Mark Souder

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Kind of a credibility test.

Mr. SOUDER. Especially when we look at the--it is hard to read the small print, but it is talking about the $5 million needed by year's end, refers to other specific individuals, and then it said BC made 15 to 20 calls, raised 500 K. Hard to believe that would not be Bill Clinton.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I am submitting additional evidence supporting the need for my amendment approved by the House on September 24, 1997 which provides $2,000,000 for the inspector general's office at the Justice Department to complete a thorough and objective investigation of the abuses surrounding the Citizenship U.S.A. Program accelerating the naturalization process prior to the 1996 elections. This evidence includes an executive summary of the KPMG Peat Marwick LLP Report, a statistical listing of the naturalizations where complete background checks were not done provided by the Justice Department, and an editorial in the Washington Post entitled ``Burned Again.'' Naturalization is a critical symbol of the American democratic experiment and the continuing contribution immigrants made. The time has come to eliminate this blemish on the immigration system and those, the overwhelming majority of whom, legally pursue their citizenship. These abuses of the Clinton/Gore administration should not be tolerated which cheapen the integrity of citizenship and the naturalization process. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Naturalization Quality Procedures Implementation Review FINAL REPORT--April 17, 1997 Executive Summary: The Department of Justice, Justice Management Division, engaged KPMG Peat Marwick LLP to review the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) implementation of the November 29, 1996 Naturalization Quality Procedures (NQP). The Naturalization Quality Procedures address seven key enhancements to the naturalization process. These enhancements include (1) standardization of work process, (2) fingerprint check integrity, (3) enhanced supervisory review, (4) instructions regarding temporary file (T-file) use, (5) implementation of a standardized quality assurance program, (6) guidance regarding revocation procedures, and (7) requirements for increased monitoring of outside English and Civics test sites. The instructions contained within the November 29, 1996 memorandum were effective upon receipt, and affected interview scheduling and oath ceremonies. DoJ contracted with KPMG to conduct a review of NQP implementation to evaluate the effective implementation of these procedures. This document contains our review of the NQP directed internal controls implemented by INS to determine if INS field offices and service centers were complying with Memorandum provisions. We conducted our review between February 19 and March 26, 1997. The sites reviewed by KPMG represent approximately 85% of the INS naturalization processing capacity and provide a cross-section of INS offices. Our review indicates that, of the seven areas addressed by the Memorandum, the INS continues to have the most significant control problems with the fingerprint process and the identification of statutorily-barred applicants. A key control implemented by the Naturalization Quality Procedures was the establishment of a data match between INS naturalization tracking systems and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) billing system to identify aliens with a disqualifying criminal history. This data match allowed INS to direct that no cases could be scheduled for interview or oath ceremony until receipt of a definitive response from the FBI regarding criminal history had occurred. Although this data match utilizes the same methodology used to determine the number of cases identified for the felony case review, there is one important exception. Unlike the methodology utilized during the felony case review, the production system requires a match of not only the A-number, but also the first and last names of the applicant. This additional requirement should increase the accuracy of the matching results. However, it should be understood that, although this is an improvement over the previous methodology, the introduction of any data manipulation into the matching methodology also introduces potential errors into the results. The root cause of this potential error is the continued lack of quality control in the completion of FD-258 fingerprint