Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, while we are waiting for some other Members to come to the floor and discuss their proposed amendments, let me talk about an amendment which I had planned to offer but which I understand may not be considered germane--it is relevant but not germane, and therefore, presumably, I would not be able to offer it--but which is included in the House-passed bill and therefore will be a subject of the conference committee, and, therefore, I hope our Senate colleagues will be able to study and, hopefully, concur in it. This is an amendment to restrict section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. By way of explanation, prior to 1994, if an illegal alien residing in the United States became eligible for an immigrant visa through a family relationship or other means, then the alien could adjust to lawful, permanent resident status without any financial or other penalty. In order to obtain the visa, the alien was required to depart from the United States, obtain a visa at the foreign consulate, and then, of course, return and acquire the legal status here. Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act was added by section 505 of the fiscal year 1995 State appropriations measure. Under this new section, an illegal alien who becomes eligible for an immigrant visa may adjust to lawful permanent status without departing the United States, but only if the individual pays a penalty of five times the normal application fee. The penalty fee is approximately $750. Some have referred to this as, ``buying your way in.'' Those who are wealthy enough simply pay this fee, this five times the normal penalty fee, and thereby are able to convert an illegal status to legal status and never have to return home to obtain a visa to arrive here legally. Under the proposed amendment, which I will not be able to offer but, as I said, which is included in the House-passed version of the bill and which I hope our Senate conferees will look kindly upon, under this amendment, the aliens present in the United States illegally will no longer be able to stay here and buy their way into permanent resident status. They would have to return to their home country, obtain a legal visa, and return just as they did prior to 1995. The amendment would take effect on October 1, 1996. There are a couple of exceptions that are worth noting, because we do not want to penalize anyone who is already here and who would be acting under appropriate color of law. First, all aliens currently eligible for lawful permanent resident status under section 245(i) of the act may, under our proposal, upon payment of the full penalty fee, apply for legal status until October 1, 1996. After October 1, 1996, those aliens, and only those aliens in the so- called ``family fairness'' category, would be eligible to change their status under section 245(i). The people protected under that section are those under section 301 of the Immigration Act of 1990. They are exempt from this change. Those in the family fairness category would be able to stay in the United States and would not be faced with this penalty fee. It includes those children and spouses of aliens granted asylum on May 5, 1988. In order to be eligible, the spouse or the child must have been present in the United States on that date. Those are the people who, in some way, were grandfathered in, and, as a result, they would not be required to go back and obtain a visa in order to obtain legal status here. But, except for those two categories, people would no longer be able to buy their way into the United States. The amendment takes effect at the end of the fiscal year, in order to give INS and the State Department an opportunity to adjust their resources. After September 30, 1997, this whole section 245(i) would expire. Just a word. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of State oppose the amendment, primarily on fiscal grounds because of their costs inherent in processing the visa applications. We are in the process of working out the possibility where a fee would be paid which would cover their expenses and alleviate that particular concern. They also pose the argument that, regardless where an illegal alien applies for legal status, either in the United States or a consulate in their home country, the waiting period to achieve the visa is the same. The point I make, however, is that the illegal alien is already in the United States illegally and that is not something we should reward, at least for those who are able to pay for it, by simply having them pay a special fine. I also think what the agencies fail to appreciate is that once an illegal alien applies for legal status in the United States, he may be considered to be permanently residing in the United States under color of law, the so-called PRUCOL status. The PRUCOL standard is frequently used as a transitional status for aliens who are becoming permanent residents of the United States. If an alien is considered under PRUCOL, then that alien is eligible for numerous Federal assistance programs, including AFDC, SSI, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, housing assistance and other unrestricted programs. So, in this manner, aliens who enter the United States illegally would be rewarded if they are allowed to reside in the United States while they are waiting for a decision on their application. The amendment I have offered but will not reask for a vote on eliminates this reward and the accompanying drain on federally funded programs by requiring illegal aliens desiring to apply for permanent status to return to their home country. Just to summarize it, again, if you were here illegally, you would need to go back home and get a visa to apply for permanent legal status. You would not be able to pay a five-times-the-usual-amount fee and thereby buy your way into the country, as they say. Again, the House has adopted this. Hopefully, on the conference committee we will agree with the House proposal and we can make that change in our immigration law. Craig-Gorton Amendment Reforming the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program

Mr. KYL. I do not have any objection to that. I know the Senator from Nevada wants to speak on unrelated matters now. Perhaps as we get further into that, the precise nature in which we can proceed may be more apparent to us later than it is now. I have no objection.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator from Georgia for his work on this issue and for yielding the time to me relative to the comments that he just made. I note as recently as yesterday on the ``Meet the Press'' television program, Senator Joseph Biden said: ``The President is silent on the matter. He has failed to speak.'' Of course, we are talking about the matter of drug abuse and, more broadly, the war on drugs. Actually, I am very heartened that the President has rediscovered his enthusiasm to fight this war on drugs. When he campaigned for the Presidency in 1992, candidate Bill Clinton said, ``President Bush hasn't fought a real war on crime and drugs. I will.'' During the first 3 years in office, the President virtually ignored the drug problem. The moving trucks had barely arrived from Little Rock when the President slashed the office, the so-called drug czar's office, by 80 percent. The drug problem received little attention thereafter from his administration. Whatever the motivation, some might say election year politics, I assume it is an obvious realization that the policy has not worked and has had a disastrous effect. The President has now reversed course and is exercising very needed leadership in our efforts to combat drugs. During his State of the Union Address, the President announced the appointment of General McCaffrey as the next drug czar, a welcome appointment, because General McCaffrey has a very fine reputation, and, of course, the energy and enthusiasm to deal with this problem. clinton's abdication on the war on drugs a. slashing ondcp's budget As mentioned before, one of the first official acts by President Clinton was to slash the drug czar's staff by more than 80 percent. The number of workers fell from 146 to just 25--half of the size of the White's House's communication staff. The President also cut the budget from $185.8 to $5.8 million--a 90-percent cut. After drastically reducing the size of the drug czar's office, the President took nearly a year to select a drug czar, finally settling on Lee Brown. Lee Brown was not an effective drug czar. Instead of focusing efforts on getting cocaine and other drugs off of our streets, Mr. Brown launched an effort to have ``Big League Chew'' bubble-gum removed from convenience store chains. The drug czar's office was concerned that the packaging resembled some chewing tobacco products, although its Deputy Director admitted that the agency didn't have any hard data to show look-alikes lead to use of the real thing. b. appointing a surgeon general who proposed legalizing drugs Lee Brown was not the only Clinton administration official to set back efforts to combat drug use. While serving as the Nation's top health official, Jocelyn Elders commented that, ``[I] do feel that we would markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized.'' c. dramatically reduced interdiction efforts Under President Clinton, interdiction has been dramatically scaled back. Keeping drugs out of the country was an important and successful element of the Reagan-Bush drug war. Successful interdiction leads to less drugs reaching our streets, and poisoning our children. Interdiction raises the price of drugs, and lowers their purity, which translates into less people using drugs, and those who do, ingesting drugs of lower potency. As a candidate for the Presidency, Clinton recognized the importance of interdiction: [W]e need an effective, coordinated drug interdiction program that stops the endless flow of drugs entering our schools, our streets, and our communities. A Clinton-Gore Administration will provide cities and states with the help they need. The President's fiscal year 1996 request represented a 37-percent cut from 1991 interdiction funding levels. And in Clinton's first year in office, the National Security Council downgraded the drug war from one of three top priorities to number 29 on a list of 29. Between 1993 and the first half of 1995, the transit zone disruption rate--which measures the ability of the United States to seize or turn back drug shipments--dropped 53 percent. The President has cut the interdiction budgets of the U.S. Customs Service, the Department of Defense, and the Coast Guard. Not surprisingly, these agencies are showing a downturn in statistical measures of interdiction. The administration's cuts to the Customs Service interdiction budget coincided with a 70-percent decline in Customs-supported cocaine seizure in the transit zone. Between fiscal years 1992 and 1995, the Defense interdiction budgets were reduced by more than half. The Coast Guard operating budget for drug missions fell from $449.2 million in fiscal year 1991 to a projected $314.2 million in fiscal year 1996. Cutter and aircraft resource hours for drug missions are projected to fall 23 and 34 percent, over the same period. d. reduced emphasis on law enforcement The President has also reduced the emphasis on law enforcement. If the President's fiscal year 1995 budget proposal had been passed, the DEA, FBI, INS, U.S. Customs Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard would have lost a total of 621 drug enforcement agents. While Congress reversed many of the Clinton cuts, the DEA has lost over 200 agents during the President's tenure. No DEA special agents were trained in 1993, nor were any budgeted to be trained in either 1994, or 1995. Although drug use is going up, the number of individuals prosecuted for Federal drug violations is going down. Between 1992 and 1994 drug prosecutions dropped 12 percent. e. abandoned bully pulpit President Clinton has failed to use the bully pulpit. Criticism of the President's lack of leadership on the drug issue is bipartisan. Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, said: ``I've been in Congress for over two decades, and I have never, never, never seen a President who cares less about this issue.'' And yesterday on ``Meet the Press,'' Senator Biden said: ``This President is silent on the matter. He has failed to speak.'' f. treatment strategy The de facto strategy of the Clinton administration in fighting drugs was to deemphasize interdiction, law enforcement, and prevention, and concentrate on treatment. But even though Federal treatment spending was 230 percent greater in 1995 than in 1989, the number of persons served in treatment decreased 144,000. The President has continued to pursue his treatment strategy, even though reducing hard-core drug use through treatment is generally futile. A 1994 study by the Rand Corp. prepared for the drug czar's office studied the effects of treatment of hard-core cocaine users. The study found that 27 percent of hard-core drug users continued hard core use while undergoing treatment. And 88 percent of hard-core users returned to hard-core use immediately after treatment. results of president's lack of leadership a. drug use is up As a measure of President Clinton's lack of leadership, drug use is up. The Clinton administration's abdication of the war on drugs has already had a devastating effect on all Americans--especially our Nation's children. Last year, the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research found that, after a decade of steady decline, drug use by students in grades 8, 10, and 12 rose in 1993. More bad news: In September 1995, the Department of HHS released the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which showed that marijuana use had increased by an average of 50 percent among young people. One in three high school seniors now smokes marijuana. We are approaching the point where a student is just as likely to drink a soft drink than use an illicit substance The increase in marijuana use among young people is frightening, not only because so many of our young people are using this dangerous narcotic, but also because, according to surveys by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 12- to 17-year-olds who use marijuana are 85 times more likely to graduate to cocaine than those who do not use marijuana. Hard-core drug use is also up. The treatment strategy is failing. Far from decreasing the number of hard-core uses as Clinton predicted, the number is increasing. The Drug Abuse Warning Network [DAWN], which monitors the number and pattern of drug-related emergencies and deaths in 21 major metropolitan areas across the country is used as a bellwether of hard-core use because so many emergency room cases involve hard-core addicts. The most recent DAWN results: Cocaine-related episodes hit their highest level in history in 1995. Marijuana-related episodes increased 39 percent, and methamphetamine cases rose 256 percent over the 1991 level. Clearly, it makes far more sense to spend resources that will prevent people from using drugs in the first place. Once people are damaged by drugs, at most, treatment can prevent further harm. As some have said, you can't fight a war by focusing only on the treatment of the wounded.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Let me finish making this point. Because what we are talking about with the backlog requires two points of clarification. One, that backlog will be cleared up; those people will get their legal status eventually and, in the meantime, as my colleague points out, they are here already, they are already unified, they are not suffering apart from each other. Second, it is important to note that the Simpson amendment grandfathers all of those people who came, I believe it is before May 1988--the exact date Senator Simpson can clarify--so that we are really not talking about in any real numbers creating a hardship for those adult children who would want to be reunified under the third priority. Mr. President, I really would like to get on.

Mr. KYL. I will yield one more time.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise in favor of the Simpson amendment. First of all, let us understand something very clearly. The discussion about separating the bills, the legal and illegal bills, boils down to one simple political fact. Those who do not want any changes in the laws relating to legal immigration in this country, who do not want to change the numbers, who want to continue to see the number of legal immigrants in this country continue to rise, as the charts that were shown earlier indicate--those people who do not want to see any constraints on legal immigration also do not want to see the issues of legal and illegal immigration combined into one bill because they understand that there is a very strong political desire to deal with the problem of illegal immigration. This body will not refrain from dealing with the problem of illegal immigration. Therefore, if we are talking about the same subjects in the same bill--there is going to be a bill and there could be a change in the law relative to legal immigration--so they do not want to see that. They would rather see the legislation regarding illegal immigration pass and then do nothing with respect to legal immigration. The Jordan Commission made some very substantial recommendations about both legal and illegal immigration. Specifically, it determined that our law should be changed to put some caps on the numbers of people legally immigrating to the United States. The basis for the recommendation was what has occurred in the last 10 years, both with respect to illegal immigration and the increases in legal immigration. Ten years ago or so when the law was changed, the assumption was that we would stop illegal immigration. How naive, I guess, everyone was. We thought by making it illegal to hire those who were here illegally, we would remove the magnet and people would stop coming here illegally. We would not employ them. Therefore we would not have as many illegal entrants. And, therefore, we could afford to raise the number of legal entrants. So the Senate and the House in their wisdom, before the occupant of the chair and I came to the Congress, decided that what they would do, since we were going to have so many fewer illegal immigrants, was to simply raise by almost a quarter of a million the number of people who could come here legally. Of course not only have we had more legal entrants every year, but illegal immigration has also risen. It is the combination of both of these numbers increasing that has resulted in the substantial majorities of people surveyed, regardless of which survey you look at, who say we need to do something about the problem, both problems. We need to get a handle on controlling our borders. We need to make it harder for illegal immigrants to be employed and receive welfare benefits. And we also need to reduce somewhat the number of people coming into the country legally. You can argue about where the numbers should be. My own view is that at least it ought to be taken about to the level that it was 10 years ago. It is still about a quarter of a million people a year. The Jordan Commission actually recommended fewer than that. The Simpson amendment actually recommends more than the Jordan commission did, but it recommends it as a true cap. It says this is a real number; 480,000 will be it. Period. That is, each year, how many people can come in legally. The bill, as it came out of the Judiciary Committee and as it is here on the floor, however, does not really limit the numbers. It provides a cap but it is called a pierceable cap, meaning you can actually have more numbers than that. And, because of a phenomenon which I will discuss in a moment, the net result is that there really is no cap at all. So let us speak very plain English here. Nobody is trying to cut off legal immigration. Nobody is trying to cut it in half. Nobody is trying to cut it even by 25 percent. But what we are saying is that there should be some limit on it, as opposed to the bill, which will enable it to escalate substantially. Those who favor basically open, legal immigration, will say, ``Oh, no, the bill actually has a cap in it.'' That is true. But, as I will point out in a minute, the cap does not mean anything. It can be pierced and it will be pierced because of the large number of people who are awaiting their turn to become legal citizens, just precisely as Senator Alan Simpson pointed out during his remarks about an hour ago. Let me return to a point that I made just a second ago and actually cite some numbers. A recent ABC poll showed that 73 percent of the people in the country want reduced immigration. A recent Roper poll showed that only 2 percent of the respondents supported the current levels of immigration; only 4 percent of blacks and Hispanics supported the current level. There is overwhelming view in our country that immigration numbers should be somewhat reduced. If I look at the actual survey numbers, as was pointed out before, most of our citizens would reduce those numbers far below what any of us are talking about doing here today. We ought to be responding to what our constituents are asking, but as happens so much here inside the beltway, with various lobby groups putting pressures on Members, we are not even going to come close to what the majority of the people in this country are asking. We are not going to reduce the number of legal immigrants in the country to 100,000 per year, as a majority of Americans would like to see. We are not going to call a time out on any legal immigration. We are not going to reduce it to 200,000 or 300,000 or 400,000. The most that we are going to do is to get it about at the level that it was 10 years ago, somewhere in the neighborhood of 480,000. So all of the great speeches about how we are shutting off immigration and we are keeping people from coming to this country obscures the fact that we would be allowing about one-half million legal immigrants into the country every year. Of course, this bill applies only to 5 years, and then we go back to the levels that exist today. The Simpson amendment is just a temporary 5-year breathing space to establish a true priority system for family immigration. As Senator Simpson pointed out, one of two things has to happen here. Either we have to change