Speech #1100054114

You are going to have to get in line. You are going to have to pass an English test. And that is all simply to get a green card. After that. of course. if you want to be a citizen. you have to wait the 5 years and do the things necessary to become a citizen. That deals with the second point. To me. one of the definitions of amnesty is this automatic path to citizenship. We have done away with that. In addition. we have established a meritbased system for green cards for those people who want them who are here Illegally. Finally. one of the benefits of amnesty is the ability to chain migrate your family. We have eliminated that in this legislation. You no longer have the right to chain migrate your family. By that. what we are talking about is to bring in the nonnuclear family. someone other than your spouse and minor children. simply because you are a green card holder or a U.S. citizen. We say: no longer. When this bill goes into effect. once the current backlog is cleared up. there will be no more chain migration of this nonnuclear family. Incidentally. there was an error made in the description of our bill by one of our colleagues. The visa that will be issued to people illegally here today does not allow chain migration. In fact. it doesnt even allow the migration of your nuclear family. your spouse. or minor children. if they are in another country. The last thing I want to talk about is the matter of the amendments we will have to deal with during the course of this next week.