Melvin Watt: “what everybody ought to focus on is that in this bill is the mechanism to move us from this visa refusal rate process…”

“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.”