Notify the employer that all available information about the alleged dispute will be transmitted to the BES national office for consideration of the appropriateness of issuing a determination pursuant to 8 CFR 211.1. It should be made clear that the finding will not be delayed to await the employer's response.

2. Contact the appropriate State agency, by telephone or telegram, and request it to furnish any information already available which will confirm or refute the allegation that a labor dispute involving a work stoppage or layoff of employees is in progress at the named place of employment, or information which will aid in determining if such a dispute exists.

3. Contact appropriate representatives of any labor union involved in the alleged dispute, when applicable, to obtain any additional available information or to resolve any conflicting information.

4. When a request for the issuance of a determination has been made with re spect to a place of employment which is located over 100 miles from the border, attempt to determine if the employer employs or is likely to employ holders of form I-151. If the place of employment is located less than 100 miles from the border and there is evidence that the employer does not employ and is not likely to employ holders of Form I-151, include such information in the report.

After obtaining and reviewing available information concerning the alleged dispute, endeavor to determine if such information supports the issuance of a determination pursuant to 8 CFR 211.1 that a labor dispute involving a work stoppage or layoff of employees is in progress at the named place of employment. The regional administrator will communicate to the BES national office (Attention: FLC, by teletype, his determination as to whether or not there is a labor dispute and all available information concerning the dispute.

To facilitate handling and to the extent possible, the regional administrator should provide the national office with the following information concerning the dispute in the following order:

1. The name, address, and telephone number of the employer involved, and the location of the alleged dispute.

2. The identity of the labor union involved, if any.

3. The date the dispute began, the date and place of any work stoppage or layoff of employees, and the number of employees involved in any such work stoppage or layoff.

4. A brief summary of the issues involved in the dispute, including whether or not the dispute involves agricultural or nonagricultural issues.

5. The identity of the person or organization requesting consideration for the issuance of a determination pursuant to 8 CFR 211.1.

6. The sources of the information obtained concerning the dispute.

7. His views on whether or not holders of Form I-151 are, or may become, involved in the dispute.

8. His recommendation concerning the appropriateness of issuing a determination pursuant to 8 CFR 211.1.

If unable to determine, due to the lack of readily available information, whether or not a labor dispute involving a work stoppage or layoff of employees is in progress at a named place of employment, report all available information concerning the alleged dispute to the national office promptly for review.

When the Secretary of Labor has issued a determination pursuant to 8 CFR 211.1, the concerned regional administrator should remain in contact with the disputants. Any labor disputes declared in the area should be reviewed not less frequently than every 2 weeks to determine whether or not they are still in progress. Upon receipt of information which indicates the dispute has ended or has been abandoned, the regional administrator should make every effort to confirm this information. This may require a communication to the union and the employer involved. The national office should be informed, by teletype, of the termination or abandonment of any such dispute. This notice should include the source of the information received.

In most cases there will be no need to inform the national office of a labor dispute pursuant to 8 CFR 211.1 unless an interested party requests consideration for the issuance of a determination. However, if the regional administrator learns of the existence of a labor dispute which he considers will be of interest to the Secretary of Labor and which involves, or may involve, holders of Form I-151, he should obtain the information requested in this memorandum about the dispute and forward the information promptly to the national office. The above procedures are effective immediately.

Senator MONDALE. Our next witnesses are Messrs. Greene, Hennessy, and Gordon.

STATEMENT OF JAMES L. HENNESSY, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE; ACCOMPANIED BY CHARLES GORDON, GENERAL COUNSEL; AND JAMES F. GREENE, ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER Mr. HENNESSY. Thank you, Senator Mondale.

The committee is interested in the numbers and classes of individuals whom the Immigration Service examines and permits to enter the United States across the Mexican-United States border. With full appreciation that some of this information is very elementary and is well known to the committee, the following outline of our procedures and practices is submitted for incorporation in your record.

In the past fiscal year ending on June 30, 1968, the Immigration and Naturalization Service examined and passed for entry into the United States across the Mexican border a total of 135,844,365 individuals. Of these 53,776,297 were citizens and 82,068,068 were aliens. The mandate of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is to inspect aliens to determine their admissibility under 31 separate and distinct statutory grounds of excludability. Our examination of persons claiming to be U.S. citizens is strictly limited to determining that fact. If an individual, by response to questions or the submission of various documents, establishes to the satisfaction of the examining inspector that he is a citizen of the United States, the jurisdiction of this Service over him ceases and he is not subject to any further questioning as to his purpose, intended length of stay, et cetera. Senator MONDALE. Would you yield there please?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes, of course, Senator.