the priorities so that instead of spouses and minor children, the two groups that we want to grant the top priority to--that is existing law; I think that is what all of us would agree to--we are either going to have to change that priority so that brothers and sisters or others could come in ahead of them or, if we are going to do what the proponents of more immigrants want, we are going to have to increase the total numbers, because the current priority system will result in far more people coming in than the current numbers allow. That is why this pierceable cap--it is only a cap in name, because the fact is the proponents of more immigration understand that if you leave the priority system as it is, inevitably there will be far more legal immigrants than there are today. The goal with the Simpson amendment is reunification of the nuclear family to ensure that the spouses can come in, that they have a top priority and that the minor children have a top priority. One of my colleagues made this argument, ``Well, Senator Simpson is actually giving a greater priority to the children of permanent residents than to the children of citizens.'' That is not true, Mr. President. Minor children of citizens are the first priority. Minor children of permanent residents are the second priority. It is true that minor children of permanent residents have a priority above adult children of either citizens or permanent residents. I ask my colleagues who made the argument, would they change that priority? Would you put a higher priority on the adult children of citizens than on the minor children of permanent residents? Because, remember, permanent residents are legal, too. They have a right to live in this country as long as they live, and if we are talking about keeping nuclear families together, we have to be very straightforward about this, and I do not think there is anyone here who would not agree that the current priority, which is for spouses and minor children, should be the top priority. So let us not hear discussion about how we are putting the children of permanent residents above the children of citizens. We are putting the minor children of permanent residents above the adult children of those who become citizens.

Mr. KYL. As has been noted earlier, that statistic could well be accurate, and about 65 percent of those people who are here are here illegally, if Senator Simpson's statistics are correct, which would suggest to me that we should not be granting a priority to people who, though they are here, got here illegally. I will be happy to yield for another question.

Mr. KYL. It is a point well made, but I believe the point relates to all the categories. As Senator Simpson related before, in all four categories of priorities, there are people here illegally who are simply waiting for their turn to become officially recognized as legal. The largest number is in the first category, and then it goes down in number to the point in the bottom category it is the fewest. So in each of these categories there are people who are here illegally who will have to wait a while before their status can be made legal and who, as my colleague from Ohio rightly points out, are not going to be kicked out. It is important for us, however, therefore, to focus on this question of priority. Senator Simpson and I and others simply believe that the first priority should be the priority of the Jordan Commission and of the existing law that minor children and spouses are the first to receive their legal status. In some cases, it will be legal status for the first time reunifying the family because the rest of the family is not in the country. In other cases, they are already here, and it is simply legalizing the status quo. The next priority and the priority after that would then come into play. In each case, there are some people who are already here illegally who would become legal, and there are others who were abroad and would be allowed to come to the country, reunify with the family, and eventually become legal. It is all a matter of priorities, Mr. President. As Senator Simpson noted, one of two things is true: Either we change the priorities--and, again, I do not really think anybody is really suggesting that--or we have to recognize that there are so many people who are eligible that the numbers are going to increase dramatically. I think there is an interesting story. By the way, may I just go back and point out when I talked about pierceable, I meant to describe what we mean by that. The Simpson amendment provides for 480,000 admissions per year. The question is whether or not that number is pierceable or not. The Simpson amendment is a true number. What you see is what you get. What the Jordan Commission recommended was a far lower number, 400,000, but theirs was pierceable, as is the current bill. ``Pierceable'' means that, because admission of nuclear family members of citizens is unlimited, the admission limit can be pierced. That is the top category, the citizen category. It is actually two categories, because the citizen's both minor children and spouses and then also other relatives of citizens. Because the number of relatives of citizens is unlimited, when we say there is a cap of 480,000 or 400,000 or whatever it may be, that is not really true. It is that number plus however many additional relatives of citizens are allowed to come in. The Simpson number is a true number: 480,000, period. Over time, that will accommodate all of the categories that they want to come in. Some will simply have to wait longer than others. We say the ones that should have to wait longer are the more distant relatives, not the spouses and the minor children. What are the official estimates of how many numbers we are talking about? According to the official INS estimates, immediate relatives will range from 329,000 to 473,000. Mr. President, let me read those numbers again for the benefit of my colleagues. Remember, the Simpson amendment calls for 480,000 family members--additional employment and diversity numbers--but 480,000 family members. INS' official estimates are there will be from 329,000 to 473,000 immediate relatives over the next 7 years, with an average of about 384,000 for immediate relatives. So the number of 480,000 is plenty to accommodate these immediate relatives. There would be about 100,000 additional slots for family- based categories other than the immediate relatives, the people who my colleagues from Ohio and Michigan have primarily addressed, 100,000 a year. It does not provide additional slots for the legalization backlog reduction. It is assumed those individuals will be absorbed in the immediate relatives category of U.S. citizens, many of whom, as my colleague noted, are now eligible for naturalization. As I noted, at the end of 5 years this limitation of 480,000 ends anyway. So under the official INS statistics, there is plenty of room for all of the people who have been talked about here to become legal in the United States of America. The facts, however, are somewhat different than the official story. Here is where we find out the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. It appears that there are some informal INS estimates that differ from the formal estimates. In fact, according to the San Diego Union- Tribune article that has been mentioned here, there will be a significant increase, a 41-percent increase in legal immigration that the INS now says will enter the United States over the next 2 years. They have undercalculated or miscalculated too low for the next 2 years, and the fact of the matter is, we are going to see about a 41- percent increase in the next 2 years. The article provides details about unreleased data from the INS showing that immigration will rise 41 percent this year and next year over 1995 levels. This is the result of an approximate 300,000 administrative backlog of relatives of individuals who have not realized applying for alien status. Therefore, the fact is, under the bill as currently written, we are not going to see a slight decrease. As the proponents like to say, we are going to see a huge increase. As Senator Simpson noted, you cannot have it both ways: Either you change the priority, which nobody wants to do, or recognize there have to be a whole lot more numbers. The truth is, as the INS-reported numbers in the San Diego paper show, that will be substantially increased over 1995: 41 percent in both years. As I said, the Simpson amendment is important because it provides a true temporary limit. In 1990--in 1990--the level of immigration was increased substantially, by 37 percent. There was an increase because it was thought that the new employer sanctions would reduce illegal immigration, as I mentioned before. That has not occurred. We know that there are approximately 4 million illegal immigrants in the country and about 300,000 to 400,000 new illegal immigrants entering the country each year. So that number has to be added to the numbers that we are talking about for legal immigrants. Mr. President, the United States has always been--and, as long as I have anything to say about it, is going to be--a land of opportunity both for U.S. citizens and certainly for all of those who come here legally. But as much as we are a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws. We cannot afford, as a nation, to continue to incur the unrestrained costs of both legal and illegal immigration in jobs, welfare, education and health care. Senator Simpson is trying to get a handle on this by limiting immigration very slightly over a very limited period of time, 5 years, as the American people have demanded. Unless we reform our legal and illegal immigration laws, I believe we will undermine the United States as a land of opportunity for all, both foreign and native born. Everybody has a story to tell how they got here. My grandparents emigrated here from Holland. My grandmother hardly spoke English. I am very proud of my Dutch ancestry and the traditions that we have maintained, but I think that my grandparents, who assimilated into our society and became Americans, would be rather shocked and somewhat disappointed at the way that the system has grown over recent years. My guess is that they would be supporting attempts of people like Senator Simpson to try to bring the right kind of balance and to try to provide opportunity for all of those who are here already and who we will invite legally to come here in the future. That is why I support the Simpson amendment. I think it is a very reasonable amendment. It is even more liberal, if you want to use that term, than the Jordan Commission recommendation. I know that we all regret that the chairman of the Jordan Commission, Barbara Jordan, herself is not here, cannot be here, because of her untimely death, to defend the rationale for the Jordan Commission report, which, as I said, is even more conservative in this regard than the Simpson amendment. But I think we ignore that report at our peril, and we ignore the sensible arguments that Senator Simpson has made here at our peril. As I said, that is why I support and hope that others will support the Simpson amendment. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. KYL. Sure.

