these officials can possibly do a thing about it. Thus, the only hope is that later on that we should refuse to accept certain kinds of certificates, like a baptismal certificate. My personal opinion is that you shouldn't accept a baptismal certificate as evidence of citizenship until it has, in fact, been investigated and determined to be true and stamped in some way, so that it is an official document.

You would have authority to do that, wouldn't you?

Mr. HENNESSY. There is some question that a person, being a citizen, that we can require specific documentation. We make available to a citizen crossing the border

Senator MONDALE. That begs the question. If he is a citizen, I agree. As I have indicated, I am very skeptical that many of these are citizens. Otherwise, they would produce an official birth certificate, which many of them did.

Mr. HENNESSY. Senator, I must point out, however, we are talking about one problem on the Mexican border with respect to one particular group.

I would suggest that as far as both borders are concerned, for all groups I am not too sure that we should require every U.S. citizen to carry with him, in effect, a passport when he would merely be making a trip across the borders.

Senator MONDALE. Well, as I understood your somewhat oblique answer to my question, you are vastly underfunded and understaffed to enforce the factual determinations that had been made.

Mr. HENNESSY. We could find more illegal aliens if we had more bodies on our staff. There is no doubt about it.

Senator MONDALE. I assume that the nonresident alien commuter knows that, just like every other law violator knows, and he plays his odds, and he figures the odds are pretty good.

He also knows that that border official doesn't have time to check these things, so that his chances of being caught are, if he wants to play the odds, relatively remote.

In light of the fact that your budgets are inadequate, and laws are highly technical and exceedingly difficult to enforce, would you not feel that-and the problems with illegals is a rapidly rising problemwould you not feel that this is an area, then, that cries out for reform and increased assistance?

Mr. HENNESSY. I could not possibly quarrel with it, of course.
Senator MONDALE. Mr. Mittelman.

Mr. MITTELMAN. This might be out of your bailiwick. I was wondering if there have been any problems in connection with these alien commuters paying their income taxes and registering for the draft and performing the general obligations that are attached to permanent alien status.

Mr. HENNESSY. The employer pays the taxes, withholding taxes, in most instances. I would suggest that this could possibly be done with respect to the Internal Revenue and social security services.

Senator MONDALE. That is right.

Mr. MITTELMAN. It is my understanding that they do not withhold income taxes from agricultural workers.

Mr. HENNESSY. I am not too sure of my expertise on immigration, but I am vastly incompetent on taxation.

Senator MONDALE. It is true that a Mexican commuter may claim 15 kids, and you don't know how many he has, and you don't collect any income tax.

We talked to many of these workers-we talked to one girl who made $2 all day, and the crew leader took 50 cents out of it for what he said was social security, no form or anything documenting the withholding was provided.

Mr. MITTELMAN. Just one more question.

I would like to explore a question Senator Schweiker asked you a little further. Assume that you go to check a farm that is certified as having a labor dispute, and you find a worker who began work on July 15, when the strike started on July 10.

The worker tells you he crossed the border on June 15, and worked for various employers. Can you check on that?

Mr. HENNESSY. Yes, we will check on the previous employers, and check with the Mexican authorities with respect to his records down there.

We have spent hundreds of man-hours trying to run down a case and have come up with a meaningless cipher at the end.

Mr. MITTELMAN. You can call up an airline and find out where anyone is in the world. They have thousands of passengers.

Is it really so complicated to get a machine, so that someone crossing the border would drop the green card in and a record made of his name and the date and place of crossing?

Mr. HENNESSY. It is not difficult. It is expensive. It runs in the neighborhood of $15 million.

Senator MONDALE. And it might save this country and contribut substantially to a profound human problem which is costing the farmworkers of this country millions and millions of dollars and depriving them of a decent life.

Mr. HENNESSY. I am not indicating the cost figure is too high, but I am saying this is a subject that, unfortunately, in this whole data processing, a machine is obsolete I know you reach the mañana business of eventually you have to fish or cut bait and go into it.

Senator MONDALE. This would require a fairly early generation computer. It is not anything important like circling the moon or shooting at the Russians.

