Speech #1040192255

Millions of close family ties. people vho we would like to see be able to come over here have to wait up to 20 years to come over. The system is not working. The brothers and sisters cannot continue to be brought in under the kind of preference we have today and leave any room for seed immigrants. that is. those who can provide skills and special things we would like to see but who have no relatives here at all. Why should just being a relative be the primary reason you get to come here? We have to have balance in our system. The current legal immigration system is imbalanced. out of whack. We need to change it. Now. there is nothing draconian about the legal reforms we have here today. If we look at what happened in 1990. we increased legal immigration in a bill that passed this Congress and went and was signed into law by 40 percent. This bill reduces it by 20 percent. So we are kind of compromising. Over the next 5 years under this bill we will add 3 million new legal immigrants to this Nation which. except for the legalization years that we had right after 1986. will be the greatest increase in legal immigration in American history in the last 70 years. This is a very generous legal immigration bill that the gentleman from Texas [Mr. SMITng has crafted. But what it is doing is extremely important. It is trying to give us an opportunity which business and all of us should be pleased witl. to get more seed immigrants since almost none can come in today who have no family ties but who have skills ad things they can offer America and should be allowed to come to this country and get rid of the backlog of those people who are close family relatives who really should come here. the children and spouses and so forth. instead of having the broken system we have today. So I implore my colleagues to vote against the amendment. As wellmeaning as it may be. it is not a good amendment. Keep legal immigration in this bill and allow it to exist. because a vote for this amendment kills legal immigration reform.