I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman. if immigration reform is to have an opportunity for passage. as it should. it needs to have language which fully and properly assures American workers that their civil rights. their jobs. and their work conditions will be fully and adequately protected. So I rise in support of this amendment and of the few amendments that will be offered by the House Committee on Education and Labor to place those protections in the bill and help assure the bills passage. which I think is important. Nothing in Americas history is more extraordinary than the collective struggle of wave upon wave of immigrants. The historian Oscar Handlin once wrote: Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. Not far from here. across the Potomac River. in the valley of the Shenadoah. lies a gravestone with this inscription: "Here lies the remains of John Lewis. who slew the Irish lord. settled in Augusta County. located the town of Staunton. and furnished five sons to fight the battle of the American Revolution." The drama. the sacrifices inherent in those words represent the contributions common to Americas immigrants. Contributions which taken together have woven the varied. colorful. resilient. durable fabric that is these United States. Our Nation was named by a German mapmaker to honor an Italian explorer.
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