And let me do it by going back to our welfare reform bill. I would like to remind my colleagues. not that public popularity is the beall and endallit can often be misleading in the short termbut I am sure many of my colleagues are aware that when asked what action by Congress in the last 4 years they most approved of. the American people. in a set of polls taken last month. said "welfare reform." What we did in welfare reform is. we set higher standards for welfare and we defined work as the norm. and we defined welfare programs as temporary programs to help people help themselves. When we wrote the welfare reform bill in 1996. and I was active in it and was a conferee. this provision with regard to refugees was a hardfought provision. Prior to the 1996 bill. there was no limit on the amount of time that a refugee could get food stamps. Many people. including myself. wanted to set a strict limit on it. again with the idea that we were talking about transitional help. but we wanted people to come to America. as millions have comeand millions of Americans have come as refugees. millions of Americans have come as refugees since World War II. We know that many of these refugees are really economic refugees but they claim to be political refugees. and often it is very difficult to tell the difference because countries that have bad political systems normally have bad economic systems. So. after a real battle in conference. endless days of negotiations. we settled on a 5year limit. Now. in this bill. in a bill that. when it was considered in the Senate where it was amendable. there was no food stamp provision. there was no debate on this issue.
Identified stereotypes
Generalization that many refugees are actually economic migrants falsely claiming political asylum.