Mr. President. this is an amendment to reduce the number of visas issued each year under the new guest worker program that is in this billreduce it to 200.000. This Is 200.000 new visas each year which would be permitted if my amendment were to be adopted. The amendment I am offering is cosponsored by Senators FEJINSTEIN. OBAMA. DODD. and DURBIN. It is essentially the same amendment I offered when we had the debate on the immigratVn bill last year when we were fortunate to have the support of 79 Senators for the amendment. Let me talk a little bit about the context of this before getting into the detail of the amendment. The KylKennedy or KennedyKyl substitute amendment allocates 400.000 new guest worker visas per year. and it has in it also an increase mechanism that allows the annual allocation to go from 400.000 up to 600.000 per year. After a few years. presumably. we would be at a level of 600.000 per year from then on. Workers are allowed to stay for a total of 6 years under this program.
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