[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.