ILW.COM - Kennedy Remarks on Immigration

[Congressional Record: December 15, 2000 (Senate)] [Page S11850-S11852] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:cr15de00-102] NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF BIOMEDICAL IMAGING AND ENGINEERING ESTABLISHMENT ACT Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to H.R. 1795, which is at the desk, having been received from the House. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title. The legislative clerk read as follows: A bill (H.R. 1795) to amend the Public Health Service Act to establish the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill. Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, many of us have worked throughout this Congress to bring greater fairness to our immigration laws. The Legal Immigration Family Equity Act and its amendments are a constructive compromise worked out between members of both parties to address a number of the injustices in current law that have harshly affected many immigrant families. Included in the final legislative package are three provisions that will provide long overdue relief to valued members of our communities and their families. First, the legislation includes the partial restoration of section 245(i) for individuals who are physically present in the U.S. by the date the legislation is enacted into law. Spouses, children, parents and siblings of permanent residents or U.S. citizens will now be able to adjust their status in the U.S. and avoid needless separation from their loved ones. Similarly, persons who benefit from employer-based petitions will also be helped by the restoration of section 245(i). Second, this legislation will benefit many of the ``late amnesty'' class members who have been in legal limbo for close to 15 years. Their spouses and children will be able to remain in the United States until they become eligible for permanent residence. Finally, this legislation provides desperately needed technical corrections that will benefit persons eligible for relief under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act and the Haitian Refugee Immigrant Fairness Act. Because these provisions were developed outside the usual committee process, they are not accompanied by committee reports on the background and purpose of the provisions. Therefore, as the chairman and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Senator Abraham and I are submitting a detailed memorandum explaining the provisions, which I ask unanimous consent be printed in the Record at the closing of my remarks. [[Page S11851]] The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. [See Exhibit 2.] Mr. KENNEDY. Our action today is a significant step in the right direction, but this legislation is far from perfect. Critical pieces are missing. We must continue to work for full parity for Central Americans, Haitians, and Liberians. It is unjust to treat refugees fleeing repression by left-wing dictators better than those fleeing repression by right-wing dictators. Congress must create a fair, uniform set of procedures for all of these refugees. We also must continue to work for relief for permanent residents unfairly affected by the 1996 immigration law. The 1996 law contains some of the harshest provisions that Congress has enacted in many years. Their scope is sweeping. They hurt thousands of immigrants. They have taken immigrants away from their U.S. citizen families, without giving them even an opportunity to have their day in court. Next year, Congress must pass new legislation to correct the harsh provisions of these unfair laws. It is also unfortunate that the legislation does not include far- reaching agreement on agricultural farmworkers. Senator Graham, Congressman Berman, and many others worked skillfully to achieve this agreement. They proposed an excellent compromise that would have benefitted both the agricultural workers and the farm owners. These further reforms deserve high priority by the next Congress, and I look forward to working with my colleagues and with the administration of President-elect Bush to enact them into law. Exhibit 1 Joint Memorandum Concerning the Legal Immigration Family Equity Act of 2000 and the LIFE Act Amendments of 2000. The pending legislation contains certain immigration provisions worked out between members of both parties to further address certain issues addressed in the first instance in the Legal Immigration Family Equity Act of 2000, or LIFE Act, which is contained in the Commerce Justice State Appropriations bill being transmitted to the President. Because both the original LIFE ACT and this legislation were developed outside the ordinary Committee process, they were not accompanied by the usual reports elaborating on the background and purpose of their provisions. This memorandum is accordingly submitted on behalf of the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to provide such elaboration in somewhat abbreviated form. The original LIFE Act sought to address two problems. First, it sought to provide a new mechanism to address the problem created by the long backlog of immigrant visa applications for spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents, who are currently having to wait many years for a visa to become available to them. Right now, many of these individuals are even precluded from visiting their spouse or parent in the United States on account of an administrative interpretation that the filing of their petition cases doubt on the bona fides of their applications for visitors visas, indicating that instead they are intending immigrants. The LIFE Act creates a new temporary ``V'' visa under which these spouses (and their children) can come to the United States and wait for their visa here, if their immigrant visa petitions have been pending for more than three years. It also expands the criteria for ``K'' visas to include spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens. The purpose of the ``V'' and ``K'' visas is to provide a speedy mechanism by which family members may be reunited. We expect the Department of State and the INS to work together to create a process in keeping with the temporary nature of the visa that does not require potential beneficiaries to wait for months before their visas are approved. Like the existing Finance visa, the new ``K'' visa is not intended to be a prerequisite for the admission of citizen spouses, but a speedy mechanism for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens to obtain their immigrant visas in the U.S., rather than wait for long periods of time outside the U.S. Second, the LIFE Act sought to correct past administrative mistakes that resulted in the wrongful denial of adjustment of status to hundreds of thousands of persons who should have qualified for permanent residence under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It directs the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to adjudicate the applications of individuals in two class action lawsuits on the merits, rather than continuing to litigate whether they were timely filed. The LIFE Act Amendments make three significant additions to the provisions in the LIFE Act. First, they delete the LIFE Act's special mechanism for ``V'' and ``K'' visa holders to adjust to lawful permanent residence, and instead add a new provision