Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word for the purposes of a colloquy with the chairman. I simply wanted to, in a sense, create a legislative record so that everybody is aware of an interpretation that we are giving to a provision in this bill, and wanted to call the chairman's attention to page 3, section 3 of the bill, and reaffirm with the chairman that it is, in fact, the intention of this bill to allow an immediate appeal either on the granting of a class action motion, or on the denial of a class action motion to assure that this provision in the bill is intended to work in both directions.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I actually had tried to restrain myself from taking time in general debate on this bill because I had very, very mixed emotions throughout this debate. I had the pleasure of practicing, sometimes the pain, of practicing law for 22 years before I was elected to Congress. There have been many, many times during that 22 years that I would have longed for the opportunity to be given the right to strike a judge and select another judge. There have been many times during that 22 years that I was on the verge of losing confidence in a process, and had to step back from it and evaluate the process that was there in our court system, and try to say to myself, how would I do this differently if I were designing a court system? So, in a sense, I guess I can empathize with my Republican colleagues who would like to make a substantial change in our judicial system because they have a sense of frustration about some aspect of it. There is probably not another person in this body, if there are, there are probably only a few, who have had a judge look at them or their law partners and call them a ``nigger'' in the courtroom. I would love to have had the opportunity to strike that judge and go on to another judge. There is probably nobody who has, as much as I, been involved in a system that had a three-judge panel, and recognized the benefits and detriments of having a three-judge panel in litigation. But when all is said and done, what we have to recognize is that we operate in a system that is unique to our country. I am in the majority a lot in this House, but I cannot start changing every rule that sometimes cuts in my favor and sometimes cuts against me. There has to be a set of rules that govern any kind of organized system, and our court system has a set of rules that govern it. So while I have experienced that frustration that some of my colleagues have talked about, what I have said to myself over and over and over again is that our system has to be protected. Otherwise, there is no rule of law; there can be no justice. We substantially undercut it when we start selectively trying to take some result and change it by changing the whole process under which we operate. That is what this bill does in substantial measure. It gives every citizen the opportunity to come in and say, I don't like this judge because I don't like what color he is or what gender she is or what political perspective they have, and therefore I am going to exercise a peremptory challenge, just like we do in a jury pool. That is an unprecedented change in our system. One, which I would have loved to have had on many occasions, but I have understood would undermine the system of justice that we have substantially in our country. Yet, my colleagues would come in here and whine and say I don't like the result, therefore I am going to change the whole system and give everybody in America the right to delay trials and subvert the system. This, my friends, is not a good bill. It may have some superficially appealing aspects to it, some which I can understand and empathize with, but we must protect the system of justice and the rules of the road, and we cannot start making them subject to who is in power in the Congress of the United States and whether it is Conservatives versus Liberals. We must have rules under which we operate. Once we undermine those rules, as this bill does substantially, then we have undermined our whole system of justice in this country. So I beg my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to evaluate this bill and see if this really is where they want to be. It may serve some short-term political objective that they have, but what does it do to the confidence of the public in our judiciary and in our judicial system? At the end of the day, after my colleagues have made that kind of evaluation, I believe, if they are acting in the interests of justice and the integrity of our system, they will reject this bill so that we can have a reasonable set of rules that have governed our system for years and years and years and do not delay the trial of cases in our system. I ask my colleagues to vote against this bill, even though it may have some political, superficial benefit to them.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Let me stop the gentleman in the middle of his sentence, because that is a big ``if,'' if there are no further constitutional grounds. The ones that I am talking about are where there is a constitutional ground. And what this amendment does is say you cannot have a remedy where there is a constitutional basis for the order. So to just kind of gloss over that big ``if'' in the gentleman's sentence is a serious matter.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, if in fact the amendment was nearly as gentle and kind as the gentleman has portrayed it, I think I could get there with him, but that is not what the language of this amendment says. It says, we are undoing prior consent orders, we are undoing prior orders, and we are making it impossible to address a constitutional violation because there is no remedy for it. It is that that I have serious concerns about.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is a good bill. It is good because we need a visa waiver pilot program. The idea of having a visa waiver program is a good idea. It is good because we have in this bill the mechanism for making the Visa Waiver Program a substantially better program by gathering the information that we need on visa overstays, to set up a rational basis for which countries can participate in the Visa Waiver Pilot Program. The gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) are going to try to make the bill better by extending the bill's coverage to some other countries that ought to be included under the existing Visa Waiver Program. So what I am recommending to my colleagues is that we support the bill, support the manager's amendment that will make it a 2-year extension, and support the amendment that is going to be offered by the gentlemen from Rhode Island and California so that we make it a better bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let me just put this in perspective here. I am in favor of this amendment. The reason I am in favor of it is that the whole notion of a visa refusal rate, if you understand that, means almost nothing, because if 100 people show up in an INS office and/or in a consular office, and two out of that 100 are refused a visa, then you have a 2 percent refusal rate. If three out of 100 are denied a visa, then you have a 3 percent refusal rate. If the consular officer in that office is sitting there, and they have a criterion that says, I do not like people who look poor, or I do not like people who look black, or I do not like people who look a particular way, then the refusal rate may be 98 percent. It could be 100 percent. The point I am making is that that is an irrational basis, a subjective basis, for setting up our whole Visa Waiver Program in the first place. So whether it is 2 percent or 3 percent, I cannot get all bent out of shape about it. This amendment would move it from 2 percent to 3 percent.