Pete Sessions: “Last year's bill added new terrorism bars to the good moral character requirement and required that an alien prove they…”

“Last year's bill added new terrorism bars to the good moral character requirement and required that an alien prove they have good moral character. Under the Immigration and Naturalization Act, the INA, an illegal alien must have good moral character to receive most of the immigration benefits, such as cancellation of removal from being here illegally. But according to the current law, the law in effect today, an alien cannot have good moral character if they are habitual drunkards, get the majority of their income from illegal gambling, have given false testimony for immigration purposes, have been in jail for 180 days, have been convicted of an aggravated felony, or have engaged in genocide, torture, or extrajudicial killings. Those are some of the things that bar you from good moral character. This year's bill, however, is completely missing these new terrorism bars, and the bill no longer requires good moral character as a prerequisite to amnesty. I wonder what this tells us about the mindset of the people who are actually putting the pencil to paper and drafting this legislation. Surely our Senators didn't fully understand it. But I have to say I am particularly troubled, because the Bush administration, as much as they have wanted a bill that would be exceedingly generous to immigrants, wanted this language strengthened, and the committee, the group that wrote the bill, rejected their request, which is hard for me to believe.”