Senator MONDALE. Does your Service reach the problem of illegal wetback entrants that don't go through your official gates, that sneak across the border?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes, Senator. I will get to that later.

Senator MONDALE. You talked about 53 million citizens who crossed. Do you include people who produce a baptismal certificate as being U.S. citizens without further explanation?

Mr. HENNESSY. Not necessarily without further explanation. I am including in the citizens those who have determined to the satisfaction of the inspector that they are citizens.

Senator MONDALE. Is it your understanding that the legitimacy of the baptismal certificates is being checked?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes. As a matter of fact, we maintain a special fraudulent document center in Yuma, and have maintained such a document center for 10 years.

Senator MONDALE. I ask that question, because I had never heard of this until I went down to the border myself and stood and watched people come across 45 percent of the people that morning, and I assume that was a sample morning because at least I didn't pick it45 percent of them produced baptismal certificates, and they are coming through there so fast that if they bothered to check one out of every 20 of them, they would have had Mexicans backed up to Mexico City.

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Mr. HENNESSY. A baptismal record is obviously not the best primary proof of birth in the United States.

Senator MONDALE. It is not an official record at all.

Mr. HENNESSY. No, it is secondary evidence. There are persons born in the United States, particularly those not born in hospitals, and not attended by physicians, where no formal record is created in the State archives of the person.

They are born frequently with midwife attendance. However, these people are baptized in the local churches, and that baptismal certificate is the best available evidence of their place of birth.

Senator MONDALE. Do you have any evidence on how many baptismal certificates are presented as evidence of citizenship within the figures that you have given us?

Mr. HENNESSY. No, I do not.

Senator MONDALE. Are you in a position to make a rough estimate or express an opinion?

Mr. HENNESSY. I could accept your statement as to your observation at that particular port at that particular time as certainly typical of that area.

Senator MONDALE. Of the baptismal certificates that are presented, how many can you say are authenticated? In other words, how many of these certificates that are presented are actually checked out to determine whether it is a fair representation of persons of U.S. citizenship or not?

I am very suspicious in this field, as you know. I must say I am sympathetic with the immigration officer. I have some question whether the baptismal certificate should be used at all. I saw persons 18 or 20 years of age, who had new crisp baptismal certificates. A Catholic priest told me it was a major problem in and around the border area.

A person who forges a green card is in bad trouble, but if you forge a baptismal certificate, it doesn't mean a thing.

There is no reason a person who wants to work in the United States who isn't eligible can't prepare himself a baptismal certificate, because the worst that can happen is that he would get caught and make another one out the next day.

Mr. HENNESSY. May I read from our annual report in June of 1968 a statement which I think bears on this, and obviously was not prepared in response to this query.

It says that the fraudulent documents center was established in 1958 as a repository for documents used by Mexican aliens to support false claims to U.S. citizenship. The records maintained consist of birth certificates, baptismal certificates, and other documents relating to citizenship.

The information is readily available to all service officers and all other Government agencies to aid in conducting investigations and obtaining evidence where a false claim of citizenship is indicated.

The record is so organized that an inquiry can be made in a matter of minutes. The workload in 1968 was greater than in any-than in the 10 years of its existence.

The total cases received and indexed amounted to 17,753. Inquiries of record checks increased by 8 percent. Positive responses to inquiries rose from 482 to 588. The affirmative responses were made with re

For the seventh consecutive year there was an increase in the number of claims to false citizenship encountered by the border patrol. These false claims were made by 2,025 Mexicans, 27 of other nationalities. Senator MONDALE. That doesn't indicate how many of those inquiries are related to baptismal certificates.

Mr. HENNESSY. No, but I would think it would be the majority. I will try to provide that in the additional information I will submit. Senator MONDALE. Will you try to provide for the record how many baptismal certificates have been presented as evidence of citizenship at Hidalgo, and how many of those have been checked?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes.

Senator MONDALE. You may not have that now, and I appreciate that.

