Speech #1100054447

No employer can afford this schedulehiring and training. only to have a worker who soon will leave. It will only encourage employers and workers to find new ways to break the rules. What we are doing is setting up a system that will encourage workers to overstay their visas. Much of the illegal immigration problem we have in this country today is not because people have sneaked across the borderalthough there are many of thoseit is because people have come here legally and overstayed their visas. and they are now illegally living in this country. If you ever wanted to have a system that would generate more people coming here and illegally overstaying their visas. we have designed it in this bill. So my amendment tries to correct that to some extent. It says once they come here and go to work. they are given a 2year visa. They can renew that two times and work the full 6 years. So it maintains the 6year limit that the sponsors. the architects of this legislation. have intended. but it makes a lot more sense in the way it works. Let me mention one other aspect which I think is crucial: that is. we need a system that is workable. We do not have the capacity todaywe. the Federal Governmentto keep track of people who leave the country. We can keep track of the ones who come in. but if you ask the Immigration Service how many of those who come in are still here. they do not know. We do not have the capacity today to track the people who leave. So we are setting up a system where we have 200.000 a year coming in.