University Daily Kansan, June 8, 1981
Page 5
Opinion
Immigration loopholes help aliens, subversives
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By ACHAL MEHRA Staff Writer
Every year, by one estimate, more than 250,000 illegal immigrants enter America, circumventing every law in the immigration books.
Many stumble across the U.S.-Mexican border under a rain of bullets. Some are shot dead.
They lay their lives on the line so that they can live in a constant state of fear of detection and injury.
They need not do that. They would not, if they had only known of an often forgotten, more frequently glassed-over clause in the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
A clause so overlooked that when it came up rather unexpectedly two years ago in a bill
sponsored by Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, D-N.Y., to amend the Immigration Act, it caught many unawares.
Section 29 of Holtman's bill sought the repeal of an innocuous clause in the Immigration Act—and it stirred a tornado from a quarter that traditionally avoids a flak.
The clause, called Section 7 of the Immigration Act of 1949, better known as the CIA Act, which Holtzman wanted repealed, reads, "Whenever the director (of the CIA), the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Immigration shall determine that the entry of a particular alien into the United States is in violation of security or essential to the furtherance of the national intelligence mission, such alien and his family shall be given entry into the United States for permanent residence without regard to their
misdimissibility under the immigration or any other laws and regulations, or the failure to comply with such laws and regulations pertaining to admissibility."
The clause limits the number of immigrants admitted under this category to 100 in any one
Stripped of its officialite, the clause gives the Director of the CIA the authority to admit 100 illegal immigrants into the country. Immigrants, who in the normal course, would have been denied entry, not only because they did not fall within the seven preference categories, but also because they fell within the 30 categories of people banned from entering the United States.
Appearing before a subcommittee on immigration, refugee and international law of the House Judiciary Committee, which looked into Holtzman's bill, John D. Morrison, general
counsel of the CIA, admitted, "The CIA does not exercise its authority under Section 7 if such persons can be admitted in accordance with existing immigration laws..."
In a letter dated October 30, 1979 to the subcommittee, then the director of the CIA, Daniel M. Hammes, asserted that its financial affiliation of the foreign intelligence mission of the Central Intelligence Agency."
He said that apart from defectors brought into the United States under the defector program, the clause enabled the CIA to admit aliens who were not citizens and whose lives in jeopardy for the sake of our country."
Morrison testified before the committee that the act often made the difference between people of importance to the CIA “being willing to participate in danger and their not being willing to do so.”
The most disconcerting aspect of the clause is that it can be abused to admit, as subcommittee chairman Holtman said, "drug traffickers, or serious crimes or other undesirables."
In fact, despite the latitude given the CIA, the attorney general has at least once turned down a CIA recommendation.
Earlier there had been accusations that provisions of the act had been abused to admit criminals. The charges were investigated by the ampirer general, but could not be established.
Whether, in fact, the provision of Clause 7 has been abused in the past is immaterial. Just so long as the potential for abuse exists by an agency or person, you have a very clean record to begin with is disconcerting.
Retirement test provides useful measure of eligibility
By RUFUS E. MILES JR.
New York Times Special Features
PRINCETON, N.J.-Amid all the controversy over the approaching inviolency of the Social Security system and President Reagan's thus far unsuccessful attempt to reduce benefits to future retirees under 65 and other beneficiaries, it is dismaying that his plan includes an extremely ill-considered, inequitable set of benefits. I have in mind the proposal to abolish what is called the "earnings test" but is more properly labeled the "retirement test."
earnings exceed those amounts,
are reduced by $1 for every $2
earned.
his earned income amounting to $1,177 per month, or $14,124 per year.
In the election campaign, Ronald Reagan committed himself to elimination of the test altogether, probably without realizing the potential serious inequities. This would allow persons who were already at 65 to draw a full retirement benefit without being retired. Reagan now proposes to fulfill that pledge by raising what the administration calls the "earnings ceiling" (it is not really a ceiling at all), to $10,000 in 1982, $15,000 in 1992, and so on. That the Administration estimates that the cost of this proposal would be $6.5 billion over the next five years.
any other time in their lives, and especially high in relation to the general population.
Because Social Security is intended to be a form of social insurance to protect against total loss of income at retirement, it is necessary to have a method of determining whether a person is eligible just as it is necessary to have a means of determining whether and when a person is disabled.
What is true of such professionals is also true of business executives who are not forced out by mandatory age requirements, of small-business entrepreneurs, and in fact, of all other persons who continue full-time employment beyond 65 because they would rather keep working than retire. Their incomes for the years between age 65 and retirement would be higher than at
Who would pay the billions of dollars that the removal of the retirement test would cost? For the most part, it would be people who earn $8,000 to $25,000—the working people who pay the great portion of their income—and not sit well for an $8,000 member of the working poor to realize that some portion of his Social Security taxes will
It is an arbitrary test that has evolved over the years from an original requirement that persons could earn no more than $1 per month without losing money. In 2013, a present law that exempts earnings up to $5,500 per year ($6,000 in 1982). When
go to pay handsome, tax-free supplements to the income of persons over 65 who are earning $50,000 and up.
The retirement test is a matter of far greater importance than the public, the news media, the Congress, and the President. It involves House Ways and Means Committee
should launch an in-depth study, drawing upon the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, the executive branch and outside experts, to develop options for modifying and improving the retirement test, rather than accept the ill-considered plan to abolish it.
Consider the inequity of the plan. All doctors, lawyers, architects and other professionals who choose to continue to work full time beyond 65, and whose training is higher (as most are), would become eligible to receive full benefits, non-taxable, on top of their current incomes. In 1984 a fully employed professional with a living wife, in the first quarter of 2013, received the maximum monthly benefit of $785, with an additional $392 for his wife, and thus have a tax-free windfall addition to
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CHEVY'S "SUN OF THE BEACH" PARTY
We're kicking off the summer of '81 with a huge bash·Tuesday, June 9th 7-?
Two Tan Contests!
Best overall tan:
$10.00 First prize in both men and womens' categories
Tan Line Contest:
Smallest tan line wing (just think of the possibilities)
Measurement will be from the widest part of the tan line.
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Register for free Beach Boy albums to be given away that night.
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