Speech #1050084277

I think this amendment should be debated. and I think it is important to try to outline why. That is the purpose that has brought me to the floor today. First of all. we are talking about. in the MackGrahamKennedy amendment. an amendment that changes the immigration laws of the country. I remind my colleagues that we are considering the D.C. appropriations bill and. therefore. this amendment has nothing to do with the subject matter of that bill. Second. I believe that this is complicated legislation. dealing with very complex. very important. and. quite frankly. very emotional issues that ought to be dealt with by the Immigration Subcommittee. by the people who wrote the law that we just adopted last year. and by people who are experts in this area. I do not believe that an amendment that has the sweeping impact of this amendment should be dealt with as a rider to an appropriations bill when. by and large. other than three or four Members of the Senate. nobody has closely examined the pending amendment. Now. let me outline very briefly what the amendment. in my opinion. seeks to do. and let me also say that I am not a member of the committee that has jurisdiction. My concern about this amendment was generated by the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee in the House. who is my colleague from Texas. who is very concerned about this amendment. and who is very much opposed to it. Basically. what this amendment seeks to do is to change the immigration bill that we wrote just last year. Now. our colleague from Florida argues that. well. it doesnt appear that maybe we wanted to do what we did. It is hard for me to judge that and. quite frankly. I dont know. But let me outline what the amendment will do and the concerns that I have. First of all. one of the provisions in the immigration bill last year was a provision to try to end the practice of people coming into the country illegally and then using the system to stay here. I am very sensitive to this issue. We had an effort that was undertaken last year to cut back on legal immigration. I was a leader in killing that effort because I want people to have an opportunity to come to America legally. I am not one of these people who believes that America is full. I believe that we have a system for people to come here under existing lawto come to the country legally. to come to work. to build their dream. and to build the American dream. I am a strong supporter of legal immigration. but I am a strong opponent of the illegal immigration of people who come to the country illegally and. in doing so. jump in line in front of 7 million people who are waiting to come legally. One of the things we did last year in the immigration bill was set a cap on the number of people who were in the country illegally but who were able to stay here by claiming extraordinary hardship if they were returned home. The cap was 4.000 people a year that we would allow to remain in the country under these extraordinary circumstances. What the Mack amendment does is waive that cap for a huge number of people. certainly in the range of 300.000. and criticsI cant speak for whether they are right or wrongwho are concerned about it suggest perhaps a larger number. I think what this does is produce sort of a rolling amnesty. I remind my colleagues that in trying to gain control of our ability to have some say about who comes to our country. without limiting legal immigration. we took the extraordinary step of granting amnesty to people who had violated the law. But part of the deal was that it was a onetime agreement and that we werent going to continue to do it. My concern here is that we are creating a rolling amnesty.