, I have concerns about a provision in S. 1685 which would expand the pilot program from its present size of being available in only six States to being available in all 50 States.

S. 1685 has a provision, however, which I believe addresses the problems that the Institute identified. This provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security, prior to expanding the program, to submit a report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees stating, one, the extent to which these problems have been resolved; and, two, describing what additional actions will be taken before expanding the program. This is a helpful addition, if you will, that counters the overexpansion to 50 States, which I believe we are not yet prepared for in terms of manpower hours at Homeland Security and, as well, technology to be able to address the overload that will occur. But it is an important issue to ensure that employers are, in fact, complying with the law and hiring those appropriately able to work in the United States.

S. 1685 also would extend the duration of an immigrant investor pilot program for 5 additional years. It is a little-used program, and I think we should do a lot to expand and promote this program because it is an investment program. This pilot program arose out of the basic immigrant investor EB-5 program. Ten thousand EB-5 visas are available each year, 5,000 of which are reserved for people who participate in the pilot program.

The requirements for participating in the pilot program are essentially the same as the requirements for participating in the EB-5 investor program, with some exceptions. An investor under the pilot program can qualify with an investment of less than $1 million, which is the requirement for the basic EB-5 program. The pilot program investor may satisfy the eligibility requirements with an investment of as little as $500,000 in a specified type of commercial enterprise that would be to promote economic growth, improve regional productivity, create new jobs or save existing ones, and increase domestic capital investment in certain definitively needy areas that would benefit from this investment. I would encourage the utilization of these visas as much as possible.

I am pleased that foreign investors are being encouraged to invest in regions of our country that need the stimulation of such enterprises. I think this is a worthwhile program that should be extended. I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill.

Might I also acknowledge the work of the Committee on the Judiciary, the House Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) who worked on this legislation and my chairman on the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler), that efforts were waged to compromise on this legislation. I do still have concerns, but I believe that we have worked through a bill that is suited for the support of my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, the Basic Pilot is a temporary, voluntary program for electronically verifying the employment authorization of newly hired employees. The bill, S. 1685, would extend the program for another 5 years.

The objective of employment verification is to ensure that American employers hire workers who are authorized to work in the United States. Under the Basic Pilot, the employer examines the documents of a newly hired employee and then transmits the pertinent information electronically to an office at the Social Security Administration (SSA). The SSA office compares the information with its records. In the case of a foreign worker, the SSA office will pass the information on to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS).

The BCIS compares the alien's employment data with immigration records to determine whether he or she is authorized to work in the United States. If BCIS confirms that the alien employee is authorized to work in the United States, it issues a confirmation number. If BCIS determines instead that the new employee is not authorized for employment in the United States, it issues a tentative nonconfirmation number. Procedures are available to permit either the employer or the employee to contest a tentative nonconfirmation before it becomes final.

The Basic Pilot is an effective employee verification program that makes it easier and safer for employers to hire foreign workers, which makes it easier for lawful foreign workers to find employment.

Section 405 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) required the Attorney General to submit a report on the Basic Pilot to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. The report was done by the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University. The institute identified a substantial number of implementation problems. It concluded, among other things, that the Basic Pilot was a good program but that it was not ready yet for larger scale implementation. Consequently, I have concerns about a provision in S. 1685 which would expand the pilot program from its present size of being available in only 6 States to being available in all 50 States.

S. 1685 has a provision, however, which addresses the problems that the institute identified. This provision would require the Secretary of Homeland Security, prior to expanding the program to submit a report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees stating first, the extent to which these problems have been resolved; and second, describing what additional actions will be taken before expanding the program.

S. 1685 would extend the duration of an immigrant investor pilot program for 5 additional years. This pilot program arose out of the basic immigrant investor EB-5 program. Ten thousand EB-5 visas are available each year, 5,000 of which are reserved for people who participate in the pilot program.

The requirements for participating in the pilot program are essentially the same as the requirements for participating in the EB-5 investor program, with some exceptions. An investor under the pilot program can qualify with an investment of less than $1 million, which is the requirement for the basic EB-5 program. The pilot program investor may satisfy the eligibility requirements with an investment of as little as $500,000 in a specified type of commercial enterprise. The enterprise must promote economic growth, improve regional productivity, create new jobs or save existing ones, and increase domestic capital investment.

I am pleased that foreign investors are being encouraged to invest in regions of our country that need the stimulation of such enterprises. I think this is a worthwhile program that should be extended.

