Orrin Hatch: “I have to say I am very disappointed. The Clinton administration is playing political games with the illegal immigration…”

“I have to say I am very disappointed. The Clinton administration is playing political games with the illegal immigration reform bill. This is one of the most important bills of this whole Congress. The Congress has worked very hard on this very necessary legislation. On August 2, 1996, President Clinton wrote to Speaker Gingrich. The only item on which he said he would veto the immigration bill was the Gallegly provision on the free public education of illegal aliens. The provision was, in fact, contained in a draft conference report proposal circulated on the evening of September 10 by Republican conferees. At no time in the next 2 weeks, as this draft proposal was circulated, was I advised that the administration wanted to remove title V of that proposal, dealing with restrictions on benefits for aliens. Indeed, the administration mentioned the Gallegly provision was really the big item to them; that if we took Gallegly out, the President would sign the bill. In order to accommodate this administration and facilitate passage of this very tough illegal immigration bill, the Republican conferees dropped the Gallegly provision outright, and I argued for the dropping of that provision, mainly because I wanted to get this bill through because there are excellent provisions in this bill that are desperately needed.”