Mr. KYL. My colleague makes a point. I think he proves too much by his argument, though. Nobody is going to kick them out. That is the whole point. So all the bleeding heart stories about how these people are not going to be reunified is, frankly, beside the point. They are here. Many of them are here illegally, but they are here. What they will have to wait for is simply their opportunity in line to have their status recognized as legal. So in point of fact, they are not being hurt one iota.

Mr. KYL. Yes, just for a moment.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I support the amendment offered by the Senator from California. It is a good-faith effort to try to respond to the critics of the Simpson amendment, and I think it does a very good job of doing that. As Senator Kennedy pointed out just now, however, it does retain the cap of 480,000, and this is what we are trying to say here today. You really cannot have it both ways. You cannot say that we are not increasing illegal immigration and then not do anything to achieve that goal, because under the bill as written, immigration is going to skyrocket. That is what the INS figures and formally reported by the San Diego Union paper said: 40 percent next year; 41 percent the year after that. If we are willing to accept those large numbers, then we should be up front about that. But everyone who has supported the bill out of committee and opposed the Simpson amendment has inferred that we are really not going to increase numbers at all. The fact is, we would increase them. Under both the Simpson and Feinstein amendment, we would have a cap. So that problem, the problem of, in effect, runaway numbers, is solved by this cap of 480,000. But at the same time, Senator Feinstein is attempting to respond to the criticism that opponents of the Simpson amendment made, which is that all of the preference could be used up by the first category, theoretically, and you would never guarantee that some of the second, third and fourth preferences could be satisfied. So what Senator Feinstein has done is to say there will be certain slots left open for, for example, the grown children of citizens or siblings and, therefore, to the extent the 480,000 cap was not reached by the first preference, that the other preferences would each have a number--and it is not 7,000, the numbers would range between 35,000, 75,000, depending upon how many are available. Just in conclusion, it seems to me this is a good-faith effort to deal with legitimate concerns that were raised, but, yes, it is also true that there is an absolute cap of 480,000, because the purpose here is twofold: to allow several different categories, each to have a number of slots to be made legal under our system, but at the same time draw an overall limit so that annually no more than 480,000 would be permitted to come in under this particular family category. So I think the Feinstein amendment is a good compromise, and I urge my colleagues to support it. Mrs. FEINSTEIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, this is an amendment which we offered in the subcommittee which Senator Kennedy and I worked on, and I believe that we have reached an agreement on this matter of immunization. I note that I have two other amendments. But I think Senator Kennedy would have an interest in both of them. So if he is going to have to leave, I will defer offering those amendments until he has an opportunity to be here. Might I inquire of Senator Kennedy? After we do the immunization amendment, it is my intention to offer two other amendments. But I believe the Senator from Massachusetts would have an interest in both of them. Would he prefer that we offer those tomorrow?

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator. Mr. President I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. KYL. I will not call for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. KYL. Yes.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the desk.

Mr. KYL. I will be very brief in describing this amendment, and we can lay it aside. The next one that I would propose to offer relates to public housing and the qualification for being able to receive public housing. That one there may be some difference of opinion on because the Department of Housing and Urban Development agrees with all of the amendment except they would prefer a 6-month rather than 3-month qualification period. My amendment tracks the House of Representatives, specifically the amendment which was adopted there as part of the managers' amendment and provided for a 3-month qualification period. Perhaps, as I am describing in more detail the immunization amendment, the Senator or his staff would determine how they want to proceed. Very briefly, this immunization amendment, which was tentatively approved in the Immigration Subcommittee, simply requires that an individual applying for permanent residency status must be immunized for vaccine-preventable diseases. To give you an idea of what it would require, before a visa is approved, an individual applying for permanent residency status must receive a vaccination assessment or be vaccinated against measles and polio for those under 5 years of age and any other vaccination determined necessary by Health and Human Services before they arrive in the United States. Aliens who have not received the entire series of vaccinations as recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices--and this includes a list of about 10 different particular diseases--would be required to return within 30 days of entry to the United States to a civil surgeon to receive these vaccinations. Mumps is actually required before entry into the United States. To recover costs of establishing and administering the civil surgeon and panel physician programs, the Attorney General would be required to impose a fee on aliens applying for permanent resident status. Currently, when any of the approximately 800,000 legal immigrants arrive annually in the United States, they are not required to be immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. This amendment will help ensure that immigrants receive the recommended immunizations. It should not present a financial difficulty for the immigrant. The estimated cost for all childhood vaccines is estimated to be $248. The Department of Health and Human Services has made immunization of the U.S. population a top priority and by the year 2000 hopes to eradicate or reduce infinitely vaccine-preventable diseases. So, Mr. President, this amendment is needed to prevent the spread of these diseases. I believe it has the support of everyone. Unless there is further discussion on this, I would inquire of the Senator from Wyoming what procedure he would like to follow with respect to moving on to additional amendments and call for votes since I doubt that this would need a vote.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Madam President, I rise in support of Senate Joint Resolution 21, a resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution to limit congressional terms to two in the Senate and six in the House--12 years in each body. Madam President, I want to begin my remarks by thanking the majority leader, Senator Dole, for making good on his promise to schedule Senate action on the term limit amendment this month. Without his support and his commitment to term limits, this initiative probably would never have seen the light of day. It would have been easy to dodge a vote--as many opponents, no doubt, would like to have been able to do--since the House already voted down a term limit amendment last year. But Senator Dole followed through on his commitment to ensure that there would be a full and fair debate and that we would have an opportunity to vote on the issue. The American people deserve to know where their Senators stand. Madam President, term limits are no panacea. They will not guarantee the election of sensible and honest individuals to Congress. They will not put an end to the influence that special interests can sometimes wield on Capitol Hill. However, term limits will help. They will help by ensuring regular turnover in Congress--guaranteeing that the people who make our laws have to live under the laws they have passed. It is too easy for legislators, who have been on Capitol Hill too long, to forget what it is like to struggle in the marketplace to survive--what it means to try to meet a payroll when the Federal Government is constantly imposing new mandates on a small business. New taxes, new regulations, more redtape. They forget what it is like for a family to try to make ends meet, when more and more is taken from their paychecks in taxes every week--higher gasoline and FICA taxes, for example. Members of Congress have learned a lot in just the short time that the Congressional Accountability Act has been in place. The myriad of workplace laws and regulations had little meaning before last year because they never applied to Congress. When we finally had to live under the same laws and regulations as the rest of the country, the people's frustrations took on a whole new meaning. It is that kind of connection with what people have to endure from their government on a daily basis that term limits will foster. Congressional service should not be a life-long career. Term limits would also help to disperse some of the power that has become concentrated in the hands of a few very senior Members of both bodies. It would also help to ensure that all of us make decisions that are in accord with the views of the electorate. Take the Federal budget, for example. The American people have been demanding less spending, lower taxes, and a balanced budget in more forceful terms every year. Newer Members of Congress tend to vote for less Federal spending than those who have served for a long time. In fact, a recent National Taxpayers Union [NTU] survey found a correlation between tenure in Congress and increased spending. NTU found that the 88 freshmen members of the House who were elected in 1994 voted for an average of $26 billion less in spending than non- freshmen did. The 11 new Senators elected in 1994 supported an average of $26.2 billion more in spending reduction than their senior colleagues. That is not to say that all of the more senior Members voted for more Government spending. But as a group, newer Members more closely reflected the desires of their constituents for less spending and leaner Government. It is a trend that term limits would help to promote. Madam President, 23 States, including my home State of Arizona, have attempted to impose term limits on their congressional delegations. But a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that all State term-limit laws that apply to U.S. Senators and Congressmen are unconstitutional. The majority held that the Constitution fixes the qualifications for congressional service, and that neither Congress nor the States may supplement them. That is why we have a constitutional amendment before us today--because all other legislative avenues have been foreclosed. