Al Gore

Last Updated: August 25, 2000

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CHAIN MIGRATION - supports

The Clinton-Gore administration played a key role in 1996 in killing reform of the country's system of chain migration. Gore has never indicated any disagreement with the stance of the administration which he serves. The administration stresses "preserving the basic ability of families to reunify." http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1998/ 11/18/6.text.2

In doing so, Clinton and Gore oppose a primary recommendation of Barbara Jordan whom they appointed to chair a bi-partisan national commission on immigration. She and the commission said the current system of family reunification needs to be stopped in order to stop damage to America's most vulnerable workers.

The term "family reunification" traditionally has meant the ability of nuclear families to live together after one member has been ripped from the others. But U.S. immigration policy since the 1950s has extended the idea to adult relatives of people who have chosen to leave their families. The Jordan Commission urged that family reunification be limited to the husbands, wives and minor children.

Congress immediately began moving legislation to carry out the Jordan recommendations. When that legislation came to the floor of the House, an amendment was introduced to strip the chain migration reform. House Democratic leaders for Jordan's reform had counted on a sufficient number of Democrats to work with Republicans who resisted lobbying from cheap-labor industrialists. But two days before the vote, the Clinton-Gore administration shocked everybody by reneging on the support it had pledged to Barbara Jordan when she first introduced her reforms. Jordan was no longer around to see the loss of support; she had died a couple of months before the vote. Since then, Asian campaign funders meeting with the administration in the White House had indicated they had a top priority of keeping chain migration going, according to reports in the Boston Globe. After the Clinton-Gore urging of Democrats to vote against Jordan's reform, around 50 fewer Democrats voted for the reform than had been expected. The Jordan reform of chain migration failed by 28 votes in the House.

The Clinton-Gore support of continued chain migration is a support for major population growth since chain migration is a primary component of total immigration. For example, in 1996 around 916,000 immigrants legally entered the U.S., of which 65 percent were chain-migration based, while 13 percent were employment related and 14 percent were refugees or asylum seekers. Chain migration is the single largest reason why immigration has exploded from 300,000 in 1965 to around a million today.

Gore's support for chain migration is further shown by his announcing rollbacks to 1996 welfare reform which again allowed wealthy immigrants to place their elderly parents on public assistance once they became citizens. This practice has been particularly common among Asian immigrants (documented at length by Prof. Norman Matloff) in California who are wealthy professionals. They bring over their parents and immediately get them on the citizenship track. In five years, the citizen seniors are then eligible for welfare, even though the adult children earlier pledged that the parents would not become a "public charge. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/EffOnMinorities/MHReport.html

(Norm Matloff's testimony) "The 1996 welfare reform bill's (and the earlier 1994 Clinton administration proposal's) restrictions on immigrant eligibility for welfare were motivated in part by the fact that many well-off/professional immigrants are sponsoring their elderly parents to immigrate and then placing the parents on welfare, reneging on promises to financially support the parents; see the author's testimony at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/ssi.html

"Asian and other immigrant advocacy groups have lobbied heavily against closing the loopholes which allow this. Though the 1996 bill passed and was signed into law, most of the restrictions in the bill were later rolled back. Significantly, Vice President Al Gore's January 1999 announcement of further rollbacks was made at a Chinese senior center in San Francisco. (San Francisco Chronicle, January 26, 1999.) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/0 1/26/MN59871.DTL

"In other words, the 1996 welfare bill rushed, say, a functionally illiterate African-American single parent off welfare while still allowing a Chinese immigrant couple, both computer engineers with a combined income well over $100,000, to put their parents on welfare, in spite of the couple's promise to support the parents. This inequity is not deliberate, but it arguably does exemplify the rise in power of the Asian immigrant advocacy groups, and the dwindling influence of black advocates."

VISA LOTTERY - supports

Gore voted in 1990 for the legislation (S. 358) which created this social engineering mechanism.

The Visa Lottery, also known as the Diversity Program, was created to make America more diverse. Each year the State Department randomly chooses around 50,000 from lottery entrants who live in countries considered insufficiently represented in American society. The Year 2000 crop includes countries such as Sudan, Pakistan and Jordan. Their invitation to America has nothing to do with valuable skills or family connections. They are merely fortunate.