Mr. HENNESSY. I can't quarrel with that.

Mr. MITTELMAN. You don't need a computer, if you do what they do at the parking lot at National Airport. It seems to me that a green card could be issued in such a form that it is able to be put into a machine and the machine actually time stamps it. Anyone can tell when the worker last crossed the border just by looking at his card. That would also solve the 6-month problem that was explored earlier. If, when the man tries to cross the border you see from his card whether this man last crossed the border more than 6 months ago.

Mr. HENNESSY. In that particular instance, yes.
Mr. MITTELMAN. It shouldn't be that complicated.

Mr. HENNESSY. I would like to say that everything you have said, I would be in complete agreement with, and I would hope that we will have additional ways of getting some parts of it, and I could go into this later in more detail.

Senator MONDALE. I have a host of questions, and it is now that I would like to submit to you for the record, and ask you to place your written responses in the record at the conclusion of our hearings.

Also, in view of the interruptions of your prepared statement, I order it printed in full at this point in the record.

Thank you very much.

Mr. HENNESSY. Thank you.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Hennessy follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES L. HENNESSY, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE COMMISSIONER, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE

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 thirty-one separate and distinct statutory grounds of excludability. Our examination of persons claiming to be United States 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, etc.

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 United States 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 indirate that 369,606 of these Mexican nationals resided in California; 198,886 were in Texas: 35,725 were resident in Arizona; and 10,339 were in New Mexico. The 45,309 in Illinois constituted the largest number in a non-border state. The Mexican "commuter" immigrant is a Mexican national who, unlike the three and one-half million other immigrants in this country, maintains his home in Mexico and enters the United States for employment on an almost daily basis. This practice of commuting in its current form has continued, with the approval of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and with the knowledge of the Congress, since at least January 1, 1930, following the Supreme Court decision of Karnuth v. Albro, 279 US 231. The better to identiy the "commuter," commencing early in November 1967 the Service arranged for the insertion of a metal grommet in the "green card" of each "commuter". The cumulative report on "commuters" for the month of April 1969 indicates there are 46,756 such on the Mexican border.

36-513 0-70-pt. 5A

The second general classification of alien is the nonimmigrant. The nonimmigrant arriving from Mexico is usually in the "visitor" classification. In recent years the Service has taken over from the Department of State responsibility of documenting the nonimmigrant visitor from Mexico, and issues upon application, a finding of admissibility, and a determination of the alien's bona fides, a non-resident border crossing card. Currently there are outstanding in excess of two million such cards.

Holders of these cards are currently limited to an area within twenty-five miles of the border and for a period not exceeding seventy-two hours following any entry. Holders of the cards, who seek to enter for a period up to fifteen days or to visit anywhere in the four border states, who satisfy the examining officer of their bona fides, are given a small printed notice, on safety paper, which reflects the date and place of admission and the serial number of the card. A Mexican citizen who satisfies the officer that he has a legitimate need to go beyond the border states or to remain in excess of fifteen days is given the same type entry control card given to an alien entering the United States from any other area of the world.

A second function of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is the location, apprehension, and expulsion of aliens illegally in the United States. During the same fiscal year 212,057 aliens were located illegally in the United States. Of this number 151,705 were Mexican nationals. Of these, 117,184 alleged entry without inspection and 25,943 acknowledged that after admission as visitors they had either remained for a longer period of time than permitted or had accepted unauthorized employment.

There are introduced for the record the following statistical tables, which are a part of the 1968 Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and which expand on the figures which I have already given. Table 19-Entries of Alien and Citizen Border Crossers.

Table 27-B-Deportable Aliens Located.

Table 35-Aliens Who Reported under the Alien Address Program.

(The tables referred to follow :)

TABLE 19.-ENTRIES OF ALIEN AND CITIZEN BORDER CROSSERS OVER INTERNATIONAL LAND BOUNDARIES BY STATE AND PORT: YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1968

TABLE 19.-ENTRIES OF ALIEN AND CITIZEN BORDER CROSSERS OVER INTERNATIONAL LAND BOUNDARIES BY STATE AND PORT: YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1968-Continued