Speech #1040201760

President. about how the local and State agencies are to pay for this costly new procedure of Issuing uniform Federal birth certificates and drivers licenses. even though it is plainly obvious that such a process is going to be an enormous financial burden on such entities. Mr. President. let me also take this opportunity to express my concerns about provisions in the legal immigration bill that are likely to surface in the near future. Although the Judiciary Committee. on a strong vote. split the two bills. split the legal and illegal immigration bills. there may well be another attempt to put these provisions back in this bill. I hope not. because these are very different issues. In committee. Mr. President. I was a cosponsor of the KennedyAbraham amendment to restore adequate levels cf family immigration because I consider it to be essential to allow U.S. citizens to reunite with their children. their parents. and other loved ones who may be residing In other countries. There may be some abuse of our current family immigration system. but that does not mean we should completely prohibit a U.S. citizen from reuniting with their 22yearold daughter. their 66yearold parent. or their 15yearold brother. Those were in fact the socalled reforms that were included in the original Simpson legislation and later expunged from -the bill during committee markup. Considering the House voted decisively to remove all cutbacks of legal immigration from their bill. it Is my hope that we have seen the last of efforts to further restrict family immigration. Mr. President. I also have serious concerns with the provisions in the legal immigration bill relating to persons seeking asylum in this country. Originally the bill required anyone seeking asylum to do so within 30 days of entering the United States or their claims would be invalid. I joined the junior Senator from Ohio and others In fighting this 30day time limit because it was harsh. it was arbitrary. and would have likely had disastrous consequences for thousands of persons who have. in most cases. fled their homelands to escape persecution. torture or worse for expressing thoughts and opinions counter to those held by those governments in other lands. We have had. no doubt. serious problems and abuses with our past asylum process. Previously. a large number of nonmeritorious claims were filed in an effort to obtain certain benefits that asylum claimants are entitled to. such as automatic work authorization. This practice did result In a mammoth backlog of pending applications that have prevented or delayed some very legitimate claims from being processed In a timely fashion. Unfortunately. though. Mr. President. lost in all the hyperbole about this problem is the fact that the Clinton administration has made tremendous progress in clamping down on asylum fraud and abuse. As a result of these new administration reforms. in the past year alone. new asylum claims have been cut in half. and INS has more than doubled their productivity in terms of processing pending claims. Mr. President. these promising reforms by the Clinton administration are in their infancy. and we should not mandate such a harsh and arbitrary deadline that is likely to not only be disastrous for legitimate asylum seekers. but also completely unnecessary. During committee markup. an amendment was adopted that extended the 30day deadline to 1 year and also provided an exception to this time limit If the applicant had good cause to wait for more than 1 year. I found this acceptable because it provided legitimate asylum seekers a waiver if they had Justifiable reasons for waiting beyond the 1year period. Unfortunately. the committee report language is more restrictive with respect to this waiver process than I had anticipated and hoped. Mr.