Speech #1040192305

The correction that the Rohrabacher amendment seeks to undo recognizes that. I will give an example. a circumstance where this might happen. You have a student who legally enters the United States under an F visa to attend graduate school. The individual receives their Ph.D. in physics. They graduate. and for 2 days they are not employed until they receive a temporary visa to do research in a hightech Silicon Valley company. Later they fall in love and get married. and the U.S. citizen spouse decides to petition for the individual to make them a permanent resident. Under the current law. you can pay a penalty fee to the U.S. Treasury and have your paperwork done here so long as you did not work in an unauthorized capacity. However. the Rohrabacher amendment would say. "No. no. you cant do that. Instead you have to buy an airplane ticket. go to the overseas consulate. get your visa there. and then come back." There Is no benefit to the U.S.. there is no benefit to the Integrity of our immigration laws. There is no benefit to anyone. There is no benefit to the U.S. citizen spouse. the company or anyone else. The only one who benefits are the travel agents and United Airlines. I would rather have the money go to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the form of fees. This has nothing to do with illegal immigrations. It has nothing to do with anything but having a sensible. pragmatic approach to having our immigration laws work smoothly. I would add that for the business community in particular. they were strong advocates of this change in the law. because having an individual pulled out of a company to do paper. work abroad can disrupt the flow of important hightech work. and when there is no good reason for the U.S. Government to do this. it makes no sense.