Speech #990081769

Mr. President. for many years the administration. the travel and tourism industry. and the Senate have supported legislation which would waive the U.S. visa requirement in certain cases. In 1982. I sponsored the original visa waiver amendment to the Immigration Reform and Control Act. This body passed that amendment unanimously. and has reaffirmed its support for visa waiver every year since. In 1983. the Immigration Reform and Control Act again passed with the visa waiver provision. The House passed an amended version in 1984. The bill has not been signed into law because of controversy over other provisions in the billnot visa waiver. Once again we are going forward in an attempt to pass an immigration reform bill. And once again. I am pleased to see that the Senate supports the enormously important visa waiver provision. However. visa waiver has not been included in the immigration reform package now being considered by the House of Representatives. I ask my colleagues to join me in insisting that visa waiver be part of this legislation. Today I am offering this amendment to express the sense of the Senate that the visa waiver provision be included in the final package when the respective House and Senate bills go to the conference committee. By recognizing the importance of this provision and reaffirming our support. we are sending a clear message to the conferees on this matter. so I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It is estimated that visa waiver would bring as many as 400.000 additional visitors into the United States from abroad. producing close to $300 million in U.S. tourism receipts. Based on these receipts. an estimated 7.000 to 8.000 travelrelated Jobs would be created and more than $16 million in tax receipts would be realized. Our American embassies and consulates are often overwhelmed by processing visas. In some countries. backlogs are so bad that applicants cancel their travel plans to the United States. The U.S. nonimmigrant visa requirements are among the most restrictive in the world. These restrictions retard our economic growth and serve as a selfimposed trade barrier against the United States. This restrictive approach increases our trade deficits and is very harmful to a very important U.S. industry. It is rather curious that. in the present atmosphere of growing protectionist sentiments and concern about our trade imbalance. we should add to our own problems by not enacting the visa waiver legislation into law. We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we fail to insist that visa waiver be retained in a HouseSenate compromise on this important issue. Mr. President. making travel to our country less restrictive will increase the number of visitors. reduce our trade deficit. add to our foreign exchange earnings. encourage economic growth. and break down another barrier to trade in tourism. The support of visa waiver legislation by this Senate is good commonsense and I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.