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, what everybody ought to focus on is that in this bill is the mechanism to move us from this visa refusal rate process, which is irrational, to a visa overstay process, which is a rational basis for determining whether a country ought to participate in the Visa Waiver Program. Because once these people get into the country, if they do not go home, then I get real bent out of shape about that. When the time comes, they ought to be required to go home. And the visa overstay information would allow us to measure that and get to a rational basis. Right now, we have no rational basis. So I do not have any problem whatsoever from moving the threshold from two out of 100 to three out of 100, because I know that there are some countries that are being denied 50 out of 100 on no rational basis whatsoever, in some cases, 75 out of 100 on no rational basis whatsoever. We ought to support this amendment, pass this bill. Let us get the visa overstay information we need to implement a rational Visa Pilot Program, and we will all be a lot happier. People throughout the world will be a lot happier because we will have a rational basis for having a program.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, would the chair advise us to how much time remains on each side?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment and encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt). (Mr. DELAHUNT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 2578, a bill to extend the visa waiver pilot program and to require the collection of data regarding the visa overstay rates of nonimmigrants who visit the United States. The visa waiver pilot program was first authorized in 1986. The principles and goals of the program are sound: to save government resources while promoting tourism to the United States. The program was based on the presumption that when visa abuse is very low from a given country, it is better to shift resources away from U.S. consular posts in that country and toward consular posts where the risk of visa fraud is more likely. I do not believe that any of us are interested in seeing the visa waiver pilot program expire. The impact on the State Department, which would have to redeploy key resources, would be enormous. The potential negative impact on U.S. travel and tourism would be immeasurable. I understand that the chairman will offer an amendment to extend the program until the year 2000 to make it a true 2-year extension of this pilot program. I will support that amendment, but only because the bill, as currently drafted, includes provisions which will require the Attorney General to implement a program to measure visa overstay rates for all visitors to the United States. Currently, a country is eligible to participate in the visa waiver program if it has a visa refusal rate lower than 2.5 percent for the preceding 2 years and if other criteria are met. The other criteria include having machine-readable passports, reciprocity for American tourists, and a low risk of compromising the law enforcement interest of the United States. In non-State Department jargon, the words visa refusal rates refer to the percentage of tourist visa applications that are denied in a given country. Visa applications are refused when U.S. consular officers, often using subjective factors, race or class-based profiles, decide whether someone is likely to overstay a visa or not. A resident at the U.S. consulate in San Palo, Brazil highlights the irrationality of reliance on visa refusal rates for participation in the visa waiver program rather than objectively measured overstay rates, which this bill will allow us to gather information to implement. In the instance in Brazil, the Brazilian consular officers were using criteria, a code on the application that illustrates the point that I am making. The code on the application was a code which says LP, which stood for ``looks poor.'' These same consular officers were instructed to carefully review any visa application from persons living in regions of Brazil which were predominantly black or Asian. The net effect of this careful review was that few Brazilians of African or Asian ancestry ever got visas to visit the United States. We only found out about this because one of the consular officers refused to follow this process. When he did, the State Department fired him. When the State Department fired him, he sued them. Finally, last week, a U.S. Federal District Judge ordered that he be reinstated in his job. Because of the subjectivity of visa rates, visa refusal rates generally, I firmly believe that we must move toward a policy where participation in the visa waiver pilot program is conditioned not on subjective factors, but on objective criteria. That objective criteria should be low visa overstay rates, not low visa refusal rates. Simply put, countries whose nationals enter the U.S. but then fail to leave should not be allowed to participate in a visa waiver pilot program. Whether that country is Europe or Africa, the same criteria ought to be applicable. Likewise, countries whose nationals enter the U.S. and then leave as they have committed to do and are obligated to do should be given the presumptions the visa waiver program gives to them. Their visa overstays should be the criteria. We must stop presuming, based on whatever subjective stereotypical or irrational criteria we are using, that one group or another is more or less likely to overstay their visa and stay in the United States. We should have some objective criteria. Of the 26 countries currently authorized to participate in the visa waiver program, 21 are European countries. Part of that is because we are now using subjective criteria. Many have requested that we make our visa waiver pilot program a permanent program. The Chairman's amendment will extend that by 2 years, rather than just into 1999 as the current draft of the bill will do. I will support the Chairman's amendment, but I should be clear that so long as participation in the program is based on subjective rather than objective criteria and, therefore, potentially discriminatory criteria, I would oppose any efforts to make this Visa Waiver Program a permanent program. On the other hand, Mr. Chairman, if we move to a point where participation is based on truly objective criteria, the amount of overstays in this country, I will be among the first to seek to make this program a permanent one. Mr. Chairman, this bill moves us in that direction by significantly, under its provisions, directing the INS to gather information that will allow us to measure visa overstays and not just be a slave to visa denials. I, therefore, encourage my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands, Ms. Christian- Green.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I will not take 5 minutes, but I rise in support of the McCollum-Conyers substitute and in opposition to the Sensenbrenner amendment. I want to address two issues quickly. Number one, I do not think this is an issue of big business against small business or a small business issue. It seems to me that restaurants are small businesses, but music writers are also small businesses. So either way we vote on this, we are going to be trying to support, as all of us I believe do, small business in this country. The second is an argument that I have heard a number of restaurant owners advance from time to time that music is just background music, and we ought not be obligated to pay for it, even though we are using somebody else's work product. And my typical response to that is, if what they are saying is true, if this is of no benefit to their company, if this is truly background music, cut it off. And if they cut it off, then nobody obligates them to pay for the use of it. So I just think, as a matter of fairness and equity, that a person who has written a song and dealt with that song and put it in the stream of our intellectual property ought to be compensated for the use of it. And I think the McCollum amendment represents a reasonable approach to it. I have some concerns about it also, but I will support that substitute and vote against the amendment offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.