F. Sensenbrenner

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I think that this is a very constructive amendment, and I would urge the House to adopt it.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation to provide the States of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana with added flexibility in meeting federal reformulated gasoline (RFG) requirements. The Fuel Price Stability Act will simply allow the Governors of each of the states in the Milwaukee-Chicago market to permit the sale of gasoline from other markets if the price of RFG in our area sees a significant rise or if supplies of RFG in our region are especially tight. Presently, only the EPA has the authority to grant any type of waiver from ``boutique'' fuel requirements. The Fuel Price Stability Act would change this by allowing our Governors to make needed short-term adjustments. Granting this new flexibility to local Governors has the potential to keep gas prices down in our area. In the past two years, when RFG prices in the Milwaukee-Chicago market skyrocketed, prices remained comparatively low in surrounding markets, including some of those on the same pipeline that supplies gasoline to our market. Should such an occurrence happen again, our Governors should have the authority to permit other gasoline types to be sold in the Milwaukee-Chicago region, thereby increasing potential supplies to our area. I strongly support other reforms in this area, including efforts to reduce the number of ``boutique'' fuels used across the country, but, lacking the implementation of a broader plan, this legislation represents a solid step toward greater flexibility in fuel use. I am hopeful my colleagues will support this legislation and the House will act on this proposal expeditiously.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes, the balance of my time, to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gekas).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Since September 11, we have learned how deeply vulnerable our immigration system is to exploitation by aliens who wish to harm Americans. H.R. 1885 contains House-passed language of H.R. 3525 that makes needed changes to our immigration laws to fight terrorism and to prevent such exploitation. It has strong bipartisan support in the other body. The House has already passed the core of this legislation by wide margins. On May 21, 2001, the House passed a 245(i) extension by a vote of 336 to 43. On December 19, 2001, the House passed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act by voice vote. I will outline some of this bill's most significant provisions. Most importantly, by October 2003, the legislation requires the Attorney General and Secretary of State to issue machine-readable, tamper- resistant visas that use standardized biometric identifiers. This will serve a number of important goals. First, it will allow INS inspectors at ports of entry to determine whether a visa properly identifies a visa holder and thus combat identity fraud. Second, it will make visas harder to counterfeit. Third, in conjunction with the installation of scanners at ports of entry to read the visas, the INS can track the arrival and departure of aliens and generate a reliable measure of aliens who overstay their visas. As we have all learned, some of the September 11 terrorists were staying in the United States on expired visas. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1885 extends the same biometric identifier requirements to passports from visa-waiver program countries. The necessity for this was demonstrated when our military found blank European passports in abandoned al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan. We must ensure that passports presented to the INS inspectors are not counterfeit, altered, or being used by imposters. The bill thus requires that aliens seeking to enter the United States under the visa-waiver program with passports issued after October of 2003 must possess tamper-resistant, machine-readable passports with the same biometric identifiers as our visas. The bill also requires that within 72 hours after notification by a foreign government of a stolen passport, the Attorney General shall identify its identification number into a data system accessible to INS inspectors at ports of entry. In addition, the Secretary of State and Attorney General shall consider, in deciding whether to keep a country in the visa-waiver program, whether its government reports to us on a timely basis the theft of its blank passports. Building upon the enhanced data-sharing requirements of the USA Patriot Act, the bill directs our law enforcement agencies and intelligence community to share information with the State Department and the INS relevant to the admissibility and deportability of aliens. This information will be made available in an electronic database which will be searchable based on the linguistically sensitive algorithms that account for variations in name spellings and transliterations. This will result in lookout lists that are much more thorough and prevent terrorists who threaten our Nation from obtaining U.S. visas or entering our country. As the Border Patrol succeeds in controlling the border, more aliens take a chance at penetrating the ports of entry, placing an ever- increasing strain on the limited staff of INS inspectors. Likewise, INS investigations units have long been denied adequate personnel. The bill helps fill these critical gaps. It authorizes appropriations to hire at least 200 full-time inspectors and at least 200 full-time investigators each year through fiscal year 2006. Another long-standing problem at the INS is the low pay for Border Patrol agents and INS inspectors. This has led many trained Border Patrol agents and inspectors to leave the INS for other law enforcement agencies offering better pay, such as the air marshals. Something is wrong when former Border Patrol agents make up 75 percent of the first air marshals class. This bill authorizes appropriations to increase the pay of Border Patrol agents and inspectors in order to help the INS retain its best people. The bill provides that aliens from countries that sponsor international terrorism cannot receive nonimmigrant visas until it has been determined that they do not pose a threat to the safety of Americans or the national security of the U.S. Mr. Speaker, U.S. embassies and consulates abroad will be required to establish terrorist lookout committees that meet monthly in order to ensure that the names of known terrorists are routinely and consistently brought to the attention of consular officials, America's first line of defense. With the same goal in mind, the bill requires that all consular officers responsible for adjudicating visa petitions receive specialized training and effective screening of visa applicants who pose a potential threat to the safety and security of the United States. The bill strengthens the foreign student tracking system by requiring that it track the acceptance of aliens by educational institutions, the issuance of visas to the aliens, and then admission into the United States of the aliens, the notification of education institutions of the admission of aliens slated to attend them, and the enrollment of the aliens at the institutions. No longer will terrorists be able to enter the U.S. on student visas with the INS never knowing that they failed to show up at school. The bill requires that each commercial vessel or aircraft arriving in the U.S. provide, prior to arrival at the port of entry, manifest information about each passenger and crew member. Starting in 2003, the information will have to be provided electronically. Prearrival of manifests allow much of the INS's screening work to be done before arrival. This not only speeds processing