Speech #970224014

I yield myself 2 minutes. I want to return to the issue of the immediate family and the cap. It is not pleasant for any of us to consider reducing the numbers for other categories. but we have a choice here of either attempting to reduce the increases in immigration. as apparently it is clearly indicated the American people wish to do. or not trying to do that and allowing immigration then to increase in a nonaccounted for area. increase by numbers where we really do not know what the numbers will be. but we know they will be larger with any legalization process. or they will get larger. Our feeling throughout that the issue was. if we are going to take care of immigrants. let us take care of spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens. That is what we do in this bill because we put no limit on that. But whatever number of spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens come. whatever those numbers. they are not heavy enough to impede in any way on a figure of 155.000. But whatever they are. they will go under the cap and as that cap is set we will then have to reduce the areas of the other preferences. That is the issue. It did come before the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. It was a serious debate in the Select Commission. In that time that we debated it. the vote was 15 to 1 against an absolute cap. but the bill did not contain an absolute cap on immediate relatives.