modifying section 245(i), a mechanism by which anyone eligible for an immigrant visa and for whom a visa is currently available can adjust his or her status to that of lawful permanent residence in the U.S., rather than have to return abroad for consular processing. That mechanism was reauthorized in 1996, but only for individuals who were beneficiaries of immigrant visa petitions or labor certification applications filed by January 14, 1998. The LIFE amendments move the date by which such petitions or applications must be filed forward in time to April 30, 2001. They also add a new requirement that for all beneficiaries whose application was filed after January 14, 1998, the principal beneficiary must have been physically present in the U.S. on the date of enactment of the LIFE Act Amendments of 2000. The function of this last requirement is to make sure that the renewed availability of section 245(i) does not operate to encourage anyone to violate our immigration laws. Accordingly, it should be interpreted with common sense. It may be difficult for an individual physically present on the day of enactment to establish his or her presence on that precise date to qualify for 245(i). The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) should therefore be flexible in the types of evidence it will accept to establish physical presence on the day of enactment. For example, the kind of evidence of physical presence INS ordinarily accepts demonstrating that the applicant has been physically present during a reasonable period preceding that date, accompanied by an affidavit or declaration that the person was present on the date itself, should ordinarily suffice. We also note that this new requirement is applicable only to principal applicants for 245(i), and not to derivatives, who continue to be allowed to ``follow to join'' if they otherwise qualify. In order to ensure that persons who may benefit from this provision are aware of this legislation, we strongly encourage the INS to conduct a broad outreach program within the immigrant communities. Additionally, to ensure that all potentially eligible persons have an opportunity to qualify for 245(i), if necessary the INS should accept petitions and applications before the April 30, 2001 sunset date that do not contain all necessary supporting documents, and allow additional documents to be filed after the deadline. Second, the legislation adds the members of a third class action law suit, Zambrano v. INS, to those covered by the LIFE Act's provisions concerning adjustment of status under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). We note that persons eligible for adjustment pursuant to the combined LIFE provisions include everyone who has ``filed with the Attorney General a written claim of class membership'', that is all registered class members, not only those who have been issued employment authorization pursuant to a screening that did not reliably distinguish between potentially meritorious and non-meritorious applications. We understand that several other class action lawsuits are still pending in the federal courts challenging other INS interpretations of the 1986 adjustment provisions. The precise posture of one of these cases, Perales v. Thornburgh, came to our attention after the legislation had been finalized. We understand that a class of about 200 identified plaintiffs in Perales challenged the same regulation whose illegality the INS has conceded in Zambrano. We would encourage the Attorney General to provide a just resolution for the Perales class members in light of the legislation enacted today. Other cases that have come to our attention, such as Proyecto San Pablo v. INS, and Immigrant Assistance Project v. INS, are in a different posture from those addressed by the LIFE Act and these amendments, in that they do not involve regulations that INS has conceded were illegal. At the same time, however, it is now almost 2001, that is, almost 15 years after the enactment of IRCA, and these cases remain unresolved. We encourage the plaintiffs and the Attorney General to explore the possibility of settling these cases and bringing to an end the years of bitter and costly litigation. Nothing in this legislation is intended to preclude this option, or to preclude the Attorney General from resolving any other IRCA adjustment applications on the merits. In that connection, we also note that when the 1986 legalization program was enacted, the Attorney General, pursuant to section 245A of the INA, was authorized to work in conjunction with voluntary organizations and other qualified State, local and community organizations to broadly disseminate information about the legalization program. The INS helped provide funding to these organizations to assist with the outreach effort, as well as with the preparation and submission of the applications for adjustment of status. A similar outreach campaign should be conducted to disseminate information about the opportunity to apply for adjustment of status under this Act. As noted above, almost 15 years have elapsed since the original legalization program was enacted, therefore the need to publicize the resolution of these issues reached by the LIFE Act and amendments thereto is critical to ensure that eligible persons are notified and have an opportunity to obtain the benefits of this Act. Moreover, nothing in the Act should be construed to preclude the Attorney General from providing funding to organizations qualified and experienced in the preparation and submission of adjustment applications. [[Page S11852]] Third, the amendments clarify that the spouses and unmarried children of the beneficiaries of Section 1104 of the LIFE Act are eligible for the Family Unity provisions of the Immigration Act of 1990. By enacting this provision, our objective is to ensure that these family members are treated in the same manner as the family members of those who adjusted their status under IRCA. In addition, the amendments address two, more technical issues. Section 1104 LIFE Act applicants, as well as beneficiaries under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) and the Haitian Refugee Immigrant Fairness Act (HRIFA) are made eligible for certain waivers of grounds of inadmissibility. These waivers are ordinarily available only to persons who are outside the U.S. The amendments to the LIFE Act allow the covered individuals to apply for these waivers in the U.S. Finally, the LIFE amendments clarify that section 241(a)(5) of the INA which bars anyone who has been ordered removed and who subsequently reenters the U.S. from obtaining any relief under the INA. Because adjustment under section 245A, NACARA, and HRIFA is not ``relief under'' the Act, LIFE amendments specify that this bar does not apply to LIFE section 1104 beneficiaries, or NACARA or HRIFA applicants. Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be advanced to third reading and passed and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without intervening action, motion, or debate. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The bill (H.R. 1795) was read the third time and passed. Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, Senator Daschle is here. We have a few resolutions we can offer at this point. ____________________

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