I urge you therefore to vote for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let me also note, I think, an important aspect of this bill, and, that is, a concern about the dissemination of information and violation of privacy that the initial bill exhibited. I am pleased to note that the Senate removed a provision that would give State and local governments access to the information collected with this program. That would have been the first step toward the dissemination or the idea, which I think is still highly debatable, of a national identity card. So, in fact, we have provided safeguard provisions to make this legislation work, to provide the information that is necessary to ensure the protection of the workplace, and also to provide due process rights for all who are involved.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, who has worked long years in bringing us a consistent and effective immigration policy for this country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First of all, let me again acknowledge my colleagues on the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims and the full Committee on the Judiciary; but I always want to acknowledge the staff, both majority and minority, for working through this legislation.

I would simply say that we have realized that we have this dilemma between the need for American workers to have jobs, particularly in this economy, and juxtaposing it against the numbers of immigrants who have come to this country for opportunity, in many instances economic opportunity. I hope that, as we look at this legislation, we will be reminded of the fact that we do need to establish a real immigration policy for this Nation.

The basic pilot legislation helps us to avoid what I think is the ugliest part of this conflict with illegal immigration, and that is racial stereotyping and stigmatizing of those who happen to come from a background that would ordinarily suggest that they are not here with legal status. By being able to find out real information through the BCIS and the Social Security Administration, employers can be safe and secure in those that they might hire.

At the same time I think that this body owes it to the establishment of a real immigration policy along with the administration that we should pass 245(i) and begin to look at ways to address the question of 8 million undocumented aliens by earning access to legalization, by passing legislation that allows those who have come here to work to earn their way to citizenship first by way of being in this country for 5 years without a criminal background, paying taxes, and working, finding a way for them to route themselves to real citizenship.

Might I say in conclusion that as we organize a Homeland Security Department, and the Committee on the Judiciary worked very hard to establish aspects of the immigration provisions, to the credit of the Committee on the Judiciary, that particular section was called the Bureau of Citizenship, I believe, and Immigration Services. That is an important step, that we want people to be able to legally access citizenship, those who have come here to work and come here to do what is good for this country to be able to access citizenship even if their first entry might have been in an illegal status.

This legislation clearly is needed today, but we do need a forceful immigration policy. With that I ask my colleagues to vote for this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2359) to extend the basic pilot program for employment eligibility verification, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 2359, the bill currently under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ illegal aliens and required employers to check the identity and work eligibility documents of all new employees. Unfortunately, illegal aliens have used the easy and cheap availability of counterfeit documents to make a mockery of IRCA. Today's document-based verification system just does not work, and it frustrates employers who do not want to hire illegal aliens, but have no choice other than to accept documents that have a high likelihood of being counterfeit.

In 1996, Congress created a pilot program to help employers verify worker eligibility. Under this program, the employers who elect to participate in the pilot program may submit Social Security numbers and alien identification numbers of newly hired employees to be checked against Social Security Administration and INS records. This weeds out bogus numbers provided by illegal aliens and thus helps to ensure that new hires are genuinely eligible to work.

The pilot program has been a great success over its 6 years of operation. A recent study conducted by the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University, in conjunction with Westat, found that 96 percent of participating employers believe the pilot to be an effective and reliable tool for employment verification; 94 percent believed it to be more reliable than the IRCA- required document check; and 83 percent believed that participating in the pilot reduced uncertainty regarding work authorization. The study recommended the continuation of the pilot.

Several participating employers indicated in a recent letter to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims of the Committee on the Judiciary, that ``the pilot is the best tool employers have to make sure they are not hiring unauthorized aliens. Employers have embraced the tools granted by Congress and Congress should grant a continuation of the pilot employment verification program.''

H.R. 2359, introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), would extend the pilot program for an additional 5 years. It would also allow volunteer employers throughout the Nation to participate in the pilot. Currently, the Department of Homeland Security is required to operate the pilot in at least five of the seven States with the highest estimated number of illegal aliens. There is no reason why employers elsewhere in the Nation should not be allowed to participate and reap the same rewards as the current participants.

The study of the pilot found that now is not the time to require all businesses in the United States to participate. However, all this bill does is to open the pilot program to additional volunteer employers. The study explicitly found that ``the Social Security Administration and INS are currently capable of handling'' a nationwide voluntary program. That is all H.R. 2359 does. The study did indicate that the pilot could be improved.

However, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims will elaborate, in the years since the time the study reviewed the pilot, the INS and the Department of Homeland Security have been successfully making these improvements. At the request of the Department of Homeland Security, H.R. 2359 would also provide that inquires by Federal, State, and local government agencies seeking to verify or ascertain the citizen or immigration status of any individual for any purpose authorized by law may be made using the mechanism of the pilot program.

