Speech #1030235176

President. I want to pay tribute to Jerry M. Tinker. who until his unexpected death this year at the age of 55 was the Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Jerry has already been memorialized most eloquently. by both the chairman of the subcommittee. the senior Senator from Massachusetts. and the subcommittees ranking minority member. the senior Senator from Wyoming. It is important to me now to add my voices to theirs. and while my tribute will be brief. it is profoundly heartfelt. Although Jerry Tinker and I did not work together on a regular basis. I got to know him rather well. In the area of immigration and refugee issues which inevitably had ramifications beyond the limits of the subcommittee or even the full committee. he could always be counted upon for solid information and sage counsel. Jerry was. in my view. precisely what a public servant should be: knowledgeable and hardworking. judicious and fairminded. a person of real integrity and courage. He. himself. was a person of great intelligence and tact. Jerry joined the staff of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs in 1970. at the age of 31. Thus he gave the past quartercenturymost of his adult lifeto issues as complex and wrenching as any this Nation has faced. In one capacity or another he devoted much of the decade of the 1980s to immigration reform. beginning with the study conducted by the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy in 197981 and continuing with the landmark legislation of 1986 and 1990. which implemented the Commissions recommendations. Yet he made time to travel when pressing refugee problems required it. he kept a phenomenal schedule. There are few refugee camps in the world that Jerry did not visit. and his experience made his voice all the more powerful on questions of effective humanitarian aid. I do not know precisely what led Jerry to make the commitment to which he gave his working years. Just out of college. he went to India in 196263 as part of the Maxwell Fellowship Program at Syracuse University and. by then a Ph.D. candidate. he returned to India in 1969 to carry out research on his dissertation. He then went on to a year at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Norway. after that year returning to the United States and joining the staff of the Immigration and Refugee Subcommittee. Was it the experience of India that inspired him. or his undergraduate years. or perhaps his family? I do not know. I know only that Jerry Tinker was conscience as well as draftsman of this immigration and refugee legislation for more than two decades. His wise presence will be greatly missed. and I feel deeply the loss of a kind and trusted friend.