DC--all so he can hire just one parttime employee on his farm in Wisconsin or New Hampshire? Mr. President. if fully implemented. this. obviously. is not a measured response to the illegal immigration problem. It suggests that the way to find a needle in a haystack is to set the haystack on fire. It is not as if we are moving to a national verification system as a last resort. Just in the past few years has the administration begun to take seriously the task of patrolling our Nations borders. Experiments such as Operation Hold the Line in El Paso. and Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego. have demonstrated that there is a way to prevent undocumented persons from entering the United States. Moreover. we have never tried to attack the visa overstayer problem. Again. that is the problem that constitutes nearly onehalf of the illegal problem. No one has ever proposed such targeted reformsuntil now. Our amendment contains provisions that impose tough new penalties on persons who overstay their visas by withholding future visas from persons who violate the terms of their agreements. In addition. anybody who applies for a legal visa must submit certain information to the INS that will allow the INS to track such persons and determine who is here lawfully and who is here unlawfully. These bold reforms should be given an opportunity to work. Let us give them a try before we commit ourselves to experimenting with a costly and burdensome national verification system.
Keywords matched
undocumented visa illegal immigration visas