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THE WASHINGTON TIMES

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, sat down with The Washington Times yesterday to discuss the immigration debate in Congress this year. This is a partial transcript:

Q. What is the fate of last year's bill, and how do you see the immigration debate this year?

A. Border security and internal enforcement of our immigration laws, and specifically the employer-sanctions law, are the key to making the country safer, as well as preventing the Congress from repeating the mistake of Simpson-Mazzoli 19 years ago -- it's now 20 years ago, because that was 1986.

Simpson-Mazzoli was based on the flawed premise that we would solve the illegal-alien problem by granting those presently in the country amnesty and not having an employer-sanctions program that would turn off the magnet for new illegals to come across the border. And it didn't work because employer sanctions were not enforced. So, I think 2 million illegals at that time, now the minimum estimate is that we have 11 million illegals.

And the talk of an amnesty program -- the president denies his program is amnesty but I don't think people will go home under his program if they get their temporary cards here -- the talk of an amnesty program has increased the flow of illegals across the border. In 2004, there were an additional half-million.

In my opinion, the two big provisions of the bill in terms of increasing security on the border and the employer verification of Social Security numbers plan, plus increasing the fines, have got to be done and have got to be funded before Congress should even consider a guest-worker program.The border security program is based on the fence and also giving the local law enforcement officers in the 29 border counties the authority to enforce the immigration law, which state and local police do not have at the present time.

I would like to see that done nationwide, but if it works in the counties where the problem is most acute, I think we will be able to get the support to have it go nationwide. ...

The verification of the validity of Social Security numbers is an essential tool to curtailing employment of illegal aliens, particularly in low-skilled, labor-intensive businesses where they congregate, like agriculture, hotels and restaurants, construction, landscaping and the like. And because a goodly number of the bad actors who hire the illegals are able to so reduce their labor cost that they either put their competition who's doing it right out of business or drag down the wages that are paid to legal aliens and U.S. citizens, that unless we do get tough with the people who are hiring lots of illegal aliens, we're not going to solve the problem, even with the fence and even with the sheriffs having the arrest powers for immigration violations in those 29 border counties.

And coupled with the verification is an increase in the fines, starting with an increase from $100 apiece on the first offense to $2,500 apiece, so that the fines actually act as a deterrent rather than simply being viewed as paying the fine as a cost of doing business.