Harry Reid: “I rise today along with the Senior Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, to introduce the Date of Registry Act of…”

“I rise today along with the Senior Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, to introduce the Date of Registry Act of 2000. The Date of Registry Act of 2000, complements similar legislation I introduced last year in an effort to fix a terrible mistake made by the Congress in 1996. Tucked into the massive piece of legislation known as IIRA IRA, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, was an obscure, but lethal, provision which stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to adjudicate legalization claims against the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Most troubling is the fact that this provision nullified legitimate claims based upon substantiated evidence that the Immigration and Nationalization Service had bypassed Congressional intent in denying benefits to certain undocumented persons who have come to be known as the ``late amnesty'' class of immigrants. Through this limitation, Section 377 of IIRA IRA has caused significant hardships, and denied due process and fundamental fairness, for hundreds of thousands of hard working immigrants, including several thousand in my home State of Nevada. These are good, hard-working people who have been in the United States and had been paying taxes for more than ten years, who suddenly lost their jobs and the ability to support their families.”