Statement of David J. Stoddard

before the

House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims

March 18, l999

Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Dave Stoddard, I live in Arizona and I come before you today as a U.S. Citizen, a border resident and a retired Border Patrol Agent. I have lived and worked on the Mexican Border for most of my life.

Upon receiving the invitation to speak to you, I interviewed border residents who are Mexican Americans and others who are Anglos. I also spoke to high- and low-ranking sheriff's deputies, Border Patrol officers, small- and large-scale ranchers, and residents of the interior United States. I am not alone in my observations and perceptions.

When I entered the U.S. Border Patrol in 1969, illegal aliens were mainly former braceros. They wanted to work in agriculture until the harvests were over and then return to their homes to repeat the cycle next season. They were honest, hard working, polite and otherwise law-abiding. By the middle and late seventies, illegal females and family groups of all nationalities were commonplace. Numbers of illegal aliens entering this country continued to climb and became a virtual stampede upon news of a possible amnesty in 1986. After 1986, thousands more entered hoping to take advantage of the amnesty program. Fraud was rampant, to say the least. Numbers of people illegally in our country have continued to rise dramatically. Today this country is in a crisis of catastrophic proportions. We can no longer be a receptacle of the poor, unskilled, under-educated and other individuals that other countries find burdensome. There are also those who come simply because they are unwilling to remain and fight the battles of life in their own country. The added cost to public schools, social programs, penal institutions, public services, health care and quality of life has been enormous. It has been estimated that immigration, legal and illegal, costs every American taxpayer at least $750 annually. I think the taxpayers would rather send foreign aid to other countries than have their citizens illegally in the United States adding to the poverty level and social problems.

Today the United States is undergoing a large scale invasion of Mexican, Central and South American entrants. Notice I use the term "entrants" while others may use the term "illegal immigrants". Only a small fraction of these individuals are true immigrants. They come for economic and other reasons and not to assimilate into the American way of life. They intend to remain in the United States long enough to accomplish the purpose for which they came and then to return to their country of origin. The very word "emigrant" connotes someone willing to leave loved ones, and abandon a former country in order to adopt a new country and a new way of life. The entrants of today intend to remain loyal to their homeland and assume that eventually they will be caught and removed from the United States. As an unintended consequence some put down roots, acquire equities and remain.

Not all come to work. The United States has become a home for unwed mothers. Illegal mothers receive medical attention at taxpayer expense. Then after giving birth to a U.S. citizen child, they become eligible for low income housing, welfare, food stamps, WIC and possibly other programs, all for the benefit of the child. Of course, the more children, the better the benefits. Illegal aliens seldom pay their hospital bills and the cost of their care is born by taxpayers or the paying clients of the facility.

Illegal Mexican aliens generally have the attitude that they are coming to a land that is rightfully theirs. The Mexican government officially and actively encourages its citizens to illegally enter the United States.

Aliens who enter at whatever point along the U.S.-Mexico Border and evade apprehension can travel to any place in the United States, stay for as long as they want and do whatever they want without any real fear of removal. Put more simply, the Border Patrol is nothing more than a speed bump on the way north to safety. There is little wonder that assaults and violence against officers and border residents are rising alarmingly.

There are groups all across the southwest protecting the rights of illegal aliens. These organizations intensely scrutinize the actions of any border resident or citizen who needs to use force against an illegal alien. These aliens rights groups are usually alerted by the Mexican consul after the consul has been notified of an alien injury by U.S. authorities. The Mexican government is zealous in its efforts to protect Mexican citizens in this country to the point of filing protests and retaining attorneys. Yet, border area residents rely in vain solely upon the U.S. government for protection while their constitutional right to be secure in their homes and property is being violated by citizens of foreign governments. Every day homes get ransacked, and property stolen or destroyed. Ranchers who rely upon their stock and land for a livelihood have their fences repeatedly torn down, their stock stolen or injured, their wells damaged and their vehicles stolen. Ranchers in the border area have had stock killed, property destroyed, or a fire set in retaliation for calling the Border Patrol. Border residents have been held at gunpoint or tied up while thugs from Mexico take valuables and terrorize families. The Mexican government would not tolerate this for an instant if the situation were reversed.

Illegal aliens are becoming more brazen, arrogant and violent It is impossible to separate illegal alien traffic and narcotics traffic. Mexico is doing nothing to alleviate the problems caused by its citizens. The United States is in a crisis and to allow it to continue is unacceptable.

The United States government has consistently failed to effectively address the problem of illegal immigration to this country and has no credibility in the world in respect to its immigration laws.

In 1986 the Immigration Reform Amnesty Act was enacted. The requirements of IRCA were such that hardly any illegal aliens qualified. They didn't qualify because the patterns of illegal immigration were such that aliens would enter this country for a temporary period of time and then return to their country of origin only to repeat the pattern time and gain. IRCA required applicants to show continuous residence in the U.S. by producing receipts and other documentation. Since many aliens didn't have the required residence, they couldn't qualify. The administration was embarrassed by the lack of applicants so an intense effort was made to encourage applications in spite of the lack of qualifications. A market for forged and counterfeit documents flourished. INS officials were told not to question documents too closely. Furthermore, aliens were approved who, during their interviews, said they did such impossible tasks as pick strawberries from trees. Word quickly spread throughout the illegal alien community, and in foreign countries, that INS would accept false documents and not attempt to uncover fraud. In a short time IRCA precipitated class action suits, injunctions and extensions that made it a farce.

