Speech #1030066418

President Bush spoke of a thousand points of light as the glory of this country. that we have all these voluntary organizations. Now we are going to crush those points of light. We are going to turn the National Service Act into a national inquisition act. to say that each of those organizations must run a little inquisition. that if the church or the school or the neighborhood association builds a playground. they better police that playground and make sure that no children of illegal immigrants play on the monkey bars. They are going to say that if there is a school and the National Service Corps provides a tutor. they better make sure that none of the kids that that volunteer may be tutoring is the child of an illegal alien. This is absurd. It is absurd. because it imposes unnecessary burdens on the private organizations. merely to meet the need of some politicians to show that they are tough on illegal aliens. It is absurd. because this amendment would make it virtually impossible for national service volunteers to serve as tutors in public schools. because we have a Supreme Court decision in Plyler versus Doe that says that it is constitutionally prohibited to deny public school services to children based on their or their parents immigration status. It is hard to believe. when all is said and done. that this House would want to retreat. even if it legally could. from a rule of law that prohibits penalizing small children for the decisions of their parents as to whether to come to this country or where they want to live. Let us enforce our immigration laws vigorously. We have to patrol our borders. We have to control them. We have the right to do that. I agree we cannot afford. unfortunately to allow to emigrate into this country every person in the world who would want to do that. It is unfortunate. but it is probably true. Let us enforce our laws intelligently and not hysterically. If we want to debate methods of enforcing our laws. let them be on the immigration bills that go before the Committee on the Judiciary and debate it intelligently. The President proposed a bill yesterday. in some respects it makes sense. in some respects it is far too harsh. in my opinion. but that is the bill which we should be looking at to modify and to amend to deal with the immigration problem. Let us not take every bill to deal with every problem in this country and waste time and taxpayers money debating how that bill might have a tenuous connection. because it might provide medical services or schooling services or some service to someone who is a child of illegal immigrants. Let us increase the Border Patrol. We just voted funding for that last week. I think. But let us not start down the road of attempting to turn each and every service provider who receives Federal funding into an enforcement arm of the INS. Let us not demand that everyone who received any service from any private organization that gets any Federal funding in any way or that uses the services of a volunteer from the National Service Corps. that every beneficiary has to prove immigration status. We do not want an inquisitional society. It is not necessary.