Madam President. the amendment I have before you is dealing with an issue I just described in morning b~usiness as one of 15 flaws in a very important part of this legislation. This amendment is going to revise current law related to visa revocation for visa holders who are on U.S. soil. Now. we have this situation which does not make sense. My amendment is meant to bring common sense to this. Under current law. visas approved or denied by a consular officer in some of our embassies overseas would be nonreviewable. In other words. what that consular office said would be final. That person being denied a visa to come to this country would not have access to courts because consular officers have the final say when it comes to granting visas and allowing people to enter a country. So if you are a consular officer and you believe somebody is a terrorist or a terrorist threat. you can deny the visa. no review. However. if that person gets a visa and they come to this country and we find out later on that they are a potential terrorist and should not have come here in the first place and you want to get them out of the country as fast as you canbecause that is surely what we would have done with the 19 pilots who created the terror we had on September 11then that decision made when the person comes to this country. that decision by the consular officer is reviewable in the U.S. courts. Now. everybody is going to say: Well. that just does not make sense. You know. the same person over in some foreign country wants to come here. and the consular officer says: We cant let that person come here because he is a potential terrorist threat. Well. then they do not get to come here and nobody can review that. But if that very same person came here and we decided they shouldnt have been here in the first place. then they have access to our court system before they can be removed. Thanks to a small provision inserted during conference negotiations on the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. the visa holder at that point has more rights than he or she should have. I think that is very obvious. Now. the ability to dleport an alien on U.S. soil with a revoked visa is nearly impossible if the alien is given the opportunity to appeal the revocation. This section has made the visa revocation ineffective as an antiterrorism tool. My amendment would treat visa revocations similar to visa denials because the right of that person to be in the United States is no longer valid. In other words. if it was not valid for him to come here in the first place and it was not reviewable by the courts. and then they get here and for the same reasons they should not be herebecause they are a terrorist threatthey should not have access to our courts. So this exception has made the visa revocation ineffective as an antiterror tool. My amendment would treat visa revocations similar to visa denials because the right of that person to be in the United States is no longer valid. If they were originally denied a visa by the consular officer. there would be no right to dispute. they would not be here in the first place. I asked Secretary Chertoff about the problem with our current law on the visa revocation. and I want to quote from what he told the Judiciary Committee in March because I have been working on this problem for a while. To quote Secretary Chertoff: The fact is that we can prevent someone whos coming in as a guest. We can say "You cant come in overseas." but once they come in. if they abuse their terms and conditions of their coming in. we have to go through a cumbersome process.
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