Speech #990061640

I do cite the support for the ASEAN activities. which is something. so that I do not believe that. for example. if the House were to reject the substitute offered by the gentleman from New York and support the amendment offered by the gentleman from Iowa. that we would be saying to the country that we will be doing nothing in Southeast Asia to help succeed in the struggle against overwhelming communism. We will be doing plenty. let me tell my friends. Let me Just say that I have had the opportunity. and it has been an honor. to work with the subject of immigration for the last. I said earlier 6 years. but it was actually 5. and I am in the late part of the fifth year. It has been an eyeopening experience for me. coming from the State that I come from. and I know that there are many subtleties at play here. The difference between an economic migrant. one who is seeking a better life. who comes from areas in which there is violence. as one who might be coming from the very same area who pleads a special kind of targeted persecution. is very little. The differenta is very subtle. It sometimes almost escapes the naked eye. I will tell my colleagues. having studied this thing carefully. that sometimes the tipping factor to cross over this nearinvisible line between an economic migrant who is not entitled to refugee status and. therefore. not entitled to come into this country. and a persecuted person who is. is something like is our Government involved with somehow causing this issue to ferment. Is our Government somehow sponsoring one side or the other in this struggle? Is our Government overtly or covertly involved? And as I have said before. are somehow our fingerprints into this struggle? If they are. if there is an overtcovert activity. if there are our fingerprints there. then often the adjudicators of this status of economic migrant or persecuted refugee will decide upon the refugee status. which then puts these people into the stream. about threequarters to 80 percent of whom come to the United States. So. I would just respectfully urge support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Iowa and rejection of the substitute offered by the gentleman from New York.