Speech #1100153509

I intro54. Pt. 5 6007 duced this bill. It follows my efforts in years past from the 105th and 106th Congress to permanently reauthorize the special immigrant nonminister religious worker visa program. I called those bills the Mother Theresa Worker Act in honor of her great service which inspired us and benefited the world. I believed then as I believe now. that the special immigrant nonminister religious worker visa program represents an important and even critical piece of our immigration laws and that it should. like other religious worker programs. not sunset. After four successive reauthorizations of this program in 1994. 1997. 2000 and most recently in 2003. each without a single substantive change in the program. I again introduced a bill to permanently reauthorize the program.