cards. Although the automated matching process does provide some control, a correct identification from the FBI is not assured. Currently, INS is experiencing a growing backlog of cases that are classified ``not found'' as a result of the failure of the FBI and INS matching effort. Additionally, in a sample conducted by INS of 200 cases identified as NON-IDENT by the FBI, 25 applicants admitted to previous arrested during their interviews. In addition to the potential error in the matching methodology between INS and FBI systems, local and state agencies are not required to report criminal arrest data to the FBI. Although the problem with state and local agency reporting is beyond the control of the INS, the integrity of FD-258 data is clearly within the INS purview, and should be corrected immediately. Based on our review, the use of Designated Fingerprint Services (DFS) has done little to increase the accuracy of this data. To ensure that no cases are scheduled for interview or oath ceremony until a definitive criminal history response from the FBI is received, a unique system-generated control number is required to be entered on the N-400 processing worksheet. However, in our review, we often were unable to verify that this mandatory check had taken place. Since this is the validation step of this critical control, we feel this constitutes a material weakness in the criminal history validation process. Upon further examination of the fingerprint process, we discovered pending case files with fingerprints that had been rejected by the FBI and are currently on indefinite hold pending a policy decision from INS Headquarters. The categories of fingerprint rejections currently being held pending a policy decision include: Applicants whose fingerprints had been rejected twice by the FBI as unclassifiable; applicants who had not responded to a request to be reprinted; and, applicants whose rejection notice was undeliverable due to an incorrect address given by the applicant. The number of rejections we witnessed further supports our conclusion that the DFS initiative is not significantly improving the overall quality and integrity of the FD-258 process. In addition to the findings regarding the criminal history validation process, our remaining findings focused on two major areas: dissemination of the new procedures and staff training. With regard to dissemination of the NQP, we discovered three different versions of the memorandum had been distributed throughout the INS. One is the Commissioner's signed copy, a second is an unsigned cc:mail version of the Commissioner's memos with different attachments, and the third is an early version drafted for the Deputy Commissioner's signature. The cc:mail version being used did not require FBI verification, completion of a processing worksheet with initials and dates, nor enhanced supervisory review for IDENT, T-file, or complex cases. If a sense of urgency regarding the NQP was communicated from INS Headquarters, it became diminished as it worked its way down the chain of command. In addition, generally staff at the first-line supervisor level and below were not informed of the reasons behind the implementation of the changes. In reviewing the training records related to the NQP memorandum, we discovered that INS Headquarters decentralized training down to the individual office level. There were no standards set, no curriculum established, and no policies established regarding the recording of attendance for accountability purposes. This was a major contributing factor in the INS' inability to implement fully the NQP. As a result of our site reviews, it is now clear that the NQP has increased internal control and helped reduce the risk of incorrectly naturalizing an applicant. But it is also clear that criminal history validation, a key control of the NQP, remains ineffective. In addition, the NQP standards outlined in the memorandum were unevenly applied across the INS as a result of the lack of standardized training and an inability to effectively communicate the NQP requirements. Due to the inherent weaknesses in the FBI and INS matching, and the continued lack of control within the overall fingerprint process, we cannot provide assurance that INS is not continuing to incorrectly naturalize aliens with disqualifying conditions. Distribution of Naturalized Persons [Sept. 1995-96] Non-Idents: Persons identified as having no FBI criminal history records.......................................................766,959

