Speech #1010042334

Mr. President. immigration is a particularly important issue In America because we are a nation of immigrants. This country has always had a very generous immigration policy. A lot of people do not know this. but we accept more immigrants each year than all the other countries combined. and I am proud of that fact. Mr. President. Senator KENNEDY and Senator SIMPSON have provided commendable leadership over the years on the immigration issue. Last year. they introduced a comprehensive bill to reform legal immigration. Many of the provisions of the 1988 KennedySimpson bill appealed to me: It provided a national level. it limited entrance under the fifth preference to brothers and sisters who have never been married. and created a new category for new seed immigrants. The 1988 bill was viewed as a consensus position on legal immigration reform. However. the consensus position was thrown out of kilter by a compromise made last month with Senator SIMON. So in this Senators judgment. and I say this with all due respect. the KennedySimpsonSimon compromise is a step backward from the 1988 consensus position. It drops the limited definition of the fifth preference from the 1988 KennedySimpson bill and increases the national level to 600.000. The compromise increases family immigrant visas by 44.000 while doing nothing for business immigrants. I have offered a compromise substitute amendment to restore the 1988 consensus position. that at the same time. addresses the needs of our Nation and the business community. Mr. President. my amendment is a compromise amendmentit does not go as far as I would like. but on the whole I think we accomplish several worthy objectives. Let me briefly summarize the major points. First. we limit the definition of the fifth preference without reducing the number of fifth preference visas. Frankly. I would have preferred to eliminate the fifth. Second. we increase the employersponsored visas without increasing the overall national level. Let me say parenthetically that my amendment incorporates the DoleMitchell amendment regarding Chinese students that has just been passed by the Senate. Third. we retain Congress power to set immigration policy instead of allowing the President to usurp that authority. The current bill allows for an automatic increase in the national level upon the Presidents recommendation. My amendment deletes that automatic mechanism.