Speech #1000134557

I want to thank my friend from South Carolina for yielding the time and I appreciate his work on the committee yesterday before which I appeared. I have to say in candor that I am very disappointed that the committee did not permit this gentleman from Kentucky to offer an amendment which I think would have been a sensible and a thoughtful solution to a problem which is in this continuing resolution today. And that is an amendment offered by the gentleman from California which really reverses the whole idea of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Many of you who were here in the 99th and now in the 100th Congresses remember my saying so often that the legalization section of the immigration bill was not meant to be an amnesty but was meant to be a casebycase examination. What the amendment of the gentleman from California does. and it is very sympathetic and I can understand why. because he is a very sympathetic gentleman. it goes too far. It basically says that every familyrelated member of one seeking legalization under the immigration bill cannot be deported. Furthermore. those individuals could be felons. They could be criminals. Under current existing law. they would have to be expelled. but under the amendment of the gentleman from California now in the bill. they could not be deported. Furthermore. people who qualify do not even now have to be in the United States. They could be abroad and if they sneak into the country through some artifact. through some device. they then cannot be deported. I offered an amendment yesterday. not allowed at all. which would have made it the sense of Congress that the Immigration Service be extremely cordial to the idea of keeping families together. to be extremely sensitive and compassionate toward families. trying not in every case to break them up. That I think would be a solution. I hope my friends who will serve on the conference who will decide what comes back to this body will be very sympathetic to the idea of revising the amendment of the gentleman from California. not defeating. not throwing it out. not striking it entirely. but revising it to make it do what the gentleman perhaps unwittingly did. which is to allow felons to perhaps stay in this country who under current law would be excludable and which allows people to qualify who are not even now in the United States. which acts as another attraction for illegal entry.