    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [July 27, 1993]
    [Pages 1194-1196]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1194]]

    Remarks and an Exchange With Reporters on Immigration Policy
    July 27, 1993

        The President. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like
    to say a special word of thanks to the large number of Members of
    Congress who are here today. I think I have the entire list. If I don't,
    the Vice President will amend it when I finish. But I see Senator
    Kennedy, Senator Simon, Senator Feinstein, Senator Boxer, Senator Graham
    and Congressmen Brooks, Mazzoli, Schumer, Bryant, Fish, Kennedy, Lantos
    and Gilman. I think that's every Member of Congress here. Did I miss
    anyone? I missed Congressman Gallegly; I'm sorry.
        Several weeks ago, I asked the Vice President to work with our
    Departments and Agencies to examine what more might be done about the
    problems along our borders. I was especially concerned about the growing
    problems of alien smuggling and international terrorists hiding behind
    immigrant status, as well as the continuing flow of illegal immigrants
    across American borders.
        Following several weeks of intense efforts, including his personal
    involvement in resolving the recent alien smuggling incident with
    Mexico, the Vice President presented me with a report spelling out what
    we might do. I have reviewed that report and approved it. We have spoken
    to Members of Congress, including those who are here today and others. I
    want to particularly acknowledge Senator Kennedy, Senator Simpson,
    Congressmen Brooks and Mazzoli for all their work on this issue over
    many, many years. We're also in debt to Senators Feinstein and Boxer for
    their aggressive work in trying to deal with the growing problem,
    especially in the State of California, and I want to state publicly how
    much I appreciate the work the Hispanic Caucus has done to ensure that a
    balanced approach is adopted in dealing with this issue.
        The simple fact is that we must not, and we will not, surrender our
    borders to those who wish to exploit our history of compassion and
    justice. We cannot tolerate those who traffic in human cargo, nor can we
    allow our people to be endangered by those who would enter our country
    to terrorize Americans. But the solution to the problem of illegal
    immigration is not simply to close our borders. The solution is to
    welcome legal immigrants and legal legitimate refugees and to turn away
    those who do not obey the laws. We must say no to illegal immigration so
    we can continue to say yes to legal immigration.
        Today we send a strong and clear message. We will make it tougher
    for illegal aliens to get into our country. We will treat organizing a
    crime syndicate to smuggle aliens as a serious crime. And we will
    increase the number of border patrol, equipping and training them to be
    first class law enforcement officers. These initiatives for which I am
    asking the Congress for an additional $172.5 million in 1994 are an
    important step in regaining control over our borders and respect for our
    laws. When I made a commitment to combat this problem on June 18th, I
    announced a plan of action. This is the next step in fulfilling that
    commitment.
        Some will worry that our action today sends the wrong message, that
    this means we are against all immigration. That is akin to America
    closing its doors. But nothing could be further from the truth. Let me
    be clear: Our nation has always been a safe haven for refugees and
    always been the world's greatest melting pot. What we announce today
    will not make it tougher for the immigrant who comes to this country
    legally, lives by our laws, gets a job, and pursues the American dream.
    This administration will promote family unification. We will reach out
    to those who have the skills we need to make our nation stronger, and we
    will welcome new citizens to our national family with honor and with
    dignity. But to treat terrorists and smugglers as immigrants dishonors
    the tradition of the immigrants who have made our nation great. And it
    unfairly taints the millions of immigrants who live here honorably and
    are a vital part of every segment of our society. Today's initiatives
    are about stopping crime, toughening the penalties for the criminals,
    and giving our law enforcement people the tools they need to do their
    job.
        I'm also taking steps today to address the long-term challenges of
    reforming our immigration policy. I intend to appoint a new chair to the
    congressionally mandated Commission on Immigration Reform and to ask the
    Congress

    [[Page 1195]]

    to expand the Commission to include senior administration officials. I'm
    also asking our Attorney General, Janet Reno, and the INS Commissioner-
    Designate, Doris Meissner, to make sure the INS is as professional and
    effectively managed as it can be. Under their leadership, I have no
    doubt that it will be. With these efforts, I hope that we can begin a
    broad-based national discussion on this important issue and move toward
    significant resolution of the problems that plague all Americans.
        Now, I'd like to ask the Vice President to come forward with my
    thanks for his outstanding work to discuss the specifics of the
    initiative.

    [At this point, the Vice President outlined the immigration policy. The
    Attorney General then discussed what enforcement measures would be
    taken.]

