Speech #930121014

Chairman. for this committee to record at this juncture in our history and ask for a diminution and reduction in what is now available is absolutely unthinkable. I cannot reconcile it with the realism of the facts. The chairmans amendment would raise the 15.000. but still be below the actual number Mexico has been obtaining every year since 1965. and also compounds the crass error that the country committed in 1965 in that exalted and much bragged about 1965 Immigration Act. which I did not vote for because I said then and I predicted then that we were adopting a principle that would bring mischief in the future with respect to the Western Hemisphere. This silly notion that we are going to equate a country the size of Panama with a country the size of China or Japan or Switzerland or France is absolutely flying in the face of logic and reason. At least at this time. my amendment would simply restore the status quo with respect to visas with respect to Mexico. period. because to throw in Canada is just a largesse in order to try to offer some sop of logic to the Rodino amendment. But. the truth is that it should not be included. Canada does not absorb even its present quota. The need is elsewhere. and it is singular and it is realistic and it is what the facts reveal. not the fancies of some pseudodemographic expert who has not bothered to even check the facts. To further compound the presentation it was said as an argument that the Mexican alien seeking legal admission indigenously to this country. like our forefathers. should be denied that opportunity he has now. because they say the record shows. and this is the argument I heard astoundingly. that he has not assimilated. that he has the lowest assimilation factor of any immigrant group. That not only is a canard. it is an insult and it flies fully in the face of our history. the facts and the statistics. I hope. if nothing else. regardless of the outcome of this substitute. that the chairman of the subcommittee will go back.