Gore has not indicated recently whether he continues to support the lottery which the Barbara Jordan Commission determined should be shut down because it swells labor market competition for American workers without any regard to the skills and education of the immigrants or whether they show any proclivity for assimilating into American society. The lottery has helped fill American communities with new cultures that include diverse social practices such as female genital mutilation and "honor" killing.
http://www.senate.gov/activities/101-2/vote_00323.html
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1999/ASA/33301899.htm

AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS - supports

Vice President Gore has been a major supporter of rewarding people who have broken immigration laws with the right to become U.S. citizens. In 1986 for the first time in U.S. history, Sen. Gore joined Congress giving such a reward to nearly all illegal aliens in the country. It was supposed to be one-time event, never to be repeated and was accompanied by rules making it illegal to hire illegal aliens. But under pressure from the Clinton-Gore administration, Congress approved another amnesty in 1997 for newer illegal aliens from Nicaragua and Cuban, and again in 1998 for illegal aliens from Haiti. Republican congressional leaders blocked the Clinton-Gore effort for another amnesty in 1999 for newer illegal aliens from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, but the Clinton-Gore administration has pledged to make the reward for illegal aliens a top priority in 2000.

Most recently, Vice President Gore reaffirmed his commitment to rewarding illegal aliens by announcing his support for S.2912, legislation that would amend the 1998 Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act to include an amnesty for other Central Americans and Haitians. In his statement, Vice President Gore said he is supporting this legislation to, "to ensure fairness and equity for certain immigrants and their families already in the United States," yet he failed to mention that the amnesty would reward immigrants who are in the country illegally. In his statement of support for the amnesty, Vice President Gore also challenged Presidential candidate George W. Bush to make his stance on this issue clear and to help press Congress to pass this legislation.

ANCHOR BABIES - supports

In the 105th Congress, the Clinton-Gore administration strongly opposed the bill (HR-7) that would disallow citizenship for children of aliens who had entered the country illegally. Clinton-Gore regards birthright citizenship as Constitutionally guaranteed. In fact, no court has ever ruled on the issue. Federal policy for years has dictated that a foreign woman may enter the United States illegally and have a baby which will immediately be awarded U.S. citizenship. Not only does the illegal alien woman then have the opportunity for her baby to eventually petition to have her become a legal immigrant, but the Clinton-Gore administration has a policy that usually refuses to deport any illegal alien who has a U.S. citizen child. This practice adds more than 200,000 people a year permanently to the U.S. population.[Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, pg 309]

IMPORT WORKERS - support/OPPOSE

The Clinton-Gore administration has a mixed record in responding to industry demands for more high-tech workers. Information technology (IT) owners complain of their inability to find Americans who can do the work and of their need to import foreigners, despite strong evidence that IT simply wants cheaper, more pliant workers.

With respect to increasing H-1B visas, Al Gore recently sounded an alarm bell. Addressing the National Convention of the NAACP (7/12/00), Al Gore remarked, "it ought to be an alarm call when we have the employers with the best jobs in the country, coming every single year, year after year saying: OWe have to go half way around the world to find people with a college education who can come in and take these good jobs.' We need to educate our own people with the skills needed to seize the jobs of the future and build the future of this country. Welcome immigrants, yes, but educate our own people and make the investments."

Recently, in a campaign speech in Atlanta (8/00)the Vice-President remarked that he was not against immigration, but he asked, why aren't we taking care of all the Americans in this country, and immigrants here, who were qualified to work in the field of computers, before we as a nation decide to increase immigration for workers from abroad. He continued by talking about making training or upgrading skills available to Americas before we resort to using immigration as the solution.

The Clinton-Gore administration played a key role in the doubling of temporary visas for skilled workers in 1998. It promised a veto of the legislation through most of the year as Republican congressional leaders rushed to curry favor with high-tech campaign contributors. But in the fall as much of the federal appropriations was being decided behind closed doors in a three-way negotiation between the White House, Senate Majority Leader Lott and House Speaker Gingrich, the Clinton-Gore resolve failed. The administration allowed the increase, although it did hold out for a shorter period of time.

Although the Administration has not been put to the test on creating large agricultural guest-worker programs, it has held out a general promise of opposition that may be part of the reason that an aggressive effort mostly from Western and Southern congressional Republicans has not moved legislation thus far.

BORDER CONTROL - oppose/SUPPORT

The Clinton-Gore adminstration has stated a lot of law-and-order sentiments about the need for controlling illegal entries at the border. It has supported innovations instigated by Border Patrol officials that have had significant success in repelling illegal crossing at major population centers along the Mexican border.

But overall indications are that the nation's borders have become increasingly out of control during the Clinton-Gore administration. The failure is obvious in the escalating amount of drugs flowing into the U.S. Mexico's drug record is worse than ever, now accounting for two-thirds of all cocaine on U.S. streets, up from one-half only three years ago (S.F. Chronicle, 2/26/99). http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/0 2/26/MN88395.DTL

The Clinton-Gore administration has not even supported the one remedy endorsed by even most of the apologists for illegal immigration -- increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. With the obvious need for increased border control, the administration did not request funding for additional agents in the fiscal year 2000. Immigration Subcommittee Chair Lamar Smith expressed his dismay about that omission (5/13/99), noting that while Congress had added an appropriation for an additional 1,000 Border Patrol agents in FY 1999, only around 200 were hired. http://www.house.gov/lamarsmith/bpltr.htm