Under current law, DHS must already respond to these agencies' request. The bill merely allows DHS to utilize the pilot program in responding. And, the pilot program contains no new databases. It merely relies on current Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records system.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill. This legislation will provide willing employers throughout the Nation the tools they need to hire a legal workforce and comply with the law.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, Halloween is coming up, and I am afraid that the argument used by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) is designed to scare people into doing something that this bill does not do. First of all, the bill creates no new databases. The basic pilot program relies on both the Social Security Administration and INS database, and there is nothing added to these databases by this bill whatsoever.

Secondly, the bill does expand this voluntary program nationwide so that employers in other States may volunteer to participate in the verification of employment eligibility. Because the problem of illegal aliens taking jobs away from Americans is a problem that exists in more than the 45 States that are not covered by this program, there is nothing wrong with giving these employers the opportunity to volunteer to participate in the program.

Thirdly, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) seems to argue against this legislation in that it will allow government agencies to be able to find out the employment and Social Security status and immigration status of people whose names are in an existing database.

The only change in the law is to allow the other government agencies to utilize the pilot program database, which contains information that is already available to the other government agencies through existing law. I think if anybody is to be scared by this bill, it is people who are trafficking in illegal and counterfeit documents which will be the sole source of employment verification should this bill go down and the pilot program be allowed to expire.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I think we ought to put this legislation into its proper perspective. First, yes, this bill expands the pilot program voluntarily to the 44 States where employers cannot get this information. But it is a voluntary program, and only those employers who choose to participate will participate. No employer will be forced to participate under this piece of legislation either in the 44 new States that are opened up or in the six existing States.

Secondly, there is nothing in this bill that expands the database or which is the precursor for a national identification card. Nothing whatsoever. I personally am strongly opposed to a national ID card and will not support any legislation that establishes a national ID card either through the front door or through the back door.

Thirdly, this legislation allows State and local governments to use the basic pilot program to access information that they can get from the Department of Homeland Security or the Social Security Administration through other means. It just makes it easier when a State and local government needs to get this information for them to get it. If we do not include this change in the law, then a private sector employer will be able to get the information in a much easier manner than our State and local governments. That does not make any sense at all.

Finally, let us look at what will happen if this bill is voted down. The basic pilot program will expire next month in the six States that have been using it for the last 6 years. That means that when it expires, those employers that have been using the basic pilot program for verification of the legal employment status of those people that they wish to hire will be forced to go back to paper documents. There are a lot of counterfeit paper documents out there. You can get them on the Internet, and you can get them on the street corner. But now in the State of California, an illegal alien can get a driver's license, which is one of the documents that is acceptable for employment verification status under the Immigration Reform Act of 1986. Thus, even a legitimate California driver's license would not verify the employment status of someone who presents that document, whether that person be a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident alien who has employment status, or an illegal alien who obtained a legal California driver's license as a result of the law that was signed by Governor Davis just a few weeks ago.

If this bill is voted down, we would go back to the bad old system of using documents as the exclusive way of establishing an applicant for a job's legal ability to be able to get that job under our immigration law. That would be a terrible tragedy.

I urge an ``aye'' vote.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 1685) to extend and expand the basic pilot program for employment eligibility verification, and other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S. 1685, the bill currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today we are considering Senate 1685, a bill authored by Senator Grassley that represents a fair and reasonable compromise regarding the reauthorization of the employment eligibility verification pilot project.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ illegal aliens and required employers to check the identity and work eligibility documents of all new employees. Unfortunately, illegal aliens have used the easy and cheap availability of counterfeit documents to make a mockery of this law. Today's document-based verification system just does not work. It frustrates employers who do not want to hire illegal aliens but have no other choice than to accept documents that have a high likelihood of being counterfeit.

In 1996, Congress responded to this state of affairs by creating a pilot program under which employers who elect to participate may submit the Social Security and alien identification numbers of newly hired employees to be checked against Social Security Administration and INS records.

This weeds out bogus numbers provided by illegal aliens and thus ensures that new hires are genuinely eligible to work.

The pilot program has been a great success over its 6 years of operation. A recent study found that 96 percent of participating employers believed the pilot to be an effective and reliable tool for employment verification, 94 percent believed it to be more reliable than the IRCA-required document check, and 83 percent believed that participating in the pilot reduced uncertainty regarding work authorization. The study recommended the continuation of the pilot.

Last month, this body considered H.R. 2359, introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), that would have extended the pilot program for an additional 5 years. It would have allowed employers throughout the Nation to voluntarily participate. Currently, the Department of Homeland Security is required to operate the pilot in at least five of the seven States with the highest estimated number of illegal aliens.

