Although a conference report is a privileged item. nonetheless. what we find is. rather than just sitting down and discussing it in an open kind of forum. where the public would be invited to at least observe and to understand the public policy issues that are being debated. there are negotiations taking place not with the Members of the Congress and Senate that have to vote on the legislation. not with the Members of the House and Senate who have worked to try to be constructive and who have supported the legislation here in the U.S. Senate the last time that we cameoh. no. the negotiation is taking place with the Dole campaign officials--the Dole campaign officials. They are the ones that are negotiating with the Republican leadership on the shape of the immigration bill. The stories have been out there of the meetings that took place last week and the positions of candidate Dole. who wants. evidently. the Gallegly amendment included in the final immigration bill. and others within the Republican Party do not want to have that. It is tied up. I dare suggest. It is always a concern to speculate on what the motivations of other people are. But. it is increasingly apparent to many of us that the Republicans want to make very difficult for the Members to deal in a bipartisan way with the issue of illegal immigration. It seems they either want the President to veto the legislation. or let it die in the Senate in the final hours of the Congress while Republicans and Democrats alike express their dislike of the Gallegly provisions. So then there might be the opportunity for those to say. look what has happened on the important issue of illegal immigration. we were not able to get the bill to the President. The Republican side says that if they take the Gallegly amendment out. the bill may well go through the Senate of the United States and House of Representatives. and the President might sign it and get some credit for it. He might get some credit for the bill in California in an important election year.
Keywords matched
illegal immigration immigration