Speech #990184082

I would also applaud the President. Ronald Reagan.. for when he came into office he did not exercise his ability at that time to replace people on the Select Commission who had been placed there by the previous President. Instead. he allowed the Commission to complete its action and a report of the Select Commission on Immigration was submitted to President Reagan on March 1. Immediately following that. the President appointed a Task Force on Immigration and Refugee Policy chaired by the former Attorney General. William French Smith. This was a Cabinetlevel task force. In June of 1981. the President discussed immigration legislation in depth with Mexican President Lopez Portillo. On July 30. 1981. the President made a statement outlining a legislative package based on eight principles designed to preserve an open immigration policy and to incorporation recommendations of the Select Commission into the legislation. In other words. the Presidents cabinetlevel task force took the recommendations of the Select Commission on Immigration. refined those recommendations. and made their report to the President. The President endorsed that report and incorporated the elements of that report in his statement. On the same day. the Attorney General testified in support of immigration reform before a joint hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Policy and the House Subcommittee on Immigration. Refugees and International Law. On the third of August 1981. the Attorney General of the United States made a speech in support of immigration reform. appearing before the Houston Chamber of Commerce. Going to a part of the country where the question of immigration is an important matter. and into a State where. in fact. it is most controversial and into a State where. in fact. we cannot thus far claim to have gotten the support of the majority of its congressional representatives. In October 1981. the administration submitted officially their legislative package to the Congress embodying the elements of their approach to immigration reform. In February 1982. Attorney General William French Smith wrote an article in favor of immigration reform which appeared in the Texas Bar Journal. In other words. contrary to those who suggest this administration was not manifesting its support for this effort. the Attorney General selected a State. perhaps second only to my home State of California as deeply impacted by immigration. in which to write his article on the question of immigration reform in support of its idea. On April 16. 1982. the cabinet council of the President decided that the SimpsonMazzoli bill would become the administrations vehicle for immigration reform. Therefore. on April 19. 1982. the Attorney General made a speech in favor of immigration reform outlining in more detail the administrations position before the San Antonio Bar Association and the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. The next month. on May 20. 1982. the Attorney General of the United States made a speech in favor of the immigration reform package before the California Chamber of Commerce. On July 11. 1982. the Attorney General wrote to Senator STROM THURMOND. the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "To reaffirm the administrations support of the bill" and to extend comments on portions of the proposed bill. The letter states that "The administration wholeheartedly supports enactment of this landmark legislation." The other body thereafter took up the bill and on August 17. 1982. the other body passed the SimpsonMazzoli bill by a vote of 80 to 19. In that same month. the Attorney General gave another speech in favor of immigration reform before the National Association of Manufacturers. In September of that year. 1982. the House Committee on the Judiciary reported a companion bill to the House floor where. unfortunately. it became stalled during the postelection lame duck session. I might say that as I have mentioned on previous occasions. we were given time to debate that bill in the late night hours and early morning hours. when even those of us very much committed to immigration reform found it at times difficult to maintain our attention span. if not only to keep awake during those hours. At that particular time. Members who had some differences with the bill had somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 amendments that they made very. very clear they were going to offer. argue and debate at length.