Senate 1685 also extends the pilot for an additional 5 years. It also takes two steps to address the concerns of some of our colleagues that aspects of the pilot program can be improved. First, the bill delays nationwide expansion for a year. It provides that employers in all States shall be able to participate in the basic pilot program no later than December 1, 2004. In addition, not later than June 1, 2004, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall complete a report evaluating whether any problems identified in the 2001 report on the basic pilot program have been substantially resolved and describing what actions the Secretary shall take to resolve any outstanding problems before undertaking the expansion of the program.

Senate 1685 also addresses the immigrant investor visa program. To encourage economic development through the program, Congress created a 5-year temporary pilot program in 1993 that set aside 3,000 immigrant visas each year for aliens who invested at least $500,000 in designated regional centers. A regional center is any economic unit, public or private, which is involved with the promotion of economic growth, including increased export sales, improved regional productivity, job creation, or increased domestic capital investment. A center seeking approval must submit a proposal showing how it plans to focus on a geographical region within the United States to achieve the required growth. Once a center has been approved, an alien applicant can receive an investor visa by showing that he will make the qualifying investment within the approved regional center. In 2000, Congress extended this program until September 2003.

Senate 1685 extends this pilot program for an additional 5 years and also allows the Department of Homeland Security to process investor visa petitions involving regional centers expeditiously, as compared to nonpilot program investor visa petitions.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill. The legislation will provide willing employers throughout the Nation the tools they need to hire a legal workforce.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler), chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims.

(Mr. HOSTETTLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the author of the House version of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the only way we are going to get a handle on the illegal immigration problem of this country is by giving employers the means to verify whether an applicant for employment is legally able to work here and then to enforce the 1986 law which makes it illegal for an employer to hire an illegal alien. If we do not do both, then it will be always cheaper for an employer to break the law by hiring an illegal alien because they do not have to pay them the minimum wage, they do not have to have workplace safety and environmental standards. In many cases they are paid in cash; and the deductions for Social Security and Federal and State income tax withholding are not taken out, all of which is illegal, but there still is a huge economic incentive for an employer to break the law multiple times by hiring an illegal alien.

This bill is an important part of closing a part of that loop, by giving employers nationwide the tools to find out if the person who is asking for a job is legal and a better way of being able to determine whether the documents that the applicant presents are genuine documents or counterfeit documents.

So we have done a part of making our immigration laws more effective by passing this legislation, but the other part indeed deals with enforcement because without enforcement of the immigration law, the problem that we thought we solved with the amnesty that was granted in 1986 will continue whether or not there is another amnesty that is granted by the Congress, which is a move that I personally oppose. So with that, I urge the Members to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2359, the Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003. While proponents of this bill claim it is a simple extension of the basic pilot program for employment eligibility verification, this bill actually comes dangerously close to threatening the privacy of U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike.

H.R. 2359 would permit any government agency to use the basic pilot confirmation system to check the immigration or citizenship status of U.S. citizens and immigrants who come within their purview. This would include those who seek drivers' licenses, it would include professional licenses, or any person who is subject to an inquiry of a Federal, State, or local government agency.

My own home State of Texas is one of the sites for the current pilot program. Although the program was set

up with the best of intentions, a recent independent study conducted for the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the basic pilot program is not ready for larger scale implementation at this time. The study identified problems such as inaccurate and outdated immigration databases. It brought out the civil rights violations by employers and insufficient privacy protections.

Although the program is not supposed to be used as a prescreening mechanism before employment is offered, many employers are basing hiring decisions on these checks. As a result, eligible workers are being denied employment opportunities because an outdated database says they are not eligible to work. The study concluded that these problems could become insurmountable if the program were to be expanded dramatically in scope.

Despite the findings of this study, this bill would expand a flawed program to every State of the Union. I can only conclude that this legislation is a veiled attempt to put in place the mechanism for eventual adoption of a controversial national identification program. The expansion of the pilot program would effectively create a single database, with no privacy protections, that would make it much easier for the government to track its own citizens.

Madam Speaker, it leads me to believe that such a vast invasion of a citizen's privacy must be carefully examined and debated by Congress. However, this broad expansion of government power has been attached to a seemingly benign program extension circumventing any committee hearings or subcommittee markup.