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, it is actually hilarious to listen to the President threaten to call us into session to investigate campaign finance reform. Maybe for 1 day we can investigate his friends who are in jail, 1 day we can investigate his friends who have been released from jail, 1 day to investigate his friends who are indicted and maybe soon heading to jail, 2 days to investigate his friends who received immunity, one for partial and 1 for people who have received full immunity, 2 days for his friends who are pleading the fifth and unwilling to testify, and 3 days for his friends who have given him money and are now escaped overseas, and we could actually break this down by continent, or maybe if we have a few extra days, we can look into the impeachment resolution of the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. BARR]. What a joke. Did he think of this when he was raising the million dollars in San Francisco the other day? Before or after? I think it is a mockery of this process for this President to propose that we should be looking at campaign finance reform. He is the one with the problem.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I should say at the outset this amendment is cosponsored by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert], the chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight with oversight over the INS. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply transfers the $3 million from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and increases the Inspector General's office at the Justice Department by $2 million to provide adequate resources for a thorough investigation of the abuses of the Citizenship USA program administered by the INS. The Citizenship USA program was devised in 1995 to increase the speed and efficiency of the naturalization process. The problem is that speed was a priority and efficiency was forgotten. In 1996, the number of naturalizations tripled to 1.1 million, an upsurge well timed for the November election. In the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, I chaired a number of hearings on the resulting chaos from this accelerated process. It was said at that time that the appropriations committee had increased the funding for this acceleration. As I pointed out, the gentleman from Kentucky, Chairman Rogers, and all of us in Congress certainly did not intend to not have background checks be done. The goal was to correctly bring people who were legal aliens into citizenship and welcome them in and accelerate that process. That was the reason the appropriations committee increased the funding, not to bring people in without the proper background checks. What we heard in those hearings was we heard from people who said that they had bound bundles of tests that were taken in the same pencil, in the same handwriting, and yet were being applied as individuals as opposed to groups that they were actually done by. We heard from Dallas, for example, that they had boxes of forms that never went through FBI background checks; boxes, literally thousands in some of these offices. We heard about the mass swearing in ceremonies, where often the green cards were dumped into bins without checking off where they were coming from and then reappeared in the streets. We heard career INS employees telling how they were told not to ask questions and follow-up questions when people did not even know what city they lived in. This type of thing was not what was intended by Congress. The accelerated activity resulted in 180,000 applications being approved without proper screening, according to Justice Department figures, and, of those, 10,800 had felony arrests. On April 18, 1997, the Justice Department released a report conducted by KPMG Peat Marwick Company that made clear that the Justice Department had failed to take adequate corrective action. The report stated that because of the persistent problems in checking fingerprints of citizen applicants against FBI criminal history records, ``we cannot provide assurances that INS is not continuing to incorrectly nationalize aliens without disqualifying conditions.'' On April 28, 1997, the Inspector General of the Justice Department announced a wide-ranging special investigation by his office into allegations of mismanagement, misconduct and illegality in the controversial INS program to speed up the citizenship process. Yet still Attorney General Reno refuses to appoint an independent counsel to provide an objective and complete investigation. I know that the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Rogers] the chairman of the subcommittee, has held hearings on this subject, as we have done on the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, and I thank the chairman for his leadership on this important matter. I ask for my colleagues' support for a complete and objective investigation of illegal activity by the inspector general in order to restore the integrity and dignity of the naturalization process. Naturalization is a critical symbol of the American democratic experiment and the continuing contribution that immigrants make. The time has come to eliminate this blemish on the immigration system and those, the majority of whom, the overwhelming majority of whom, who legally pursue their citizenship. We should not cheapen it.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make it clear, I intend to make no additional statement.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the chairman of the subcommittee for his steadfast efforts over the last week to try to improve the targeted dollars going to IDEA. We had a bill that everybody agreed to in this Congress, and moved it through to try to get more money to these children. The gentleman has a perfecting amendment here. I am pleased it has been accepted, and we are trying to move the debate forward. But I think it is a very targeted thing, to try to keep these funds directly on the kids affected, and not be wasted away in a lot of places where people in fact may not be coming out of the prison system.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra], chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, did not invent this out of blue air. He has been working on this issue for some time, and he has always favored block granting. It is not a question whether or not we believe there should be more emphasis on education. Those of us who are parents realize, with the possible exception of family values and strong personal values and the importance of moral values, nothing is more important than our children and education. It is a question of who is going to make the decision regarding our children's education. Is it going to be parents, local school boards, teachers, and the State, or is it going to be the Federal Government? It is not a question of where the money goes, but who is micromanaging, how that money is used. For example, I think as we work through some standards this fall, and the gentleman agreed to withdraw the amendment at this point, if we are going to bring tax dollars to Washington and send them out, holding people accountable is justified. But they should be minimal. When we have two different programs trying to decide how much exactly goes in a drug-free school, how much exactly goes into the arts or whatever, I think those decisions should be made back in Indiana, in my case, rather than here in Washington. I strongly support the concept of, if we cannot get all the money in the classrooms, at least getting it 600 miles closer to my home State where those decisions are going to be made. I believe that the Hoekstra bill moves this in that direction. We are starting a debate that is likely to go on through this fall and into next year as we all try to decide not whether our children should be educated but how. And I have more confidence in the school boards of this country, in the parents of this country, in the teachers of this country then to say the fount of all wisdom is here in Washington. I believe in Indiana we understand that we have a drug problem and that those drug problems can be allocated to the schools where they can be treated, and that we can make them work more efficiently than the way we are currently providing. I believe that a society without arts and culture is damaging. But I do not believe that arts and culture just flow from this building or the buildings down the street in the Education Department and the White House. I believe they flow out of the local community. And that is what this amendment does.