WORKER VERIFICATION - oppose/SUPPORT

Vice President Gore has not indicated that he believes employer sanctions should be eliminated. The sanctions threaten employers with fines if they knowingly hire illegal aliens. But the Clinton-Gore administration has done almost nothing to see that the law is carried out effectively. The Clinton-Gore INS has failed to help employers determine legal worker status by providing a better system of verification. In fact, the administration has worked at making it easier for illegal aliens to work in the United States and made employers more nervous about firing illegal aliens. For example, in October 1999, the Clinton-Gore Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it would extend broad anti-discrimination rights to illegal immigrants. EEOC Chair Ida Castro defended the policy, saying that it would prevent employer exploitation of foreigners illegally in the country. (Public backlash prompted the EEOC to withdraw on the issue, saying it had been "misunderstood.") http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/1 0/29/MN39735.DTL

INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT - opposes

The Clinton-Gore administration has virtually gutted interior enforcement against illegal immigration. Interior enforcement is essential not only because it must handle the illegal aliens who manage to evade Border Patrol measures but also because it is the only way to pick up illegal aliens who entered the country on legal visas but failed to return home when the visa expired. Perhaps half of all illegal aliens entered the country legally.

Interior enforcement has not been strong since the Eisenhower administration. But the Clinton-Gore administration may have brought interior enforcement to an all-time low. Interior offices have been closed and investigation staffs have been cut. Local governments throughout the country know that the most common experience for them with illegal aliens is to apprehend them, call the INS and be told to let the illegal aliens go free because the INS does not have the resources to pick them up and deport them.

FEDERAL FORCED DOUBLING OF U.S. POPULATION - supports faster doubling

Vice President Gore currently favors most federal policies that will change the United States from a country of 274 million people today to 571 million at the end of the century, according to the Census Bureau.

But even that increase does not seem enough for Gore, who has consistently supported massive amnesties for illegal aliens. Those amnesties not only immediately increase the permanent population of the United States but set the stage to mulitiply additions through high fertility and chain migration.

This behavior is nothing short of bizarre for the author of a best-selling book on the environment, "Earth in the Balance." Gore has talked of the importance of stabilizing the population of all the nations of the world in order to have an environmentally sustainable future for the planet. But his actions have been inconsistent as he has consistently supported unsustainable population growth in the United States. In that book he wrote, "No goal is more crucial to healing the global environment than stabilizing human population" (pg 307). Yet he routinely advocates mass immigration to the United States, one of the highest consuming nations, thereby increasing each immigrant's ecological "footprint" on the earth's resources -- and increasing this c ountry's total footprint. [For an explanation of "footprints," see http://www.iclei.org/iclei/ecofoot.htm .]

In 1990 Senator Al Gore voted in favor of S. 358, a bill that increased the numbers of immigrants in all categories.

His "quality of life" initiatives have been completely symptomatic in approach. He advocates a "smart growth" response to sprawl and other problems with overdevelopment. But his solutions all involve restricting individual liberty while totally ignoring the immigration-caused U.S. population growth that fuels around half of all American urban sprawl.

Click here to view a detailed version of the massive population growth being caused by current immigration numbers which this candidate wants to make even larger.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Vice President Al Gore is the son of a U.S. Senator, raised from birth (3/31/48) in Democratic politics. The Clinton-Gore administration started out hopefully enough - by appointing Barbara Jordan to head the Commission on Immigration Reform.The administration endorsed each set of recommendations from the Jordan Commission as they were issued, but in the end gave in to other values. Also, the death of Barbara Jordan in early 1996 ended a strong and principled voice for immigration reform.

The Clinton-Gore administration has gone on record as being
• against English as the official language.
• opposed to Prop 187, the California initiative (passed by 59%) which disallowed taxpayer funding for education of children who were illegal aliens and for welfare benefits for illegal alien adults.
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1998/ 11/18/6.text.2

Vice President Gore has made great display of speaking Spanish as he extolls diversity as a national ideal. He remarked in an Ellis Island speech in June 1999, "With each wave of immigrants, we have become not only more diverse -- but also more open and equal; not only culturally richer -- but also spiritually stronger." Indeed, he remarked to a Hispanic audience (Washington Post, 9/16/99) that his first grandchild had been born on the Fourth of July and, "My next one I hope will be born on Cinco de Mayo." http://www.algore2000.com/speeches/speeches_ellis_island_042199.html

In the 105th Congress, the Clinton-Gore administration strongly opposed the bill (HR-7) that would disallow citizenship for children of aliens who had entered the country illegally. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) argued that HR-7 was a proper response to the reward of citizenship for children of persons who had broken the law. Clinton-Gore regards birthright citizenship as Constitutionally guaranteed. [Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, pg 309]

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