Speech #1040203024

I thank the Senator from Michigan for his leadership on it. First of all. I think that this amendment is an unfortunate attempt to circumvent the will of the majority of this Congress. which has clearly indicated Its strong desire to keep the issue of legal immigration separate from the issue of illegal immigration. The other body has already sent a very strong message on a strong. bipartisan vote not to have any cutbacks. Mr. President. in current legal immigration levels. Just a few weeks ago. after a very. very long process. the Senate Judiciary Committee. again on a very strong. bipartisan vote. voted by a large margin to keep these two areas of law separatelegal and illegal immigration. Groups and organizations from across the political spectrum have united behind the common goal of keeping legal immigration separate from the Issue of illegal immigration. This Includes a lot of business groups. such as the National Association of Manufacturers. labor groups. such as the AFLCIO. religious groups. such as the American Jewish Committee and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. and liberal and conservative groups ranging from Americans for Tax Reform to the National Council of La Raza. They are all opposed to this attempt to rejoin the issues of legal and illegal immigration. That is why. Mr. President. with this immense amount of support for considering legal immigration reform as a separate piece of legislation. I am disappointed that the Senator from Wyoming has chosen to offer this amendment today. Just to review. the Senate Judiciary Committee voted by a 12to6 margin to split the two issues. Nonetheless. that vote did not prevent the committee. nor will it prevent the whole Senate from considering both issues. Indeed. after the committee had dealt with. at length. the illegal Immigration bill and disposed of It. the committee very shortly moved on to discuss and consider and vote out a separate bill on legal immigration. Mr. President. I am also somewhat troubled by what has been suggested both privately and publicly. that cutbacks in legal immigration cannot pass unless they are riding the coattails of strong Illegal Immigration reform. I think that is a very troubling notion. If there are not enough votes in this Congress to pass a bill that reduces legal immigration. it should not be piggybacked onto a separate piece of legislation that has far more support. If a particular proposal cannot pass based on its merit. what other possible justification could there be for Its passage? We have heard the argument that the Issues of legal and illegal Immigration are Intertwined because so many immigrants come here on temporary visas and remain here unlawfully after their visas have expired. Fair enough. This Is known as the visa overstay problem. But before the AbrahamFeingold visa overstay provision was adopted by the Judiciary Committee last month. there was not a single word in this bill about that Issue. about the significant number of people who are here illegally because they overstay their visas. Let me emphasize that point. Mr. President. It is important for all Senators to understand that the visa overstay problem represents roughly onehalf of our entire illegal immigration problem. We are not talking here about people who jump the fence along the Mexican border in the dead of the night and disappear into the American work force. We are talking about people who come here on a legal visa. usually a tourist or a student visa. and then refuse to leave the country when the visa expires. That problem alone represents onehalf of illegal immigration. The Senator from Wyoming is suggesting that the only way to combat that problem is to tie redudtions in legal immigration to an Illegal immigration bill. Mr. President. that theory has already been discredited. The new visa overstayer penalties. authored by the Senator from Michigan and myself. are not contained in the legal immigration bill. They are contained quite appropriately in this bill. They are in the illegal immigration bill and that Is where they belong because the issue of visa overstay has to do with illegality. But this amendment offered by the Senator from Wyoming has nothing to do with illegality. It has to do with questions of levels of legal immigration and who should come In and when. But what was offered In committeeand what is a part of this billare targeted penalties and reforms against those legal immigrants who break the rules and. therefore. have conducted themselves illegally. It does not represent the approach of the Senator from Wyoming which is to clamp down on all of these immigrants whether they are playing by the rules or whether they are breaking them. So the proposition that we need to tie the legal provisions to the illegal provisions so we can clamp down on the visa overstayer problem is just plain false. We have clamped down in visa overstayers. who are illegal aliens. in the illegal Immigration bill. As I indicated yesterday in my opening remarks. there has unquestionably been some abuse of our legal immigration system. I will not. of course. deny that. But much like you wouldnt stop driving your car if you had a little engine trouble. we should not pass such harsh and unnecessary reductions in lawful Immigration simply because a few have chosen to abuse the system. Mr. President. let me be clear about my position on this issue.