Mohamed Atta committed his crime before he could have been convicted of being a terrorist. and he obviously killed himself in the process. The time to apply this legislation to him is not after the fact but hopefully before the fact. The problem is that at the time he overstayed his visa. to our knowledge. he had not committed any other crime except perhaps forging some documents or making false statements to an immigration officialsomething such as that. What I am saying is we have drafted this in a way that it would not have caught people such as Mohamed Atta because to do that would be to exclude others from the benefits of the legislation both the Senator and I agree should not be excluded. I am simply trying to say we have to be careful with the language because if we simply sayand I know the Senator from Illinois would agree with this proposition when he says we dont want to exclude just people who have overstayed their visas. and he gave the example of the student who overstayed a visaI know he doesnt mean to include within that somebody such as Mohamed Atta because the reality is that is exactly what we have done here. If we could find some other way to add a provision that says if we have evidence to believe somebody is a terrorist. they would also be included. that probably would be a good idea. and we would both agree to do that.
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visa visas immigration