Mr. HENNESSY. I do not have that now, but I will submit it for the information of the subcommittee.

Senator MONDALE. Senator Murphy?

Senator MURPHY. Was this condition aggravated after Public Law 78 was terminated?

Mr. HENNESSY. The number of citizens that were born in the United States occurred in large part during Public Law 78, and the illegal entry period, when the large wetback drive occurred in the 1950's. Many of these families were returned to the Mexican side.

Senator MURPHY. Are you saying that the wetback problem doesn't exist any more?

Mr. HENNESSY No, sir; I am not making any such statement. It does exist.

Senator MONDALE. As a matter of fact, it got worse.

Mr. HENNESSY. That is true.

If I may continue the statement.

The aliens who apply for admission are divided into two classes. First, immigrants. These are aliens who have been accorded the right to reside permanently in the United States. Usually they have received an immigrant visa from a U.S. consul abroad.

Once they have made an initial entry with that visa, which is surrendered to the immigration officer at the port of entry, they are issued a green/blue laminated alien registration card. This card serves a dual purpose of being an identity document and also a travel document which enables them to reenter the United States, following departures to Mexico or any other foreign place, without the necessity of obtaining a new consular-issued immigrant visa.

According to the alien address reports filed in January 1969, there were 3,506,359 such permanent residents in the United States. Of these 701,979 were Mexican nationals. The preliminary figures, an analysis of the January 1969 report, indicate that 369,606 of these Mexican nationals resided in California, 198,886 were in Texas, 35,725 were residents in Arizona, and 10,339 were in New Mexico. The 45,309 in Illinois constituted the largest number of Mexican nationals in a nonborder State.

Senator MONDALE. Would you describe for us the criteria that must be established for a greeen card before it is issued?

Mr. HENNESSY. The applicant for a green card is an applicant for an immigrant visa.

Senator MONDALE. What does he have to establish to obtain that green card?

Mr. HENNESSY. The current practice, and I guess that you would prefer that I respond to the Mexicans as such: By the act of October 1965, that became fully effective last July 1

Senator MONDALE. Under your present regulations?

Mr. HENNESSY (continuing). Yes. There is a ceiling of 120,000 aliens who may enter the United States from all of the Western Hemisphere, and no numbers are specifically allocated to any national or residential group.

The visas are issued on a first-come, first-served basis. As a matter of fact, the supply of visas, 120,000, is not adequate to meet the current demand, and there is approximately a 7- to 8-month delay from the time a person initially registers for a visa before his case may be considered by a consular officer.

To obtain a visa, he has to establish evidence of his nationality. He establishes his freedom from any criminality or political subversive sections, meets various health requirements, and unless he is a spouse, parent, or child of a citizen or a resident alien, must obtain a certification from the Department of Labor that the position to which he is coming in the United States will not adversely affect wages and working conditions in the United States.

This is the so-called labor certification.

If he satisfies the consular officer on all of those grounds, the visa is issued. He surrenders it upon the occasion of his first entry, as I have earlier indicated, and the green card is issued.

Senator MONDALE. That determination of adverse effect is made only once, am I correct?

Mr. HENNESSY. Only on occasion of the original entry.

Senator MONDALE. So he might get a job with employer A which qualifies the immigrant under that standard, and the day after the green card is issued, he may change employment, and he may take a job at a rate which, in fact, does adversely affect the labor market, but there is no further check on that by your service?

Mr. HENNESSY. There is. I would say, that possibly the 1-day business is largely on the theoretical side. It could happen. Frequently it is a longer period of time, such period of time as not to enable us to establish that he obtained the labor certification in a fraudulent way. In most cases, it is hard for us to establish that that was his intent. This becomes an "after acquired" intention. He is free to go anywhere, and there is no check.

Senator MONDALE. There is no requirement or present effort by the Immigration Service to determine whether this essential finding of no adverse effect upon which the green card is issued is any longer being applied?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes, we are out investigating these cases frequently to see that the individual goes to the initial employment.

Senator MONDALE. In the first instance, but after that?

Mr. HENNESSY. After that, no, because there is no requirement in the statute.

Senator MONDALE. As a matter of fact, that could go on for 25 years, couldn't it?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes, and to pinpoint it to our precise issue, an individual could come into the United States with a certification that he was going to employment, we will say, in a factory that needed