Speech #1030125994

Mr. President. the purpose of this amendment is to provide relief from exclusion and/or deportation. beyond whatever relief may be afforded under the refugee and asylum provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. to persons who can show that they have a well founded fear of persecution for refusal to submit to forced abortion or sterilization under the coercive population control program now in force in the Peoples Republic of China. or that they have actually undergone such persecution or been forced to undergo such a procedure. As originally drafted. our amendment would have accomplished this purpose by clarifying the statutory definition of refugee. There are. however. sincere people who have expressed reservations about cluttering up the basic definition of refugee with references to particular types of cases. So we have agreed to a substitute amendment which does not say anything one way or the other about whether these people are refugees but which provides separate and additional protection under a different provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. There is an extremely strong case that people facing persecution for resistance to the coercive population control program are refugees within the definition of the act. The PRC regime treats these people not as ordinary lawbreakers but as its political and ideological enemies. The immediate former general counsel of INS issued a legal opinion to the effect that such persons are refugees on the ground of political opinion imputed to them by the persecutors. The three immediate former Attorneys General have officially ordered that these people be protected under the asylum law. and the present Attorney General has specifically declined to recede from this position. Forced abortion and forced sterilization under a program such as that of the PRC has recently been held to be persecution on account of political opinion in an excellent decision by Judge Ellis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The present amendment does not subtract anything from these arguments. Rather. it simply provides additional protection for a specified number of persons. beyond those who may be granted asylum or refugee status. Mr. President. it is my understanding that there is no intention to make the burden of proof under this section either higher or lower than the current standard for asylum and refugee applicants. That is. in order to get such persecution the applicant must prove by a preponderance of the evidence both that he or she subjectively fears such persecution. and that there is an objective basis for the fearthat is. that a reasonable person in the applicants situation would have such a fear. The statute provides a numerical limit for persons who may be afforded protection under this section. There is no reason to expect that this will present a practical problem. Despite wildly inaccurate news reports of many thousands of people being granted asylum because they fear the coercive population control program. the number has never been more than a few hundred per year. Of course. people who are granted asylum or refugee status under existing law are not included in the numerical limit under this section. Mr. President.