[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        JERRY TINKER REMEMBERED

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I want to pay tribute to Jerry M. 
Tinker, who until his unexpected death this year at the age of 55 was 
the Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee 
Affairs of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Jerry has already been 
memorialized most eloquently, by both the chairman of the subcommittee, 
the senior Senator from Massachusetts, and the subcommittee's ranking 
minority member, the senior Senator from Wyoming. It is important to me 
now to add my voices to theirs, and while my tribute will be brief, it 
is profoundly heartfelt.
  Although Jerry Tinker and I did not work together on a regular basis, 
I got to know him rather well. In the area of immigration and refugee 
issues which inevitably had ramifications beyond the limits of the 
subcommittee or even the full committee, he could always be counted 
upon for solid information and sage counsel. Jerry was, in my view, 
precisely what a public servant should be: knowledgeable and hard-
working; judicious and fair-minded; a person of real integrity and 
courage. He, himself, was a person of great intelligence and tact.
  Jerry joined the staff of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee 
Affairs in 1970, at the age of 31. Thus he gave the past quarter-
century--most of his adult life--to issues as complex and wrenching as 
any this Nation has faced. In one capacity or another he devoted much 
of the decade of the 1980's to immigration reform, beginning with the 
study conducted by the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee 
Policy in 1979-81 and continuing with the landmark legislation of 1986 
and 1990, which implemented the Commission's recommendations. Yet he 
made time to travel when pressing refugee problems required it; he kept 
a phenomenal schedule. There are few refugee camps in the world that 
Jerry did not visit, and his experience made his voice all the more 
powerful on questions of effective humanitarian aid.
  I do not know precisely what led Jerry to make the commitment to 
which he gave his working years. Just out of college, he went to India 
in 1962-63 as part of the Maxwell Fellowship Program at Syracuse 
University and, by then a Ph.D. candidate, he returned to India in 1969 
to carry out research on his dissertation. He then went on to a year at 
the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway, after that 
year returning to the United States and joining the staff of the 
Immigration and Refugee Subcommittee. Was it the experience of India 
that inspired him, or his undergraduate years, or perhaps his family? I 
do not know. I know only that Jerry Tinker was conscience as well as 
draftsman of this immigration and refugee legislation for more than two 
decades. His wise presence will be greatly missed, and I feel deeply 
the loss of a kind and trusted friend.

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