Speech #980005904

Mr. President. today I am reintroducing my legislation to clarify the Federal Governments role during large scale immigration emergencies. My bill provides for a contingency plan which specifies the steps the President and appropriate agencies may take to stop an uncontrolled mass migration of aliens to the United States. Mr. President. the Senate took the first step last year toward reforming our immigration policy. Unfortunately. the House of Representatives failed to complete action on the bill before the end of the 97th Congress. Therefore. we are back to groundzero. which troubles me greatly. The State of Florida is still digging out from the impact of the mass migration from Cuba and Haiti during the last few years. The major influx has slowed considerably but there are still many detected and undetected boats slipping into Florida harbors daily carrying hundreds of undocumented aliens from Haiti. Colombia. the Dominican Republic. Pakistan. and Bangladesh. Control of this influx is at best sporadic with only informal agreements regulating the cooperation between the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). the Coast Guard. and local law enforcement. It is obvious that a constructive plan and additional resources are needed to effectively control our shores. Last year. Senator SIMPSON skillfully and diligently steered an immigration reform package through the Senate. He has assured me that he will continue this year to strive for an immigration reform bill. With the absence of any reform in our immigration policy. it is even more imperative that some form of contingency plan be defined to set forth the current authorities of the President to deal with immigration emergencies. Early last year the administration testified that such a plan was being drafted. Yet. no such plan has been presented to Congress. I would hope the administration will soon act on this pressing matter. In addition to a contingency plan based on current law. I feel that it is necessary to have additional legal authorities for responding to declared immigration emergencies. Attorney General Smith concurred with this judgment last year and I am hopeful we will have his counsel again on this issue in the near future. Last year I withdrew my proposed emergency powers amendments when I received assurances from both the Justice Department and State Department that the administration does have authority under existing law to stop another immigration emergency. The Justice Department indicated that it had developed a plan to control future crisis situations. Yet. such a plan is still not in place.