[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 134 (Wednesday, October 1, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10263-S10264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1998

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 1253

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, as I understand it, we have scheduled a 
tabling motion of the Mack amendment, and Senator Mack himself has 
moved to table the amendment. I thought it would be timely for me to 
come over and say a little bit about this amendment.
  Let me make it clear that I intend to vote against tabling the 
amendment. I think this amendment should be debated, and I think it is 
important to try to outline why. That is the purpose that has brought 
me to the floor today.
  First of all, we are talking about, in the Mack-Graham-Kennedy 
amendment, an amendment that changes the immigration laws of the 
country. I remind my colleagues that we are considering the D.C. 
appropriations bill and, therefore, this amendment has nothing to do 
with the subject matter of that bill.
  Second, I believe that this is complicated legislation, dealing with 
very complex, very important, and, quite frankly, very emotional issues 
that ought to be dealt with by the Immigration Subcommittee, by the 
people who wrote the law that we just adopted last year, and by people 
who are experts in this area. I do not believe that an amendment that 
has the sweeping impact of this amendment should be dealt with as a 
rider to an appropriations bill when, by and large, other than three or 
four Members of the Senate, nobody has closely examined the pending 
amendment.
  Now, let me outline very briefly what the amendment, in my opinion, 
seeks to do, and let me also say that I am not a member of the 
committee that has

[[Page S10264]]

jurisdiction. My concern about this amendment was generated by the 
chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee in the House, who is my 
colleague from Texas, who is very concerned about this amendment, and 
who is very much opposed to it. Basically, what this amendment seeks to 
do is to change the immigration bill that we wrote just last year. Now, 
our colleague from Florida argues that, well, it doesn't appear that 
maybe we wanted to do what we did. It is hard for me to judge that and, 
quite frankly, I don't know. But let me outline what the amendment will 
do and the concerns that I have.
  First of all, one of the provisions in the immigration bill last year 
was a provision to try to end the practice of people coming into the 
country illegally and then using the system to stay here. I am very 
sensitive to this issue. We had an effort that was undertaken last year 
to cut back on legal immigration. I was a leader in killing that effort 
because I want people to have an opportunity to come to America 
legally. I am not one of these people who believes that America is 
full. I believe that we have a system for people to come here under 
existing law--to come to the country legally, to come to work, to build 
their dream, and to build the American dream.
  I am a strong supporter of legal immigration, but I am a strong 
opponent of the illegal immigration of people who come to the country 
illegally and, in doing so, jump in line in front of 7 million people 
who are waiting to come legally. One of the things we did last year in 
the immigration bill was set a cap on the number of people who were in 
the country illegally but who were able to stay here by claiming 
extraordinary hardship if they were returned home. The cap was 4,000 
people a year that we would allow to remain in the country under these 
extraordinary circumstances.
  What the Mack amendment does is waive that cap for a huge number of 
people, certainly in the range of 300,000, and critics--I can't speak 
for whether they are right or wrong--who are concerned about it suggest 
perhaps a larger number. I think what this does is produce sort of a 
rolling amnesty. I remind my colleagues that in trying to gain control 
of our ability to have some say about who comes to our country, without 
limiting legal immigration, we took the extraordinary step of granting 
amnesty to people who had violated the law. But part of the deal was 
that it was a one-time agreement and that we weren't going to continue 
to do it. My concern here is that we are creating a rolling amnesty.

  A second very real problem is that we are talking about people who 
came to this country, many of them from El Salvador, Guatemala, and 
Nicaragua, when there was a war going on. The war in El Salvador was a 
war where Communist insurgents were trying to overthrow the government 
and deny democracy and capitalism to the people in El Salvador. The war 
in Nicaragua was a war against a Communist dictatorship. What happened 
during this period is that people came to this country illegally.
  Now we are hearing the argument that there was a wink and a nod and 
there was an agreement. But I don't see anywhere in law that that was 
the case. Now, I can't today make a judgment about whether people who 
came here from Nicaragua fleeing communism should be granted the 
ability to stay. I would have to say that I am more sympathetic to them 
than I am to people who came here from El Salvador, because they were 
supporting a Communist insurgency, and now the El Salvadoran Government 
is saying, ``Please keep those people in America, don't let them come 
back to El Salvador.''
  My point is this. I think we need to look at each one of these cases. 
But the war in each country from which these people were fleeing is 
over. We were successful in stopping Communist insurgency in El 
Salvador. We won in Nicaragua. Now people who were fleeing a conflict, 
now that the conflict is over, are saying, ``We don't want to go 
back.'' Well, now, in some circumstances, they should not have to go 
back. But I don't think the Senate is ready today, without the benefit 
of hearings, without the benefit of consideration by the subcommittee 
and full committee, without an extensive debate, to make that 
determination. I don't know what we should do in each of these 
circumstances. If we could narrow the scope, if we could put the focus 
on those who came from Nicaragua, if we could find some middle ground, 
I might be willing to do that. But I don't see any effort to find a 
middle ground.
  So this is one of these circumstances where we are trying to change a 
law that is just now going into effect--the first real test we have had 
in the new immigration bill--where we set a cap on the number of people 
who come to the country illegally and we subsequently allow to stay 
here. The first time we come up with a test based on, obviously, very 
real human drama--in many cases, strong cases by individual families--
we are getting ready to set aside the bill that we so recently adopted 
and grant a rolling amnesty. Apparently, nobody else seems to care, but 
I care. That is why we have the rules of the Senate as we do, so that 
one person who cares can be heard, so that there can be a debate.
  So I intend to vote against tabling. I hope the vote will be 100 to 
0. But it won't change anything. We can vote not to table this 
amendment 100 times and it won't change anything, because I don't 
intend to step aside on this issue. Now, we have rules of the Senate. 
There can be cloture. We can file cloture and we are going to wait the 
several days that the Senate rules require it to mature.
  We can have extensive and thorough debate. This amendment is 
amendable. It is amendable with a motion to recommit with instructions. 
It will be amendable when the second-degree amendment is disposed of. 
It will be amendable when we vote to name conferees. It will be 
amendable when we vote to take up the House bill and insert the Senate 
language. It will be amendable in many different ways. And, until we 
find a solution, I intend to see that it is amended.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
proceed to vote on a motion to table amendment No. 1253 by the Senator 
from Florida. On this question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, 
and the clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the Senate will now proceed to vote on a 
motion to table amendment 1253 by the Senator from Florida. On this 
question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call 
the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Maryland [Mr. Sarbanes] is 
necessarily absent.
  The result was announced--yeas 2, nays 97, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 265 Leg.]

                                YEAS--2

     Byrd
     Stevens
       

                                NAYS--97

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cleland
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Reed
     Reid
     Robb
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Specter
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Warner
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Sarbanes
       
  The motion was rejected.




                          ____________________