Speech #1020136764

I thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the chairman of the full committee for reporting this bill out. I would like to respond to the previous speaker. They speak. the opponents of this bill speak. of economic refugees. of circumventing immigration laws. and letting people in line. This bill does not let people into this country. That is a bad argument. That is misinforming the House about what this measure does. When you talk about economic refugees and people coming for other kinds of reasons. you have to square what you are saying about the wretched Haitian refugees leaving this country seized by a coup with a history of violence and oppression like hardly any other country in the world. When a Pole came to this country during the height of the Communist control of Poland. no one asked that Pole whether he was an economic refugee or what would happen to him when he got back there. We never would have thought of sending a Polish emigre or a tourist who had overstayed his visa back to Poland. or from the Soviet Union. the same thing. from Vietnam. the same thing. No Nicaraguans were ever deported back to Nicaragua. We are not talking about people in the United States. We are talking a 6month stay of deportation from Guantanamo back to their country in an environment where there is absolutely no effective monitoring about what happens to these people. Our foreign mission in Iraq could not find out whether they were building a nuclear arsenal. Does anyone think that we are going to be able to monitor. from our little Embassy in Haiti. what is happening to these people when they are sent back. with the TonTon Macoutes and the other enforcers of oppression running around?