Speech #1030071039

We must now act. Today. I introduce a bill that is a first step in finally gaining control of immigration. The Asylum Reform and Alien Smuggling Control Act of 1993 takes a number of steps to make our political asylum process more effective. and deter the horrendous practice of alien smuggling. While not a solution to our illegal immigration problem. this bill would take important steps to expedite the exclusion of aliens who blatantly attempt to exploit loopholes in our Immigration regulations. Under this bill. an asylum officer would immediately determine whether an alien has a legitimate claim of political asylum. Those who are judged to be making political asylum claims in good faith. and who honestly face persecution in their country of origin. would receive temporary asylum. However. those who are simply using the system of political asylum as a way of illegally entering the United States. would be immediately excluded. In addition. this legislation takes steps to deter alien smuggling by enhancing the penalties for this activity. and making it an aggravated felony under Federal law. 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 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 the United States 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 had 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.