Speech #1040198110

Our country is a beacon of hope and freedom. let it not be extinguished. Let us not abandon our leadership role in international human rights. Let us not abandon the worlds true refugees. let us not restrict the due process that protects the people who look to us for asylum. Unfortunately. the impact of the provisions in this bill would be to deny refugees any opportunity to claim political asylum and would. instead. summarily exclude them from the United States and send them back to their persecutors without a hearing. without due process protections. without assistance to help them describe their plight and without judicial review of any kind. Sections 421 and 422 of the conference report prohibit an asylum claim by refugees who enter this country with false identification. I could understand that we might want to consider as potentially relevant factors to an asylum claim that the refugee arrived with false documents and the route that the refugee traveled to get here. But those factors should not be dispositive. The examples to which I have previously alluded indicate that there are times when the use of false documentation is not something that we would want to punish. I fear that the bill goes too far and sends the wrong signal by putting the burden on the refugee. without counsel and in a summary proceeding. to establish that the person is the exception and to create a clear record of "credible fear" and that it was necessary to present the false document to depart from the persecuting country. The Committee to Preserve Asylum has sent each of us a letter outlining the ways In which similar provisions in the immigration bill would harm human rights and endanger refugees. In their April 8 letter supporting the Leahy amendment they outline cases in which these provisions would have been disastrous. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees sent our chairman a letter dated March 6 objecting to these provisions as inconsistent with the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and remains critical of the bill. The asylum process was reorgenized and reformed in January 1994. The bill falls to take these changes into account. In fact. in 1995 asylum claims decreased greatly and were being timely processed. Only 20 percent were granted. Thus. the bills provisions are a bad solution in search of a problem. The INS and Department of Justice report that they have matters in hand. The Department of Justice counsels that we should allow immigration judges rather than asylum officers to make these determinations. Under the circumstances. I believe that we have moved too far too fast and allowed a few cases from the distant past to create bad law. The asylum provisions in the bill would place undue burdens on unsophisticated refugees who are truly in need of sanctuary but may not be able to explain their situation to an overworked asylum officer. The bill would establish summary exclusion procedures and invest lowlevel immigration officers with unprecedented authority to deport refugees without allowing them a fair opportunity to establish a valid claim to asylum. Even before being permitted to apply for asylum. refugees who flee persecution without valid documents. would be met with a series of procedural hurdles virtually impossible to understand or overcome. This is a radical departure from current procedures that afford an asylum hearing before an immigration judge during which an applicant may be represented by counsel. may crossexamined and present witnesses. and after which review Is available by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Such hearings have been vitally important to refugees who may face torture. imprisonment or death as a result of an initial. erroneous decision by an INS official. Indeed. human rights organizations have documented a number of cases of people who were ultimately granted political asylum by immigration judges after the INS denied their release from INS detention for not meeting a "credible fear" standard. Under the summary screening proposed In the bill conference report. these refugees would have been sent back to their perseontors without an opportunity for a hearing. Under international law. an Individual may be denied an opportunity to prove an asylum claim only If the claim is "manifestly unfounded." This bill would establish a summary screening mechanism that utilizes a "credible fear" standard without meaning or precedent In international law. These summary exclusion provisions have been criticized by International human rights organizations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Furthermore. the proposed legislation would deny the Federal courts their historic role in overseeing the implementation of our immigration laws and review of individual administrative decisions. The bill would allow no judicial review whether a person Is actually excludable. These proposals thereby portent a fundamental change in the role of our coordinate branches of Government and a dangerous precedent. Besides being fundamentally unfair to a traumatized and fatigued refugee. who would be allowed no assistance and no interpreter. the proposed summary screening process would impose a burdensome and costly diversion of INS resources. In 1995 for example. only 3.287 asylum seekers arrived without valid documentshardly the tens of thousands purported to justify these changes. The bill would require that a phalanx of specially trained asylum officers be created and posted at airports. sea ports and other ports of entry across the country to be available to conduct summary screening at the border. There is simply no need to divert these resources in this way when the asylum process has already been brought under control. There are no exigent circumstances that require this Nation to turn its back on its traditional role as a refuge from oppression and to resort to summary exclusion processes. Neither the Department of Justice nor the INS support these provisions or believe them necessary. I urge my colleagues to reject this gutting of our asylum laws and support the motion to recommit.