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote a friend suggesting ways that the newly drafted Constitution could be improved. Jefferson said three things were missing: a Bill of Rights, limits on the tenure of the Chief Executive, and term limits for Congress. Since then, we have seen Jefferson's first two ideas implemented; the resolution before us today embraces the last. Madam President, I urge support for the term limits amendment.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, April 21-27 is National Crime Victims' Rights Week. To ensure that crime victims are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect, I rise--along with my colleague Senator Feinstein--to introduce a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to establish and protect the rights of crime victims. Representative Henry Hyde will introduce a companion joint resolution in the House. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a full committee hearing on the resolution tomorrow, Tuesday, April 23. And I would like to thank Senator Hatch for recognizing the importance of this issue and moving so quickly to hold hearings. This should be a signal to my colleagues and to all America that the time for justice for crime victims is at hand. The proposed constitutional amendment will give victims fundamental rights to be informed, present, and heard at critical stages throughout their case, and the rights to a speedy trial, reasonable protection, and full restitution from the convicted offender--the least the system owes to those it failed to protect. The text of the amendment is clear and straightforward. It reads: Section 1. To ensure that the victim is treated with fairness, dignity, and respect, from the occurrence of a crime of violence and other crimes as may be defined by law pursuant to section 2 of this article, and throughout the criminal, military, and juvenile justice processes, as a matter of fundamental rights to liberty, justice, and due process, the victim shall have the following rights: to be informed of and given the opportunity to be present at every proceeding in which those rights are extended to the accused or convicted offender; to be heard at any proceeding involving sentencing, including the right to object to a previously negotiated plea, or release from custody; to be informed of any release or escape; and to a speedy trial, a final conclusion free from unreasonable delay, full restitution from the convicted offender, reasonable measures to protect the victim from violence or intimidation by the accused or convicted offender, and notice of the victim's rights. Section 2. The several States, with respect to a proceeding in a State forum, and the Congress with respect to a proceeding in a United States forum, shall have the power to implement further the rights established in this article by appropriate legislation. Mr. President, these simple words will help to restore justice to a system fraught with injustice. Support The amendment is supported by major national victims' rights groups: Parents of Murdered Children, Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD], the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Victim Center, the National Victims' Constitutional Amendment Network, the Victim Assistance Legal Organization, and the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau. Need to Protect victims' rights--scales of justice imbalanced There is a need to protect victims' rights because the scales of justice are imbalanced. Those accused of crime have many constitutionally protected rights; They are innocent until proven guilty; they have the right to due process; right to confront witnesses; right against self-incrimination; right to a jury trial; right to a speedy trial; right to counsel; right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet, despite rights for the accused, the U.S. Constitution, our highest law, does not protect the rights of crime victims. The recognized symbol of justice is a figure holding a balanced set of scales, but in reality the scales are heavily weighed on the side of the accused. These protections are sadly one-sided. My proposal will not deny or infringe any constitutional right of any person accused or convicted of a crime. But it will add to the body of rights we all enjoy as Americans. Each year, about 43 million Americans are victims of serious crime. These victims have no constitutional rights. They are often treated as mere inconveniences, forced to view the process from the sidelines. Defendants can be present through their entire trial because they have a constitutional right to be there. But in many trials, victims are ordered to leave the courtroom. Victims often are not informed of critical proceedings, such as hearings to consider releasing a defendant on bail or allowing him to plea bargain to a reduced charge. Even when victims find out about these proceedings, they frequently have no opportunity to speak. Today, victims have no right to reasonable finality. It is not uncommon for cases to last years and years after the jury verdict, while courts again and again review the same issue. These lengthy delays cause terrible suffering for crime victims, especially the loved ones of homicide victims. What others consider as a mere inconvenience can be an endless nightmare for the victim. Patricia Pollard Consider the case of Patricia Pollard--a woman from my home State of Arizona. In July 1974, on a road just outside of Flagstaff, AZ, Patricia Pollard was silenced--first by an attacker, and then by the judicial system. Eric Mageary used the jagged edge of a ripped beer can to inflict deep slash wounds in her body. He broke her ribs and her jaw. He choked her into unconsciousness and left her for dead by the side of the road. Patricia survived. Mageary was convicted and sent to prison. Ten years short of serving his minimum sentence, he was paroled. No notice was given to Patricia. If given the opportunity, Patricia would have wanted to tell the judge about the crime, about how dangerous Mageary was, and how a long prison sentence was needed to protect the community from this vicious criminal. But the law gave Patricia no right to be heard, and society paid for its silencing of her. Mageary's parole was soon revoked for serious narcotics violations, and he was back in prison. In 1990, the people of Arizona amended their State constitution to add a victims' bill of rights, which established the right of victims to be informed, present, and heard at every critical stage in their case. Incredibly, in 1993, in direct violation of Patricia's new constitutional rights, the parole board voted to release Mageary--again without hearing from Patricia. But this time there was a remedy for this injustice. An action was filed to stop the release and force the board to hold another hearing in which Patricia's rights would be protected. The Arizona Court of Appeals acted swiftly and stopped the release. The second time around, after the board took the time to hear directly about the horrible nature of the crime, they voted for public safety and for Patricia, and kept Mageary behind bars. Without constitutional rights for Patricia, the safety of the community would have been jeopardized again. Constitutional rights restored Patricia's voice. Not all Americans have these rights, and even those that exist are not protected by the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution. That is why today, during National Crime Victims' Rights Week, Senator Feinstein and I are introducing a victims' bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution to extend to victims throughout the country a threshold of basic fairness. Victims must be given a voice--not a veto, but a real opportunity to stand and speak for justice and the law abiding in our communities. statistics Patricia Pollard is not an isolated example. As I noted earlier, each year 43 million Americans are victims of serious crime, according to the Department of Justice. According to DOJ statistics released last week, during 1994 there were 10.9 million violent crimes, 6.6 million simple assaults, 2.5 million aggravated assaults, 1.3 million robberies, and 430,000 rapes or other types of sexual assault. Also, one of every nine persons from 12 through 15 years old was a violent crime victim during 1994. And just this week the Clinton administration reported that crime costs Americans at least $450 billion a year. These numbers are staggering and sobering. And they