Speech #970199965

Again. the U.S. Government was unprepared for the influx. The Haitians were not resettled into the community as the Cubans had been but were placed in detention at the Krome missile site north of Miami until their cases could be reviewed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The population at Krome. a facility designed for 525 people quickly exceeded 1.300. The tremendous backlog of cases. the cumbersome hearing procedures. and the court decisions regarding the rights of the Haitians. greatly slowed the process for deciding the legitimacy of their asylum claims. Some of the Haitians have been in detention for 13 months with no resolution of their cases in sight. A Federal judge has just recently ordered their release. We have seen a complete breakdown of the asylum process during the refugee crisis. Each case must be decided on a casebycase basis and the process is subject to a lengthy appeals procedure. Although it appears that many of the refugees are economic refugees. not political refugees and do not quality for asylum in the country. so far. only 133 have been excluded. S. 2222 will make significant improvements in the asylum process so that cases can be resolved expeditiously. But I am afraid that the new system will also collapse under the pressure of thousands of cases. We should not assume that the Cuban/Haitian refugee crisis was a unique situation that will never occur again. That crisis showed us a serious flaw in our immigration laws and I believe that we should take this opportunity to correct it. The amendment I am submitting today aims to prevent another mass migration so that refugees may be screened and processed before they arrive in the United States. Only those who appear to have a legitimate claim of persecution will be released Into the community. The controls that are provided for by my amendment will help prevent the chaos that south Florida experienced from reoccuring at some point in the future. First. the amendment would allow the President to declare an immigration emergency if a substantial number of undocumented aliens are about to embark. or have embarked. for the United States and in his judgment the procedures of the Immigration and Nationality Act. or the resources of INS would be inadequate to respond to the expected influx. Within 48 hours. the President would notify the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of his reasons for calling the emergency. As soon as practicable. an announcement of the emergency would be published in the Federal Register.