Mr. SOUDER

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hostettler] did not make those arguments yesterday, and the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] implied that he was reversing himself.

Mr. SOUDER. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, it is hard to believe we are even debating this amendment of giving free needles to enable people to abuse an illegal substance, heroin, and possibly terminate their own lives and the lives of others. It is truly astonishing that anyone who wants to prevent drug abuse or help an addict get off drugs would support a needle exchange program. In fact, what we are saying would be, here is a clean needle, keep injecting yourself with this, it will kill you. This is not compassion, this is truly just masquerading as compassion. In fact, the lead author of the San Francisco needle exchange study, a needle provider himself, was later found dead of an IV heroin drug overdose. Beyond the evidence now coming in from the Canadian needle exchange give-away programs in Montreal and Vancouver that show increased HIV infection in addicts who participated in the program versus those who did not, evidence is not clear. Earlier evidence was suggesting one thing, and evidence coming in now is suggesting another. One has to question the consequences of needle exchange programs for the community involved. What happens when a clinic, with government sanction, is allowed to dispense free needles to addicts? The zone around the clinic dispensing free needles to IV drug users becomes a no-go area for law enforcement. The result is, drug dealers move in, certain they are immunized against prosecution and free to keep their clients addicted. In Manhattan, the lower east side community Board 3 passed a resolution in November, 1995, to close down their needle exchange program because the community was inundated with drug dealers. Law- abiding businessmen shut down, and needed law enforcement was withheld by the police. In Willimantic, CT, after a toddler was stuck by a needle discarded near the needle exchange program and an intoxicated man died from an overdose after receiving clinic needles, residents protested and the program was finally shut down in 1997. Do not be fooled, needle exchange programs are only a subtle form of drug legalization, and at least enables that. I want to read from a statement from Dr. James Curtis on June 4, 1997, director of the Department of Psychiatry and Addiction Services at the Harlem Hospital Center, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons on behalf of the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. He describes his college and then he says, The specific topic of needle exchange programs is one I have carefully followed since they were first proposed almost 15 years ago. From the first and up until the present time, I remain firmly opposed to the needle exchange because I am convinced they would do much harm to black people. Addicts need to be treated and can be effectively treated. They should not be given needles and encouraged to continue their addiction. Dr. Curtis of the Harlem Hospital continues, Let us examine needle exchanges. Addicts are well-informed about how the HIV/AIDS is transmitted, and also about methods of obtaining clean needles. It is absurd to believe addicts cannot afford the small cost of injection equipment, but that they can afford to raise the much larger amount of money to purchase illicit drugs they will inject in their veins. By giving free needles and syringes to addicts, we help them to finance their addiction. . . . Often needles are supplied free along with the purchase of powdered heroin, and cocaine needles are sold freely on the black market, since large supplies are regularly stolen from hospitals and physicians' offices, Dr. Curtis of the Harlem Hospital continues. Furthermore, since needles and syringes can be prescribed for diabetic patients, many addicts, whether they are diabetic or not, obtain prescriptions this way. However, even well-informed addicts, who carefully use clean needles for years, eventually reach the point that they have used up all of their veins. The unfortunate result is that when they are admitted to hospitals for treatment for other medical or surgical procedures, physicians often are sometimes unable to find a vein to perform a life-saving function. Furthermore, Dr. Curtis of the Harlem Hospital Center says, The addict cannot remain an addict unless he or she receives a lot of help from a group of other people. These other people are referred to as enablers, other addicts and well-intentioned family members or friends. He said that needle exchange programs encourage denial and are frankly enabling. He also points out that the public has been led to believe that persons who have a compassionate concern for drug addicts should favor the use of clean needles, and anybody opposing the program is in favor of forcing addicts to use dirty needles. In other words, it is a contest between the liberal and humane persons versus those who are prejudiced against addicts, black people, and persons with AIDS. In actuality, the choices are not between clean needles or dirty needles. It is a still better choice to be opposed altogether to needles. It would be appalling to use our tax dollars to be enablers for people who are putting their life and their communities at risk.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, my question is on language. When a Member of Congress refers to the other Member as talking on both sides of the issue, how does that differ from saying that someone talks out of both sides of their mouth?

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a number of points. One is that we can explain the different categories logically. For example, shopping centers do not mean the sales of all the units inside the shopping center; it means the sales that are controlled by the shopping centers. Those ratios may be slightly changed, but by not changing them at all for inflation, we merely stay with the old ratio. So the argument that we do not have the new, precise relationships down means that we keep the same relationships that we have always had. That was not a logical argument. As to the argument as far as the substance here, it may indeed be true, both what some Members may have maintained on the floor that there is not enough to do over at the NLRB, and at the same time it may mean because they are chasing around a lot of little cases and they are not focusing on the larger cases, which is what the amendment attempts to do. Mr. Chairman, nearly 20 percent of their representation efforts has been on bargaining units of nine persons or less. Yet this 20 percent effort only reaches 2 percent of the total number of employees. What we are arguing is that it should be targeted. So this is really a small business amendment. If the NLRB feels they need to intervene, they can intervene. Mr. Chairman, this is really a small business issue and precisely the type of thing we have been trying to point out throughout this bill. That is we need more, like in OSHA, more toward compliance and less toward enforcement and overhead. If we were targeting to the higher risk cases, we could do a better job of protecting the workers and employees of this country, than by just going willy-nilly for the benefit, predominantly for the benefit, in many cases, of lawyers, or at least largely the case of lawyers. Now to the substance on the question of whether something or not is authorized, I understood the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] to say, and I want to say that while we are at the end of a long stretch here, that in general these debates have been very orderly and we have not had the personal conflicts that we have seen here this afternoon, which I think is unfortunate. But the question is when the gentleman says that some programs that are not authorized are asked to be carried; asked by whom? According to the House rules, Members cannot bring something to the floor, even if the authorizing chairman asks them to do it, and what usually happens in the House rules, without a rule that protects the particular piece of legislation from being subject to a point of order. For example, Mr. Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts comes to the floor without our ability to make a point of order. I would ask the gentleman from Illinois if that is not correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Chairman, I believe I did.