demonstrate the enormous burden that crime forces its victims to carry. The breakdown of social order and the crisis of crime that accompany it, have swelled the ranks of criminals, and those who suffer at their hands, to proportions that astonish us, that break our hearts, and that demand collective action. And the process of detecting, prosecuting, and punishing criminals continues, in too many places in America, to ignore the rights of victims to fundamental justice. twenty states have constitutional amendments The need for a constitutional amendment was first recognized in 1982 by a President's Task Force on Victims of Crime, which concluded that the criminal justice system has lost its essential balance. Since then, 20 States have adopted victims' amendments. The average electoral support for these amendments was 78 percent. In 1994, six States approved constitutional amendments--all by landslides: Alabama, 80 percent; Alaska, 87 percent; Idaho, 79 percent; Maryland, 92 percent; Ohio, 77 percent; and Utah, 68 percent. But this patchwork of State constitutional amendments is inadequate. A Federal amendment would establish a basic floor of victims' rights--a floor below which States could not go. victims need rights in the federal constitution Some may say, ``I'm all for victims' rights but they don't need to be in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is too hard to change. All we need to do is pass some good statutes to make sure that victims are treated fairly.'' But statutes have not worked to restore balance and fairness for victims. The Federal Government has well-written statutes that were intended to establish rights for victims in Federal proceedings. Yet the promise of those statutes lies largely unfulfilled. The whole history of our country teaches us that constitutions are needed to protect the basic rights of the people. The original Bill of Rights was adopted to guarantee that the Federal Government would never infringe on inalienable rights enjoyed by the people--neither at the hands of an overreaching executive nor an inflamed majority in Congress. Some argued that because the Federal Government did not possess the power in the Constitution to infringe these rights, the express protection of them in the Constitution was unnecessary. History soon taught us the wisdom of including the Bill of Rights. Who would be comfortable now if the right to free speech, or a free press, or to peaceably assemble, or any of our other rights were subject to the whims of changing legislative or court majorities? When the rights to vote were extended to all regardless of race, and to women, were they simply put into a statute? Who would dare stand before a crowd of people anywhere in our country and say that a defendant's rights to a lawyer, a speedy public trial, due process, to be informed of the charges, to confront witnesses, to remain silent, or any of the other constitutional protections are important, but don't need to be in the Constitution? Such a position would be rightly subject to ridicule. Yet that is precisely what critics of the victims' bill of rights would tell crime victims. Victims of crime will never be treated fairly by a system that permits the defendant's constitutional rights always to trump the protections given to victims. Such a system forever would make victims second-class citizens. It is precisely because the Constitution is hard to change that basic rights for victims need to be protected in it. Our criminal justice system needs the kind of fundamental reform that can only be accomplished through changes in our fundamental law. Today we have a system of justice that accommodates the interests of its professionals fairly well, but it all too often treats its citizens, its victims, with hostility, and almost always with indifference. Attitudes will not change without a constitutional reform that recognizes the rights of victims as a core value. Amending the constitution is a big step, but a necessary one Amending the Constitution is, of course, a big step--one which I do not take lightly--but, on this issue, it is a necessary one. As Thomas Jefferson once said: I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. Conlcusion In closing, I would like to thank Senator Dianne Feinstein for her hard work on this amendment and for her tireless efforts on behalf of crime victims. Mr. President, for far too long, the criminal justice system has ignored crime victims who deserve to be treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. Our criminal justice system will never be truly just as long as criminals have rights and victims have none. We need a new definition of justice--one that includes the victim. Today, as we begin National Victims' Rights Week, in courtrooms across America, victims will be forced to sit outside while their attackers are tried. Today and every day, critical proceedings will be held in criminal cases and victims will not be informed of those proceedings or given the opportunity for their voices to be heard. Today, and every day, victims will be forced to endure endless delays. Mr. President, with this joint resolution, we can cure this injustice. Victims groups across America support this effort and are watching to see if Congress has the will to make this Victims' Rights Week truly a celebration for crime victims.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, April 21-27 is National Crime Victims' Rights Week. To ensure that crime victims are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect, I rise--along with my colleague Senator Feinstein--to introduce a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to establish and protect the rights of crime victims. Representative Henry Hyde will introduce a companion joint resolution in the House. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a full committee hearing on the resolution tomorrow, Tuesday, April 23. And I would like to thank Senator Hatch for recognizing the importance of this issue and moving so quickly to hold hearings. This should be a signal to my colleagues and to all America that the time for justice for crime victims is at hand. The proposed constitutional amendment will give victims fundamental rights to be informed, present, and heard at critical stages throughout their case, and the rights to a speedy trial, reasonable protection, and full restitution from the convicted offender--the least the system owes to those it failed to protect. The text of the amendment is clear and straightforward. It reads: Section 1. To ensure that the victim is treated with fairness, dignity, and respect, from the occurrence of a crime of violence and other crimes as may be defined by law pursuant to section 2 of this article, and throughout the criminal, military, and juvenile justice processes, as a matter of fundamental rights to liberty, justice, and due process, the victim shall have the following rights: to be informed of and given the opportunity to be present at every proceeding in which those rights are extended to the accused or convicted offender; to be heard at any proceeding involving sentencing, including the right to object to a previously negotiated plea, or release from custody; to be informed of any release or escape; and to a speedy trial, a final conclusion free from unreasonable delay, full restitution from the convicted offender, reasonable measures to protect the victim from violence or intimidation by the accused or convicted offender, and notice of the victim's rights. Section 2. The several States, with respect to a proceeding in a State forum, and the Congress with respect to a proceeding in a United States forum, shall have the power to implement further the rights established in this article by appropriate legislation. Mr. President, these simple words will help to restore justice to a system fraught with injustice. Support The amendment is supported by major national victims' rights groups: Parents of Murdered Children, Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD], the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Victim Center, the National Victims' Constitutional Amendment Network, the Victim Assistance Legal Organization, and the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau. Need to Protect victims' rights--scales of justice imbalanced There is a need to protect victims' rights because the scales of justice are imbalanced. Those accused of crime have many constitutionally protected rights; They are innocent until proven guilty; they have the right to due process; right to confront witnesses; right against self-incrimination; right to a jury trial; right to a speedy trial; right to counsel; right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet, despite rights for the accused, the U.S. Constitution, our highest law, does not protect the rights of crime victims. The recognized symbol of justice is a figure holding a balanced set of scales, but in reality the scales are heavily weighed on the side of the accused. These protections are sadly one-sided. My proposal will not deny or infringe any constitutional right of any person accused or convicted of a crime. But it will add to the body of rights we all enjoy as Americans. Each year, about 43 million Americans are victims of serious crime. These victims have no constitutional rights. They are often treated as mere inconveniences, forced to view the process from the sidelines. Defendants can be present through their entire trial because they have a constitutional right to be there. But in many trials, victims are ordered to leave the courtroom. Victims often are not informed of critical proceedings, such as hearings to consider releasing a defendant on bail or allowing him to plea bargain to a reduced charge. Even when victims find out about these