I dont think they were ever seriously challenged. This is the way it ran. Under current levels of legal immigration. there would be 18.9 million people coming into the country. If we had passed this legislation as it originally was when it hit the floor. we would have had 78.7 million at a minimum coming in4 times the current level of immigrationand it could have hit the maximum of 217 million. according to our calculationsabout 11 times the current level of immigration. So those are huge numbers. I think they caused great concern. After the amendment Senator BINGAMAN offered was passed and it took out that 20percentperyear escalator clause on the 325.000person guest worker program per yearunder this new program. if you hit that 325.000 one year. automatically the next years limit was 20 percent more. automatically the next year would be 20 percent more. and automatically the next year would be 20 percent more. I think that would have sent a clear signal to the entire world that the United States was going to accept huge numbers of immigrants. and I believe we would have had applications flooding in and it would have been a very serious problem. We did pare that back to 200.000 per year without any 20 percent increase over 20 years. and that made the huge difference I just mentioned. So now about 73 million to 93 million will come in over 20 years. 4 to 5 times the current rate.
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immigrationand immigrants immigration