Bill Clinton: “I'd like to answer the question you asked, and also then make a reference to the other issues you raised on the jobs and…”

“I'd like to answer the question you asked, and also then make a reference to the other issues you raised on the jobs and the health care issue. The first thing I want to do is to hire a strong, sensible, practical person to be head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I have asked the Attorney General, Janet Reno, whom I think has really done a good job, to put a very high priority on selecting a nominee who will be compassionate but also hard-headed. I mean, I think you want somebody who is compassionate, but hard-headed, who is realistic about what we're up against and what we're facing. I think she will make a recommendation to me this week, and we'll resolve that. That's the first thing. The second thing I think we have to do is to make a better effort to enforce the law that we have. If we've got a law on the books, we ought to try to enforce it, even if it's difficult to enforce. One of the things that was in the jobs program that you referred to that was killed by the filibuster was funds for more border guards to enforce the law. A lot of people don't know that, but that was in there. So I think we have to find ways to get the resources necessary to do as much as we can to enforce the law that exists. There is a limit to how much any economy can have. You've got the California economy very depressed now. This is a State made by immigrants. It's very important to recognize that. Los Angeles County has people from 150 different racial and ethnic groups. We also will continue to have people who are exiles really from political oppression, and under our law they get a different set of treatment. But I think we have to really roll our sleeves up and do this. In the meantime, there's something else I think we ought to say. Whatever we do on immigration is a national decision that has uneven impacts. You would admit that, right? It hurts California and Texas and Florida and New York and, to a lesser extent, a handful of other States more financially than it does the rest of the country. But it's a national policy. Or if there's a lack of a policy, it's a national policy. One of the things that has really bothered me, especially as we've seen all these educational cutbacks in California with your economy down after the defense cuts and the other problems, is that the Federal Government has essentially been willing to let you in California eat the cost of the Federal policy. So another thing we have done in spite of all the budget cutting we've done, there are funds in this budget to substantially increase funding to California to deal with the cost of immigration, thereby freeing up other funds in California to be spent on education or jobs or whatever else you all want to do here. I think we need to do more of that. Now, I don't want to mislead you. There is not as much money here in the budget as a lot of people asked for from California. But there's a whole lot more; I mean, several hundred million dollars more than was previously given. And I just think it is imperative that we have to provide--if the Federal Government is going to have a policy, or lack of it, then the Federal Government ought to pay for the policy, or lack of it, so that the States can be free to spend their money on educating and training and finding jobs for the people who live within the State. That's what I think. So we're going to move toward that. If I might just make one other comment on what you said earlier. I'm going to try to come back with various pieces of this jobs initiative. I hope we can still get some more money for summer jobs, because we've got the best summer jobs program this country has ever organized. We've worked in partnership with the private sector. We're going to require 90 hours of educational work for people who have summer jobs, hoping that we can actually help people to get full-time continuing jobs and to continue their education, something that's never been done with a Federal summer jobs program before. So we're going to try to get some more. I also believe very strongly that we need to make a down payment now on the efforts that I'm making to put 100,000 more police officers on the streets so we can have more community-based policing, which means the best of both worlds if you've got the right kind of community policing. It means less crime, tougher law enforcement, and less abuse of authority because you have people working the neighborhoods, knowing their friends and neighbors, and less pressure. So we're going to start with that and then try to move back toward these other issues. Financial Aid for Education”