proceedings, they frequently have no opportunity to speak. Today, victims have no right to reasonable finality. It is not uncommon for cases to last years and years after the jury verdict, while courts again and again review the same issue. These lengthy delays cause terrible suffering for crime victims, especially the loved ones of homicide victims. What others consider as a mere inconvenience can be an endless nightmare for the victim. Patricia Pollard Consider the case of Patricia Pollard--a woman from my home State of Arizona. In July 1974, on a road just outside of Flagstaff, AZ, Patricia Pollard was silenced--first by an attacker, and then by the judicial system. Eric Mageary used the jagged edge of a ripped beer can to inflict deep slash wounds in her body. He broke her ribs and her jaw. He choked her into unconsciousness and left her for dead by the side of the road. Patricia survived. Mageary was convicted and sent to prison. Ten years short of serving his minimum sentence, he was paroled. No notice was given to Patricia. If given the opportunity, Patricia would have wanted to tell the judge about the crime, about how dangerous Mageary was, and how a long prison sentence was needed to protect the community from this vicious criminal. But the law gave Patricia no right to be heard, and society paid for its silencing of her. Mageary's parole was soon revoked for serious narcotics violations, and he was back in prison. In 1990, the people of Arizona amended their State constitution to add a victims' bill of rights, which established the right of victims to be informed, present, and heard at every critical stage in their case. Incredibly, in 1993, in direct violation of Patricia's new constitutional rights, the parole board voted to release Mageary--again without hearing from Patricia. But this time there was a remedy for this injustice. An action was filed to stop the release and force the board to hold another hearing in which Patricia's rights would be protected. The Arizona Court of Appeals acted swiftly and stopped the release. The second time around, after the board took the time to hear directly about the horrible nature of the crime, they voted for public safety and for Patricia, and kept Mageary behind bars. Without constitutional rights for Patricia, the safety of the community would have been jeopardized again. Constitutional rights restored Patricia's voice. Not all Americans have these rights, and even those that exist are not protected by the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution. That is why today, during National Crime Victims' Rights Week, Senator Feinstein and I are introducing a victims' bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution to extend to victims throughout the country a threshold of basic fairness. Victims must be given a voice--not a veto, but a real opportunity to stand and speak for justice and the law abiding in our communities. statistics Patricia Pollard is not an isolated example. As I noted earlier, each year 43 million Americans are victims of serious crime, according to the Department of Justice. According to DOJ statistics released last week, during 1994 there were 10.9 million violent crimes, 6.6 million simple assaults, 2.5 million aggravated assaults, 1.3 million robberies, and 430,000 rapes or other types of sexual assault. Also, one of every nine persons from 12 through 15 years old was a violent crime victim during 1994. And just this week the Clinton administration reported that crime costs Americans at least $450 billion a year. These numbers are staggering and sobering. And they demonstrate the enormous burden that crime forces its victims to carry. The breakdown of social order and the crisis of crime that accompany it, have swelled the ranks of criminals, and those who suffer at their hands, to proportions that astonish us, that break our hearts, and that demand collective action. And the process of detecting, prosecuting, and punishing criminals continues, in too many places in America, to ignore the rights of victims to fundamental justice. twenty states have constitutional amendments The need for a constitutional amendment was first recognized in 1982 by a President's Task Force on Victims of Crime, which concluded that the criminal justice system has lost its essential balance. Since then, 20 States have adopted victims' amendments. The average electoral support for these amendments was 78 percent. In 1994, six States approved constitutional amendments--all by landslides: Alabama, 80 percent; Alaska, 87 percent; Idaho, 79 percent; Maryland, 92 percent; Ohio, 77 percent; and Utah, 68 percent. But this patchwork of State constitutional amendments is inadequate. A Federal amendment would establish a basic floor of victims' rights--a floor below which States could not go. victims need rights in the federal constitution Some may say, ``I'm all for victims' rights but they don't need to be in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is too hard to change. All we need to do is pass some good statutes to make sure that victims are treated fairly.'' But statutes have not worked to restore balance and fairness for victims. The Federal Government has well-written statutes that were intended to establish rights for victims in Federal proceedings. Yet the promise of those statutes lies largely unfulfilled. The whole history of our country teaches us that constitutions are needed to protect the basic rights of the people. The original Bill of Rights was adopted to guarantee that the Federal Government would never infringe on inalienable rights enjoyed by the people--neither at the hands of an overreaching executive nor an inflamed majority in Congress. Some argued that because the Federal Government did not possess the power in the Constitution to infringe these rights, the express protection of them in the Constitution was unnecessary. History soon taught us the wisdom of including the Bill of Rights. Who would be comfortable now if the right to free speech, or a free press, or to peaceably assemble, or any of our other rights were subject to the whims of changing legislative or court majorities? When the rights to vote were extended to all regardless of race, and to women, were they simply put into a statute? Who would dare stand before a crowd of people anywhere in our country and say that a defendant's rights to a lawyer, a speedy public trial, due process, to be informed of the charges, to confront witnesses, to remain silent, or any of the other constitutional protections are important, but don't need to be in the Constitution? Such a position would be rightly subject to ridicule. Yet that is precisely what critics of the victims' bill of rights would tell crime victims. Victims of crime will never be treated fairly by a system that permits the defendant's constitutional rights always to trump the protections given to victims. Such a system forever would make victims second-class citizens. It is precisely because the Constitution is hard to change that basic rights for victims need to be protected in it. Our criminal justice system needs the kind of fundamental reform that can only be accomplished through changes in our fundamental law. Today we have a system of justice that accommodates the interests of its professionals fairly well, but it all too often treats its citizens, its victims, with hostility, and almost always with indifference. Attitudes will not change without a constitutional reform that recognizes the rights of victims as a core value. Amending the constitution is a big step, but a necessary one Amending the Constitution is, of course, a big step--one which I do not take lightly--but, on this issue, it is a necessary one. As Thomas Jefferson once said: I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. Conlcusion In closing, I would like to thank Senator Dianne Feinstein for her hard work on this amendment and for her tireless efforts on behalf of crime victims. Mr. President, for far too long, the criminal justice system has ignored crime victims who deserve to be treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. Our criminal justice system will never be truly just as long as criminals have rights and victims have none. We need a new definition of justice--one that includes the victim. Today, as we begin National Victims' Rights Week, in courtrooms across America, victims will be forced to sit outside while their attackers are tried. Today and every day, critical proceedings will be held in criminal cases and victims will not be informed of those proceedings or given the opportunity for their voices to be heard. Today, and every day, victims will be forced to endure endless delays. Mr. President, with this joint resolution, we can cure this injustice. Victims groups across America support this effort and are watching to see if Congress has the will to make this Victims' Rights Week truly a celebration for crime victims.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I see the majority leader is here. Just increasing the sap content of the trees makes them more impervious to beetles, and thus disease, thereby creating more nutrients in the grasses because the forest has opened up. Wildlife needs less grass because the protein content has quadrupled. There are so many benefits to this kind of management that it is clear we need to expand it to broader sectors of our forest environment. The point is there are innovative things being done to protect our fragile environment, with land stewards and environment groups and others all working together. These two examples I have discussed today show that through this kind of cooperation and innovation, we can truly protect the environment in a very bipartisan and cooperative way. I commend these two experiments to my colleagues.

