Speech #1040190263

I rise in strong support of this rule. I think it is a very fair rule. This legislation has been marked up very. very extensively in the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims and in the full Committee on the Judiciary for weeks and weeks. and I think the legislation we brought forward is outstanding. We have allowed nonetheless 32 separate opportunities to amend the bill. and I commend the Committee on Rules for their work and strongly support this rule. I also strongly support the underlying legislation. I want to particularly call to my colleagues attention an amendment that I strongly oppose. and that is the ChryslerBermanBrownback amendment that deals with what some are representing as splitting out the legal portion of this bill and only dealing with illegal immigration. The fact of the matter is this does not split the bill. In the Senate. they voted to split the bill and are actually moving two separate bills forward. But this amendment would not do that. Mr. Speaker. what this amendment does is kill legal immigration reform because there is no provision anywhere to move forward with those provisions of the bill dealing with legal immigration. Therefore I would strongly urge the Members of the House to oppose that amendment when it comes up for conmideration probably tomorrow. I also would urge strong support for the amendment that I will be offering dealing with the H2B program as a much more reasonable reform of the current H2A program than to go with the Pombo amendment which sets up an entirely new program with 250.000 new nonimmigrants coming into the country. That is not good. and I would urge opposition to that and support for the rule.