        Q. With all due respect, sir, all of this has been tried previously.
    The Simpson, Romano, Mazzoli bill did make a similar attempt to this by
    increasing penalties, they increased funding, they increased border
    patrols, they increased penalties to employers, and yet, nothing
    happened. What leads you to believe that this time something might
    really happen?
        The President. I want to give them a chance to answer this. It's not
    true that all these things have been tried before. First, Senator
    D'Amato, I'm glad to see you. Thank you for coming.
        It's not true that all these things have been tried before, and it's
    certainly plain to anybody with eyes to see that the border patrol is
    drastically understaffed, breathtakingly understaffed. But there are
    also some new elements in this, and I think I'd let the Vice President
    and the Attorney General address them.
        The Vice President. Yes, the change in the exclusion provisions is
    brand new. The change in the investment in the information systems that
    will avoid a repetition of what happened when the sheik applied for a
    visa and then the office didn't have the information because even though
    the State Department did, it didn't have the information system to
    display it, a lot of these things are brand new. They've never been done
    before, and it is a coordinated approach involving all of the players
    involved and the full keyboard, if you will. Every part of the issue is
    being addressed here.
        Now, there are some things that are not addressed and the procedure
    the President outlined for addressing the longer term problems is going
    to work just as well as this procedure worked. It's going to take more
    time, though.
        Q. How much of this counterterrorism provision was sparked by the
    World Trade Center bombing, and how confident are you that the borders
    will be safe now from terrorists getting into the United States, if this
    proposed legislation is enacted?
        The President. I can answer the first part; maybe I should invite
    the Attorney General to comment on the second. There's no question that
    the World Trade Center bombing has caused us to review a whole range of
    issues, not just involving immigration, in terms of our ability to deal
    with the whole threat of actual or potential terrorism. And when that
    happened, we began in earnest to review not only this issue but the
    capacity of our law enforcement agencies to deal with it, and we will
    continue to do that. I think that I owe that to the American people, and
    that clearly had something to do with it.
        Attorney General Reno. With respect to the second part, no one can
    ensure anything, except that we are going to try our best. When I came
    into office, I found a service that too often did not communicate with
    law enforcement and vice-versa, that too often was not in communication
    with other Federal Agencies. I think it's imperative that we bring
    everyone together to communicate to do everything that we can to address
    the critical issue of terrorism and to be as vigilant as possible. To
    ensure our borders at this day and time is a very difficult task, but it
    is one that is of the highest priority of this administration.
        Q. Mr. President, on the question of the reason illegal Chinese
    immigrants--obviously, they involve three parties: the United States,
    China, and Taiwan, because some of the ships are from Taiwan. So I
    wonder, are you planning to personally discuss with leaders of China and
    Taiwan, maybe, in November APEC meeting in Seattle?
        The President. Well, let me say, first of all, I just talked to the
    Secretary of State last night, and he raised these issues personally in
    his conversation with the representative of the Chinese Government
    recently. And we have enjoyed good relations with Taiwan, also. We
    intend to raise it with them. We intend to raise it at the highest
    levels with both countries and to seek their active and consistent
    cooperation. And I think, as you point out, without that coopera-

    [[Page 1196]]

    tion, we will continue to have greater difficulties on this end. But I
    think they will help us more, and I have no reason to believe that they
    won't. We're just going to have to work on it. We're going to have to
    have their help to do better.
        Q. Are you inviting them to the APEC meeting? Are you inviting
    President Li Teng-hui to the APEC meeting?
        The President. We also are discussing how we're going to deal with
    the APEC meeting, who is going to come from all the 15 countries. And of
    course, who comes will be in part, I think, determined by how much we'll
    want to pursue this discussion there. But in terms of who will be there,
    that hasn't been finalized from their point of view.
        Go ahead.
        Q. Mr. President, how do you depoliticize the asylum process?
    Because in the Reagan years, anybody from El Salvador was not considered
    to have a bona fide claim of asylum. In the Bush years, Chinese fleeing
    birth control policies were deemed to have a good claim for asylum. How
    do you make this more rational so that the American people and the
    foreigners both know what qualifies as asylum?
        The President. That's a very good question. I'm so glad you asked
    it. I think the answer is that we have to have criteria for enforcing
    this law that grows out of our laws that are based on policies rooted in
    laws enacted by the Congress. I think that is the answer. Obviously, if
    Congress and the administration work with the Congress, if we decide
    that there's some policy that's so important for other reasons, for our
    other foreign policy concerns, our human rights concerns, you name it,
    that we want to root that in our legal policy, then no one can accuse us
    of being arbitrary, because we will have gone through a deliberative
    process. The Congress will have made a judgment; we will all be on
    public record.
        But I do think it's very important that immigrants from the world
    looking at us and governments from the world looking at us, not believe
    that the President will wake up someday and decide that for some
    arbitrary reason we will enforce the immigration laws of the country in
    one way or another. Perhaps the Vice President and the Attorney General
    would like to make a comment about that, also.
        The Vice President. I'd like to add one brief point. This proposal
    does take the partisanship and the politics out of it. This is a
    bipartisan initiative. Republicans as well as Democrats are here from
    both the Senate and the House. And if I could summarize the basic tone
    of this initiative, I would use the words of Doris Meissner, who is the
    designee to head up INS, when she said not long ago, we want to stop
    illegal immigration so that we can continue opening our country to legal
    immigration. The two go together, and that's what this proposal is
    designed to do.
        The President. I think we've answered about all the questions we
    can. I'd like to close by reemphasizing that point. When I ran for
    President, I think in some ways the most rewarding part of the
    experience was having the opportunity to see just how many different
    countries and how many different ethnic groups have contributed to
    making America what it is today. We don't want to do anything to
    interrupt that. But we cannot continue to progress as a country unless
    we have a more vigorous response to this problem, and we don't want to
    cloud the two. This has nothing to do with our support for keeping the
    rainbow and the melting pot of America going and growing and enriching
    and strengthening this country.
        But the kinds of practices that are manifest in who can get into
    this country on an airplane, what kind of illegal smuggling can go on,
    and the fact that our borders leak like a sieve, those things cannot be
    permitted to continue in good conscience. It's not good for the American
    immigrants who are here legally in this country, for the American
    economy, for the cohesion of our society, or for the rule of law
    worldwide. And we're going to try to do better. This is a very good
    first step.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:38 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive
    Office Building.