Speech #1030124722

This amendment was adopted by the Senate on November 10. 1993. during consideration of the crime bill. The Department of State is generally supportive of the amendment. This amendment expressee concern about the backlog of asylum cases which has now reached 355.000. To put this in perspective. last March the total backlog of cases was less than 200.000. By this March. the case backlog could well be twice as much as it was 1 year ago. The current abuse of asylum causes this extraordinary backlog and distorts the original intent of the Refugee Act of 1980. As a result. the whole asylum process is in disarray. The logical solution to this problem is to return to the original intent of the Refugee Act of 1980. This is a sense of the Congress amendment that: First. declares our asylum policy today should be what the law originally intended. When the Refugee Act of 1980 was written. the intent was to protect aliens who. because of events occurring after their arrival here. could not safely return home. That is why we provided an annual allotment of only 5.000 asylum slots when we passed the Refugee Act of 1980. Second. declares further that persons outside their country of nationality who have a wellfounded fear of persecution if they return should apply for refugee status with the local U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. or other international organization. office or at one of our refugee processing. offices abroad. and Third. in conclusion. calls for reform of our immigration. refugee. and asylum laws to correct the current problems.