We all agree that we need to find ways to ensure employers hire workers that are legally authorized to work in the United States; however, the Basic Pilot Extension Act does nothing to take us closer to this goal. Instead, this legislation expands a currently imperfect program and creates a new and controversial identification database that could threaten the privacy of all U.S. citizens and immigrants. I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 2359.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) just said that this bill does not create a new database, and I disagree with the gentleman. I disagree with the gentleman, and for the first time since I have been in Congress do I agree with the organizations called Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union.

In their report to H.R. 2359, they say that the Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003, that the undersigned organizations write to ask Members to vote

against H.R. 2359 because this bill puts in place the mechanism for eventual adoption of a national identification system.

They say, perhaps more importantly, section 3 of this proposed bill establishes the precursor of a national identification system by amalgamating data of citizens and immigrants into what is effectively a single database that would be used for multiple purposes.

It is quite interesting if it is not going to do what the gentleman says, why they do not just put it through the regular process and let the committees debate it and discuss it and vote on it in committee instead of attaching it to another bill. All of this to say that it is alarming to see what is being done here by a group that is circumventing the process that has worked here for years and years in the House of Representatives.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I agree with much of what the gentleman from California pointed out.

I want to summarize my comments and say that this bill provides for the extension and expansion of a program to verify if employees are legally authorized to work in the U.S. But we have Representatives on both sides of the aisle who oppose this bill because it expands this current pilot program to all 50 States, when today the pilot program is currently covering only six States. That includes California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Nebraska. They are the ones who have these pilot programs. This legislation would allow all the States then to have access to what is existent right now in the database.

Again, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 2359.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2359. I think it is important to point out a few facts. First of all, the people on this side of the aisle would be speaking in favor of this bill if it were simply to extend the sunset date on this pilot program to allow the pilot program to continue to work out the weaknesses and deficiencies that the INS study found in the program.

But this program does far more than that. This program goes from a pilot program in 5 States to a nationwide program. While my friend from California, the sponsor of the bill, may be correct, although I am not quite sure how he knows where 80 percent of the illegal immigrants are located, but let us assume that for a second the fact is 80 percent of the employers are not located in those 5 States. This is a massive expansion of the pilot program.

In 1996, we created the pilot program. In the law in 1996 we told the INS to get people to study how the program was working. The INS went and did that. They commissioned two different groups, organizations, to study the program and what was happening with those employers who were voluntarily participating. The study came back. What did the study say? The study said, based on the evaluation findings, the basic pilot program should not be expanded to a mandatory program, and this does not do that, or a large-scale program. I would suggest that opening it up to every employer in America on a voluntary basis constitutes that kind of large-scale expansion which the study commissioned by the INS and required by the Congress said we should not do.

Why did they say that? They talked about the problems and the deficiencies in this program. It would have been nice if the Immigration Subcommittee of Judiciary had had a hearing on this bill where the authors of the study could have come forward and answered questions and developed it; but we had no hearing, we had no markup, the bill was taken directly to a markup in the full committee and put on the floor, not with a rule to allow amendments to address specific deficiencies in the operation of this pilot program, not with a rule that allowed any kind of amendments, but on suspension where no amendments can be made.

What the study found about the program, I think, is very important. The program was hindered by inaccuracies, inaccuracies and outdated information in the INS databases. The program did not consistently provide timely immigration status data which delayed the confirmation of a worker's employment authorization in one-third of the cases. The employer has decided to hire somebody. He participates in this program. He asks Social Security and INS to verify that person. In one-third of the cases he does not get an answer and then does not hire that person but goes to another person. A person who was fully authorized to work, who was in this country legally, is denied a job because of inaccuracies and a slow-to-respond operation from the INS and the Social Security Administration.

A sizable number of workers who were not confirmed, who were rejected, it turned out were work authorized, but there was something wrong in the processing of their papers. There was a mistake in the database. When they went out and checked who these people were, it turned out well over 42 percent of the sample that they used were work- authorized, but were told by the people operating the pilot program that they were not. Forty-two percent of that sample did not get a job. In some cases, the employer did not follow the rules and the guidelines of the pilot program. In other words, the program was riddled with deficiencies.

Theoretically, I have to say, if we could get an accurate, quick employee identification system where employers could know they were getting accurate information and workers who were authorized to work in this country, who were here legally, who had a right to work could get the right answer, then I would say let us talk about expansion and let us pursue that by continuing this program. But I urge this body to reject an effort to expand this nationwide to add not simply employers but State, local and Federal Government agencies to the list of people who will be using a program when that program by the INS's own study was riddled with deficiencies and weaknesses which

delayed responses, which kept people who are here legally from getting jobs or rights they would otherwise get, or be entitled to get simply because of inaccuracies in the database. This is not the kind of a program to expand at this time.

I urge a ``no'' vote.