Speech #990259502

It means you permatize. you legalize people who are here illegally until such time as another event takes place. What has happened is every single EVD that has been granted in the past has been every single person granted extended voluntary departure in the United States. EVD was something that use to be given as blanket authority to the Attorney General to take care of refugee problems. EVD was how the people from Hungary came here after the Hungarian revolution. EVD was the way Cubans came here. In 1980 this Congress decided that we were not going to do that anymore. There was an ad hoc approach to it. oftentimes subject to political influence. depending on whatever administration was in office. We were going to establish a criterion to govern the admission of refugees into this country. We would adopt the United Nations protocol. expanding our definition of refugees. basically saying a refugee is someone who has a wellfounded fear of persecution based on five different criteria such as persecution for religious belief. for political belief. because of belonging to a particular ethnic group. et cetera. We said that is the way we want it to happen in the future. We are not going to use EVD anymore. We are going to set up a procedure that is not subject to political manipulation. Everyone will be viewed the same and individually. That is what happened with countless refugees around the world. Yet in this bill if we had adopted the rule. an amendment would have been thrown into it on which we could not do anything. we could not vote on it up or down by itself. in which every single Salvadoran and every single Nicaraguan in this country before November of this past year would be able to stay here forever. Now. some people say well. look. they are having problems down in El Salvador and we should allow every Salvadoran to be here. That was a cry we had in this Congress over the last couple of years. As a result. the ranking Republican of the Committee on the Judiciary. HAMILTON FISH. and others came up with a plan where we would follow every single Salvadoran who was deported from the United States back to his home country. For the last 2 years that has been done. not by the U.S. State Department. not by the U.S.