As a social consequence of IRCA, since many Mexican citizens are naturalizing as U.S. citizens, Mexico passed a law retroactively giving dual citizenship to Mexicans who naturalize as U.S. citizens. Furthermore, people born in the United States of a Mexican National parent can also be a dual citizen under this law. Also, a spouse of such a derivative Mexican citizen can apply for and be granted Mexican citizenship. Therefore, I, having married a first generation U.S. citizen of a Mexican parent, can apply for and be granted Mexican citizenship. The result is that Mexican nationals who become U.S. citizens retain their loyalty to Mexico and can vote in Mexican elections. My concern is that millions of people in the United States can vote in Mexican elections on issues affecting Mexico, and those same people will vote in U.S. elections on issues affecting Mexico. Proposition 187 in California is an example of the conflict of interest that can arise. Mexico is now considering methods to allow dual citizens to vote in Mexican elections without their having to leave the United States to do so. America's national sovereignty will suffer if this is allowed to happen.

Prior to the 1996 elections the Clinton administration was too eager to naturalize thousands of immigrants in time to vote democratically in the upcoming elections. Consequently, INS naturalized many, possibly thousands, of unqualified aliens in a hurried and frequently fraudulent manner. The agency allowed outside contractors to administer tests whose priority was quantity and not quality.

Also, during the last Cuban boatlift, the Attorney General of the United States, Janet Reno, announced on national television that not one Cuban picked up at sea would ever set foot onto U.S. soil. Quietly and without fanfare, every Cuban held at Guantanamo (all of which had been picked up at sea) was brought to the United States and released. This act was widely publicized in Mexico.

Other than Mexican aliens (OTM) when apprehended by immigration officers, are processed and released other than being held for removal. They are released with documents allowing them to remain in the United States, supposedly temporarily. That rewards illegal entry and encourages others to do the same. The odds of their ever being removed are small. This too erodes credibility.

Many immigration laws passed by Congress, in some way, rewards illegal entrants thereby contradicting the position that the United States is against illegal entry.

In 1997 President Clinton promised the President of Mexico that there would be no "mass" deportations during his administration. This was taken as an invitation by many different nationalities.

Compounding the above facts is the recent decision of INS not to arrest domiciled aliens in the interior, in blatant disregard of its mandates from Congress, while those who wait to legally immigrate are punished by an INS unwilling or unable to effectively respond to either enforcement or service functions but is stagnant somewhere in between.

There is no small wonder that the United States immigration policy is in shambles and has no credibility.

The morale in the U.S. Border Patrol is at an all time low. Although the agency has increased in strength from around 1200 agents when I entered on duty to almost 9,000 today, it is not allowed to do its job. There is a belief that funds which are allocated by Congress for the Border Patrol somehow are not used for their intended purpose. In the Tucson Sector there are 3 helicopters which don't fly at night, the time of day when they are needed most. There are 15 sets of night vision devices for a crew of 1000 agents. On a smaller scale, Naco station has two sets of night vision devices for 60 agents. One set does not work. There are no permanent checkpoints in Tucson Sector thereby allowing a corridor for movement of aliens into the interior United States through Arizona. Agents are endangered by poor radio communications due to a lack of frequencies. Sensor equipment is incomplete, outdated or dysfunctional.

Yuma Sector is unable to continuously man its critical checkpoints to deter smuggling.

The fact is that the U.S. Border Patrol has been and will apparently continue to be, the bastard child of INS.

The INS Commissioner is incompetent, while the top 10 managers in her administration are inept and devoid of enforcement or INS experience. (There may be an ex-military policemen within the top 10 managers, but I don't consider being an MP as real federal enforcement experience.) The primary objectives of INS seems to be geared towards service and not offending Mexico rather than protecting the integrity of the United States from foreign invaders.

For the good of the country INS must be competently managed and restructured. Or, INS must be disbanded and its functions assumed by other agencies. I personally recommend the plan submitted by Susan Martin and the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. I cannot believe that it would take 3 to 5 years to implement, but if so, we must begin reform at some point and now is a good time.

The U.S. immigration laws already in effect, if conscientiously and humanely enforced, would be effective. For the good of the country they must be enforced, in spite of the shrill cries and objections of special interest groups. Immigration enforcement is not a race issue, it is not xenophobic, it is not unpatriotic, and it is not inhumane. It is a matter of national security. The vast majority of the American people want our immigration laws enforced. This includes millions of Mexican Americans who are seeing increased crime, overpopulation in their neighborhoods, and lowered standard of living.

A viable illegal alien abatement program must contain these elements:

1. Control at the borders, along coastlines and at Ports of Entry.

2. Detection and removal of domiciled aliens.

3. Enforcement of the employer sanctions provisions of the law.

4. An effective anti-smuggling program.

5. Fraud and false document detection.

6. Credibility.

I am now ready to answer any questions to the best of my ability.