Bill Clinton: “That's a very good question. I'm so glad you asked it. I think the answer is that we have to have criteria for enforcing…”

“That's a very good question. I'm so glad you asked it. I think the answer is that we have to have criteria for enforcing this law that grows out of our laws that are based on policies rooted in laws enacted by the Congress. I think that is the answer. Obviously, if Congress and the administration work with the Congress, if we decide that there's some policy that's so important for other reasons, for our other foreign policy concerns, our human rights concerns, you name it, that we want to root that in our legal policy, then no one can accuse us of being arbitrary, because we will have gone through a deliberative process. The Congress will have made a judgment; we will all be on public record. But I do think it's very important that immigrants from the world looking at us and governments from the world looking at us, not believe that the President will wake up someday and decide that for some arbitrary reason we will enforce the immigration laws of the country in one way or another. Perhaps the Vice President and the Attorney General would like to make a comment about that, also. The Vice President. I'd like to add one brief point. This proposal does take the partisanship and the politics out of it. This is a bipartisan initiative. Republicans as well as Democrats are here from both the Senate and the House. And if I could summarize the basic tone of this initiative, I would use the words of Doris Meissner, who is the designee to head up INS, when she said not long ago, we want to stop illegal immigration so that we can continue opening our country to legal immigration. The two go together, and that's what this proposal is designed to do.”