Chuck Grassley: “the amendment I have before you is dealing with an issue I just described in morning business as one of 15 flaws in a…”

“the amendment I have before you is dealing with an issue I just described in morning business as one of 15 flaws in a very important part of this legislation. This amendment is going to revise current law related to visa revocation for visa holders who are on U.S. soil. Now, we have this situation which does not make sense. My amendment is meant to bring common sense to this. Under current law, visas approved or denied by a consular officer in some of our embassies overseas would be nonreviewable. In other words, what that consular office said would be final. That person being denied a visa to come to this country would not have access to courts because consular officers have the final say when it comes to granting visas and allowing people to enter a country. So if you are a consular officer and you believe somebody is a terrorist or a terrorist threat, you can deny the visa, no review. However, if that person gets a visa and they come to this country and we find out later on that they are a potential terrorist and should not have come here in the first place and you want to get them out of the country as fast as you can--because that is surely what we would have done with the 19 pilots who created the terror we had on September 11-- then that decision made when the person comes to this country, that decision by the consular officer is reviewable in the U.S. courts. Now, everybody is going to say: Well, that just does not make sense.…”