Speech #970273252

It was the same law that established that quota. Our policy Is torn between spite and generosity. between fear and charity. We accept more refugees than any other land. maybe more refugees than the rest of the world combined. yet even there the policy is at random and unpredictable. Central Americans fleeing from imminent danger are turned back but Cubans who were simply an inconvenience to Castro were welcomed until we found out that most of them were black. Then all of a sudden that welcome mat was removed. All of a sudden we had a dilemma here and we start saying. well. these are all castoffs that Castro wished on US. Southeast Asians swept up in the tides of war have been welcomed. but not Haitians who live in oppression and misery as grim as any on the face of this Earth. The policy is not directed by any clear and consistent idea of what a refugee really is. but by the politics of the moment. by impulse. Some refugees find us generous. others find our hearts stony cold. It depends on whether we are feeling fearful or whether we are feeling charitable. It is this same contest between spite and generosity that marks our overall immigration policy. The bill before us is at once too much. and too little. It is too little because it does not undo the fundamental error of the 1965 law. the error that assigned totally unrealistic quotas on immigration from Latin America. Those are quotas that give no consideration to the history of the Southwest. that ignore the inextricable ties that have been in place since long before the American Revolution. and that seek to defy the unchangeable facts of geography. These are quotas that make legal immigration all but impossible for the typical Mexican or Bolivian or Central Americanquotas that perforce create illegal immigration on a very large scale. Enactment of this bill will not end illegal immigration. The fact is that Latin Americans are attracted to this country by a powerful set of forces. I might more accurately say driven. because these people are more driven than anything else.