Immigration Enforcement Improvements Act of 1995 Fact Sheet

To aggressively secure our borders, speed the deportation of illegal aliens, and better enforce the law prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens.3 min read

The White House, May 3, 1995

"We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a Nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it."
-- President Clintons 1995 State of the Union Message

The President today transmitted to the Congress a legislative proposal entitled the "Immigration Enforcement Improvements Act of 1995." This legislation is part of the package of enforcement initiatives the President announced in his State of the Union Message on January 24, 1995, to aggressively secure our borders, speed the deportation of illegal aliens, and better enforce the law prohibiting the employment of illegal aliens.

Provisions of the Legislation

This legislation will complement the President's unprecedented FY 1996 immigration budget to fund border control and immigration enforcement initiatives and his February 7, 1995, Presidential Memorandum, which directs the heads of the Executive Departments and Agencies to take specific steps to fight illegal immigration. These steps include: strengthened border control, intensified worksite enforcement and work authorization verification efforts, expanded detention and deportation capability (especially of criminal aliens), additional coordination of deterrence strategies in selected metropolitan areas, improved benefits verification, continuing work with States to obtain more Federal help for certain State costs, and emphasizing international cooperative efforts to jointly resolve issues of illegal immigration.

Some of the most significant provisions of the legislation, which will strengthen the Administration's strategy for combatting illegal immigration, include those to:

* Authorize the Attorney General to increase the Border Patrol by no fewer than 700 agents and add sufficient personnel to support those agents for fiscal years 1996, 1997, and 1998.

* Authorize the Attorney General to increase the number of border inspectors to a level adequate to assure full staffing.

* Authorize an Employment Verification Pilot Program. The program would test various methods of verifying work authorization status, including using the Social Security Administration and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) databases. The Pilot Program will determine the most cost-effective, fraud-resistant, and nondiscriminatory means of removing a significant incentive to illegal immigration -- employment in the United States.