Speech #1100055908

Mr. President. We start out with the proposition that somewhere between 12 million and who knows how many million illegal immigrants who are in the United States. for the most part. are going to be able to stay. If everything that can be expected of them is accomplished. they have the ability to apply for a green card and eventually potentially become citizens of the United States of America. That is a tremendous benefit for people who came illegally. One of the reasons some of us have been willing to accommodate that is people have come here with families or have created families here. and we do not want to disrupt those families. Secondly. there are family visas that historically have been issued by the United States. This bill doesnt in any way affect the ability of any legal permanent resident or citizen to bring into the United States their spouse or minor children. That is the socalled nuclear family. In addition. 40.000 parents per year can be brought into the United States. and there are extraordinarily liberal visitations for parents beyond that 40.000 number. We have said the socalled nonnuclear familythe extended familyin the future is going to compete the same as workers are going to compete. so that we can get in balance with some of our competitors in the global economy. where more of the visas are reserved for work purposes and fewer for family purposes. But in the meantime. some 4 million people. roughly. who have applied for a family visaextended or nonnuclear familyare going to be allowed to immigrate to the United States. and instead of taking 30 or 40 years. in some cases. it is going to all happen within an 8year period of time. That is extraordinarily helpful to families and family reunification. Now. it is true. if somebody has come here illegally and their family is still outside the country. we dont permit that family to come. But the object. obviously. is to try to encourage that individual to go back with his family. That would be family reunification. But the problem the Menendez amendment poses is. instead of allowing those people who have applied for visas for extended families who have a reasonable expectation to come to the United States. he would change the date that measures their eligibility in such a way as to allow a lot of peoplethousands. hundreds of thousands. actuallyto immigrate to the United States who. today. under current law. have no reasonable expectation they would ever make it to the United States. What we have tried to do is to be fair and say. if you have a reasonable expectation you will be permitted to immigrate to the United States. we will allow you to come in. and we will do it within a very short period of time8 years. or perhaps less than that period of time. as opposed to the perhaps 20 or 30 years it may have otherwise taken. If you didnt have a reasonable expectation to get in. then you are not going to come. The reason the date was drawn where it was in May 2005 is that represented a compromise.