Speech #1030040232

Mr. President. as we are all aware. the problem of illegal immigration is not new. For years. hundreds of thousands have attempted to pass through our porous borders. and our attempts to control this influx have been weak at best. Yet. recent events have focused our attention on one specific loophole in our immigration policyour system of political asylum. The stories are shockingand call for us. in Washington. to take urgent steps to put a stop to the flaunting of our immigration law that is now occurring. The United States has always prided itself on its acceptance of those who are not safe in their home countriesthose who face torture and death in their homelands. Even today. the United States has no law limiting the number of refugees we will accept from any country. However. the unfortunate reality is that many foreigners have used our generosity to exploit our overburdened immigration system. Unscrupulous aliens have sought to use loopholes in our immigration laws to illegally enter and live in the United States at a high cost to our society. and to legitimate refugees. Nowhere is this abuse more evident than in our system of granting political asylum. Thousands of aliens have learned that once they arrive at an American port of entry such as the Kennedy Airport in New York. simply by uttering the words "political asylum." they are virtually assured of an extended stay in the United States. Recent events have shocked the country into recognizing a horrible consequence of this breakdown in immigration controlacts of terrorism within U.S. borders made possible by lapses in our immigration law. particularly our system of adjudicating political asylum cases. The Nation was jarred into the reality of terrorism by the pictures of chaos and destruction resulting from a bomb placed in the heart of New Yorks business district. During the followup investigation. it soon became clear that most of the suspects in the bombing has used our chaotic immigration system to enter and remain in the United States illegally. The New York Times recently characterized two of the suspects in the World Trade Center bombing. One. named Mohammad AjaJ. was apprehended and put into custody when arriving at Kennedy International Airport because of a fraudulent passport.