Bill Clinton: “Well, there were two problems with the 1980 situation in our State, which I'm very mindful of, which do not apply in…”

“Well, there were two problems with the 1980 situation in our State, which I'm very mindful of, which do not apply in this case. If you will remember, a lot of the people who were released from Cuba in 1980 had either serious mental health problems or criminal backgrounds. And the two problems that existed there that the United States does not face now with the Haitians in any kind of general terms were that the refugees that were brought to my State, number one, weren't screened in advance, which is something that had been done with the Vietnamese refugees, for example, when we took large numbers there in our State with no problems and with open arms. And number two, the military authorities who were charged with maintaining order denied that they had the capacity to maintain order. So one of the things that I have done is to reassure all the leaders of the countries with whom I have talked that if they were willing to help us with the safe havens or with processing centers, depending on which country we're talking about, that they would bear no cost and that they would not have to worry about the security problems. Those are the two things that, I think, that are legitimate concerns. Now, in Florida the main problem there is the cost problem. And since I have been President, I have worked very, very hard to increase the allocation of Federal assistance to States that have disproportionate refugee or illegal alien burdens. That's not only Florida but also California, Texas, New York, New Jersey--they are the major ones, and some other States. And we've increased that aggregate assistance by, oh, about a third, by several billion dollars since I have been in office.”