Speech #980214525

Chairman. I rise in opposition to the amendment. I believe that the SimpsonMazzoli bill. as we have pointed out. has many problems. but this is one of the strengths. the way the committee has dealt with the issue of family reunification. I think it is a trubute to the chairman of the committee who has had substantial experience and concern for this issue. and I believe that if we look at the whole SimpsonMazzoli bill. we will see that it is a combination of toughness and compassion. with the toughness part on the employer sanctions and some of the other restrictive measures. and the compassionate part. which deals with family reunification. I would like to deal with some of the arguments that my colleague from California mentioned. He said that present levels of immigration are too high. adding to problems caused by overpopulation. such as increased burdens to taxpayers for social services and entitlements. and overuse of natural resources. However. as the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy found. and its Chairman Theodore M. Hesburgh stated. The research findings are clear: immigrants. refugees and their children work hard and contribute to the economic wellbeing of our society. strengthen our social security system and manpower capability. strengthen our ties with other nations. increase our language and cultural resources and powerfully demonstrate to the world that the United States is an open and free society. [%]New immigrants benefit the United States and reaffirm its deepest values... Numerous economic studies undertaken since the Commission concluded its work have made similar findings. As for the socalled drain on our Nations physical resources. it would be much more effective to reduce our per capita consumption of energy resources. for example. than to restrict future legal immigration by some arbitrary amount. The United States now has the lowest population density of almost any wealthy. industrialized nation in the world (with the exception of Canada and Australia). and has only about 6 percent of the worlds populations. The gentleman raises another question. that the cap is a reasonable limit. That presupposes that there is a reasonable consensus that 450.000 is the appropriate longterm annual rate for legal immigration. No such consensus exists. In fact. most demographers are now saying that because of our low birth rates and the aging of our native population. we will soon have a deficiency in our workingage population that could be compensated for by increased immigration. Another argument that my colleague makes is that changes are needed to deal with the problem of large visa application backlogs. This change will only worsen the backlog problemcurrently about a million and a half. Moreover. it will fall most heavily on family preference immigrants. unfairly restricting the rights of Americans to become reunited with their closest relatives. This is clearly counter to our Nations commitment to fostering family reunification. A far better approach would be to have numerical limitations large enough to prevent large backlogs. The last case is that the worldwide cap is fair to all countries. I think the reduction in legal immigration will hurt the most those countries with the largest backlogs. Some of those countries were discriminated against by low quotas under the national origins quota system in effect until 1968that is. the Philippines. Hong Kong. and Korea. The cap would also worsen the backlog problem Mexico has experienced since the 20.000 per country ceiling was first made applicable to the Western Hemisphere in 1976. Note that there was no ceiling on Western Hemisphere immigration until 1965. A reduction in legal immigation that affects the disproportionately would lead to the perception that we were again reverting to racial and national discrimination in our immigration policy.