Speech #1040203004

I am going to go and Join them because I love them and I want to be with them." Does anybody believe that is not happening? So they live illegally in the United States while waiting for their name to come up. In the second amendmentI will address that briefly. and I have a brief chart. and then we can get on with the debatethe employmentbased visa limit will be reduced to 100.000. which is still well above the number of visas now being. actually used for employmentbased immigration. The employment visa. will continue to be allocated under the preference system in current law. We will look. also. at the issue of unskilled numbers. which we took care of in the committee bill. on legal immigration. which is not before you today. but is at the desk. and which is not to be incorporated into it by an amendment by me or anyone else. There are a lot of things in that legal immigration bill. When we are through with this caper here. whether it goes or does not go. we might deal with that. since that passed the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 13 to 4. I would think that might well be addressed by us at some future time. with appropriate unanimousconsent agreements. or whatever may be. so there would not be too much chicanery involved. The committee bill reduced diversity visas from 55.000 to 27.000. My amendment retains the committee provision of the 27.000 diversity visas. At the end of 5 years. under these amendments. the temporary reduction will end and terminate. and the immigration numbers and the priority system will automatically return to current law. You say. "Well. what is the purpose of that? You are going to lower it 10.1 percent for 5 years. and at the end of 5 years. it is going to go right back where it wassame heavy numbers." That is right. That will give the Congress an opportunity to look at where we are going. because. obviously. people are not paying attention to where we are going. and we watch these continual frustrations arise and finally come to a volcanic ferocity like proposition 187. If anybody believes that you do not deal with this issue and pretend that there will not be more of those in every State in the United States. we are all somewhat remiss. If the Congress does not pass a bill that includes a reduction in immigration. then our refusal to address the very real and very reasonable concerns of our constituents will contribut3 even more to the general cynicism about Congress and our detachment to what the people who elected us think. Mr. President. this Is not merely a problem of how Congress is perceived. of our reputation. because. if we ignore what the people think and feel. we are not likely to legislate in ways that have a favorable realworld. commonsense impact on the peoples lives.