Speech #890138271

Mr. President. let us take a further look. It will be noted under the language of section 13. which amends section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act that refugees from Western Hemisphere countries are eligible for an adjustment under this same section 245. This language. of course. would include Cuban refugees who .have been paroled into this country under the program which has been in existence for several years and under which approximately 225.000 Cuban refugees have been permitted to reside in the United States. At the present time. this form of relief is not available to them as native of an adjacent island. but under the bill before us it would become available. The joker. however. is that under this form of relief a record of lawful admission is created for the alien as of the date of the adjustment. Now let us look at another section of the proposed bill. Under section 3 of the bill section 203 of the Immigration and Nationality Act is substantially revised and among the preference classes created is one for refugees. Such refugees are granted conditional entries and under paragraphs 203 (g) and (h). as amended. their status may be regularized after 2 years residence and a record of lawful admission created as of the date of the original arrival in the United States. Thus in one case. a refugee would be given credit toward naturalization for the time he has resided in the United States while waiting for his adjustment. and in the other case he would not be granted such credit for naturalization purposes. A Cuban refugee. therefore. might have to reside in the United States 7 years before he could obtain naturalization. while a similarly situated Cuban or other refugee who entered under the new provision will have to wait only 5 years. The basis for this discrimination is not apparent. Mr. President. there is another provision in H.R. 2580 which. in my opinion. has not received enough attention. Section 1 of the bill amends section 201 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and completely revises it. Section 201(c) as revised provides that during the 3year interim period subquota areas are to be limited to 1 percent of the maximum authorized visa numbers available to the mother country. Under existing law. colonies and other dependent areas which are classified as subquota areas have access to the quotas of the mother countries to the extent of only 100 quota numbers per year. which places them in the same category as the minimum quota countries. Under the language of H.R. 2580. it seems inescapable that during the 3year interim period the application of the formula for the subquota areas of 1 percent of the maximum numbers available to the mother country will create some rather unusual and unique results. For instance. the present quota of Great Britain is approimately 65.000 per year and therefore that would be the maximum number of visas available to Great Britain during the 3year period. Applying the 1percent formula. each subquota area under the quota for Great Britain would have available to its natives for use in each fiscal year a total of 650 visa numbers. It is interesting to note that there are 15 subquotas under the quota for Great Britain and each subquota has access to 650 visa numbers annually. Therefore. a total of 9.750 numbers will be available to the subquota areas annually as compared to the present total of 1.500. I might just name a few of the subquotas involved: Antigua with a subquota of 100 would have a quota of 650.