Mr. KYL. I thank the Chair. And I thank the Senator from Georgia for his effort to organize this group of conversations regarding the protection of our environment. I noticed from some of the comments that certain Democrats, anyway, I should say, have appeared to take offense that Republicans are actually working to protect the environment, apparently under the belief that Earth Day is a special day for them to demagog and politicize environmental issues. The real purpose of Earth Day is to recognize important work being done to protect our environment. Today I want to discuss briefly two specific projects undertaken by a broad group of interests in my home State of Arizona that do exactly that. The first has to do with ranchers in southeast Arizona who are acting as true stewards of the lands for the purpose of protecting the grasslands on which they currently are grazing. Many ranchers are working in harmony with nature not only to earn a living but also to protect the environment upon which they are earning that living. They are using their natural resources in a way that it is meant to be used. In his forward to Dan Dagget's book called ``Beyond the Rangeland Conflict--Toward a West That Works,'' David Getches, who is chairman of the board of trustees of the Grand Canyon Trust, said of ranchers on the Colorado Plateau--I am quoting-- It's not hard to find ranchers on the plateau who share some of our most heartfelt values. Most want their grandchildren to know a region with a healthy ecosystem and places of wonder, beauty and solitude. And most can understand that economic stability and permanence of communities are intertwined with the permanent health of the surrounding land, water, and wildlife. Certainly Professor Getches is correct because some of the people who care the most about the land are those ranchers. I speak specifically of a new group called the Malpai Borderlands Group which is the essence of this commitment for protection. I met with representatives of the Malpai Group over the Easter recess when I was in Douglas, AZ. I was very impressed with the work they are doing as a combined group of ranchers, representatives of environmental groups, Federal agencies, and other people in the community. The area in which they are working together is an area of thousands of acres in both New Mexico and Arizona which is the home of a great many endangered species and an environment that needs help. The land ownership is about half private and half Federal agency, the Federal lands being the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service as well as some State trust land. But in 1990 this group got together to begin discussing ways of dealing with what they thought was a deteriorating situation, an attack on ranching generally, and also a deteriorating environment. The grasslands, with some shrubs, were moving inexorably to shrub lands with some grass. And this occurred for many reasons. But the principal one was the absence of a very natural element--fire. For years fire used to sweep through this area every decade or so and, in effect, cleanse it of all of the woody shrubby plants which then promoted very shortly thereafter fresh new grass for the wildlife then to thrive on. But because of the fire suppression that has not occurred in the last 100 years or so, the result is that the grasslands have gradually now become woods where there are shrubby lands that cannot support grazing. So the agenda of this group was to address both the threat of fragmentation of the landscape--selling off smaller parcels for development--and the decreasing productivity and loss of biological diversity accompanying the encroachment of these woody species on the grasslands. What they did is form the 501(c)3 organization called the Malpai Borderlands Group with 45 rancher members. And its 19-member board includes local ranchers, a scientist, and a businessman, and, as I said, representatives of various environmental groups. It has a 5-year plan for ecosystem management that targets three key concerns. First, conservation and land protection, including such things as on- the-ground projects, use of fire, and holding of conservation easements; second, sustaining rural livelihoods, including innovative approaches to grazing, possibly the cooperative marketing of beef, and exploring other opportunities with low impact to the environment; and, third, science and education, including a comprehensive resource inventory of the area. The Malpai Group has taken an evolutionary, if not revolutionary, approach to ranching, working with biologists, soil conservation specialists, BLM and Forest Service representatives, and the Nature Conservancy to find ways to keep this area literally a working wilderness. As I alluded to, reintroducing fire is a crucial element of the Malpai group's plan to restore the range. As a result, they have worked in several experimental areas restoring that element of fire and bringing back the grasslands. The success of this group, as I said, is really due to a commitment of the landowners. Participation is purely voluntary. The enthusiasm of this group of land stewards is clearly a shining example to those who would like to create such organizations and protect their own areas, working together. As Bill McDonald, Malpai Borderlands Group president, says of the group: ``In a political climate where the traditional position on the issue of land use is usually to be at one end of the spectrum or the other, we find ourselves in the `radical center.' We invite you to join us right there.'' Mr. President, I joined that group just a couple of weeks ago to try to help them clear away some of the bureaucratic underbrush that might prevent them from moving forward with their very important, innovative experimentation. Now, the second key thing relates to the forests in the arid Southwest. Natural fire is not just a friend of the grasslands but has also helped to maintain the health of our forests over the years. Once again, because of fire suppression and other problems, our forest health has deteriorated because that natural phenomena that used to keep it healthy is no longer part of our management process. Instead, what happens is that because we suppress fire, the fuel in the forests builds up and the growth begins to become very concentrated, with the result that when the fire comes, it burns not only the underbrush as it used to do, thus clearing the forest of the smaller, scrubbier kind of plants, but quickly crowns to the top of the trees and literally jumps from tree to tree, devastating entire forests. The other problem with the forests is the health condition today. Too many trees are crowding into too small an area which then sucks all of the nutrients and the moisture from that area, thus providing a more disease-prone forest. Rather than the open and rather park-like environment that existed 100 years ago, tree densities now make a very unattractive and unhealthy forest. Mr. President, 100 years ago the tree density was typically 20 trees per acre, with most trees of a relatively large diameter. By contrast, the present forest averages about 850 trees per acre, with an average diameter of less than 4 inches. I have three cross sections of trees in my office. One is about this big, one this big, and one is this big. All three trees are 60 years old, but the big tree exists in the open park-like environment, and the little tree exists in a cramped environment with 850 or 1,000 trees per acre. Obviously, all are competing for the same nutrients and water. What we need to do is open the forests up. Two professors from Northern Arizona University have begun an ambitious program to do precisely that. Professors Wally Covington and Margaret Moore have begun to use what they call adaptive management techniques to restore the southwestern ponderosa forests to their natural presettlement conditions. Their partners are the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and Northern Arizona University. Their work is being supported by Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Secretary Glickman, and others in the region who understand the importance of bringing environmental groups and other persons interested in forest health together to reintroduce some of the natural methods of forest management that have been lacking in recent years, including both the thinning of the small, unhealthy trees and the use of fire to get rid of the brush and the fuel which could, of course, create the fire danger. In October 1995, these scientists initiated the Southwest forest ecosystem restoration project near Mount Trumbull, AZ. This is roughly a 5,000-acre pilot project in which these new management techniques will be utilized to determine whether or not they can truly restore the health of the forest and whether these management techniques would then be useful throughout the arid Southwest. They will remove the dense, young growth to restore the open forests of large older trees and hope to do ecological sampling that include overstory trees, understory trees, understory shrubs, grasses, wildflowers, and forest floor fuels. Sampling will also extend to birds, mammals, and insect communities. I saw a pilot project just west of Flagstaff which had only been under experimentation for 2 years, but it is amazing that sap contents of the trees--which did not mean anything to me before I heard about it--had grown by an order of magnitude in just 2 years, thus making the tree almost impervious to bark beetles.