for arriving passengers, but gives INS inspectors more time to conduct background checks on and to interview passengers. Finally, the bill requires the President to conduct a study of the feasibility of establishing a North American National Security Program to enhance the mutual security and safety of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Finally, H.R. 1885 contains a compromise reached with the other body on the future of section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. No one will be entirely satisfied with this compromise; however, it reflects a judicious balancing of the many divergent and deeply held views Members hold on 245(i). When Congress passed the LIFE Act in December 2000, we made a promise to give U.S. citizens and permanent residents at least 4 months time to file immigrant visa petitions for their relatives using section 245(i). This promise was not fulfilled because the INS was typically unable to issue implementing regulations until March 2001. Mr. Speaker, this bill will allow qualifying illegal aliens to unify section 245(i) as long as they have had green card petitions filed on their behalf by the earlier of November 30, 2002, or 4 months after the date the Attorney General issues implementing regulations. It also requires that aliens must have entered into the family relationships qualifying them for permanent residence by August 14, 2001. With this compromise, we have signaled that 245(i) will not become a permanent part of our immigration law and that aliens should not base their future actions on the assumption that it will be. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 376) providing for the concurrence by the House with amendments in the amendment of the Senate to H.R. 1885.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), and I ask unanimous consent that he may be permitted to yield portions of that time to other Members.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Did not the Chair recognize me following his statement and I asked unanimous consent pursuant to that recognition?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Will the gentleman from New York yield?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Because this bill is fairly complicated, Mr. Speaker, I have a statement that may be a little bit more than 10 minutes, but I am happy to cede whatever time I have left to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 365, the resolution under consideration.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2175) to protect infants who are born alive.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart).

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, at the risk of not quitting while I am ahead, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), who will tell the Members what good this bill will do.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, is to protect all infants who are born alive by recognizing them as a person, human being, child or individual for purposes of Federal law. This recognition would take effect upon the live birth of an infant, regardless of whether or not his or her development is sufficient to permit long-term survival and regardless of whether or not he or she survived an abortion. It has long been an accepted legal principle that infants who are born alive are persons and thus entitled to the protections of the law. Many States have statutes that explicitly enshrine this principle as a matter of State law and some Federal courts have recognized the principle in interpreting Federal criminal laws. However, recent changes in the legal and cultural landscape appear to have brought this well-settled principle into question. In its July 2000 ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortion. In doing so, the Carhart court considered the location of an infant's body at the moment of death during a partial-birth abortion, delivered partly outside the body of the mother, to be of no legal significance. Indeed, two members of the majority, Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, went so far as to say that it was, quote, ``irrational,'' unquote, for the Nebraska legislature to take the location of the infant at the point of death into account. Thus, as Justice Scalia noted in dissent, the result of the Carhart ruling is to give live-birth abortion free rein. Following Stenberg v. Carhart, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit made this point explicit in the case of Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer when it struck down New Jersey's partial-birth abortion ban. According to the Third Circuit, under Roe v. Wade and Carhart, it is nonsensical and based upon semantic machinations and irrational line-drawing for a legislature to conclude that an infant's location in relation to his or her mother's body has any relevance in determining whether or not an infant may be killed. The logical implications of Carhart and Farmer are both obvious and disturbing. Under the logic of these decisions, once a child is marked for abortion, it is wholly irrelevant whether the child emerges from the womb as a live baby. That child may still be treated as though he or she did not exist, and would have not the slightest rights under the law, no right to receive medical care, to be sustained in life, or to receive any care at all. If a child who survives an abortion is born alive and had no claim to the protections of the law, there would be no basis upon which the government may prohibit an abortionist from completely delivering an infant before killing it or allowing it to die. The right to abortion, under this logic, means nothing less than the right to a dead baby, no matter where the killing takes place. Thus, the Carhart and Farmer rulings have essentially brought our legal system to the threshold of accepting infanticide itself, making it necessary to firmly establish the ``born alive'' principle in Federal law. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act is designed to repudiate the destructive ideas that have brought the born-alive rule into question, and to firmly establish that, for purposes of Federal law, an infant who is completely expelled and extracted from his or her mother and who is alive is, indeed, a person under the law. This bill draws a bright line between the right to abortion and infanticide, or the killing or criminal neglect of completely born children. The bill clarifies that a born-alive infant's legal status under Federal law does not depend upon the infant's gestational age or whether the infant's birth occurred as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion. Thus, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act protects the legal status of all children born alive and affirms that every child who is born alive has an intrinsic dignity which does not depend upon the interests or convenience of anyone else. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2175. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 2175, the bill under consideration.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of House Concurrent Resolution 311 just adopted.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I also support H. Con. Res. 311, recognizing the Civil Air Patrol for 60 years of distinguished service to the United States. Mr. Speaker, the Civil Air Patrol was established on December 1, 1941, days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Today it provides an important service to our country by performing search and rescue missions, assisting law enforcement with antidrug operations, and helping the FAA to monitor airports. The Civil Air Patrol deserves our support, praise, and thanks. With this concurrent resolution, we recognize it for the important role it has played in our Nation.