Speech #980217873

Does it provide reform? Not at all. What the bill does is to allow those who want cheap farm labor to get all of it they want. playing off the poorest of our poor against the poorest of Mexicos poor. and to give those who want to say they reformed immigration to claim action. But the bill does not address root causes. it does not reform. and it will ultimately be found. as virtually all other immigration bills have been. to be a failure. For this bill. like those that have gone before. is a product of the fears and prejudices of its time. It is no less wrong than the Chinese Exclusion Act. no less biased than the old quota system. and no less unworkable than the disastrous socalled reform of 1965. the bill that led largely to the flood of illegal immigration that we have to daybecause it prescribed unrealistic and unenforcible country limitations. which limitations will go almost unchanged in this bill. But it satisfies the fears of the moment. the same fears that in earlier times have lain behind other bills that sought to exclude orientals or southern Europeans or Africans. Ultimately. this bill represents reaction. not reform.