One is, indeed, most of the people who were here, most of the hijackers were here illegally, not legally, because they fraudulently produced documents to get their visas. The visas were frauds to begin with, making them illegal aliens in this country.
Secondly, many of them had overstayed their visas or were doing something here that was not allowed under the visa, making them illegal aliens in this country. So, indeed, they were illegal.
Thirdly, there are far more members of 9/11 families who oppose this bill because the provisions we are talking about here are missing; those provisions to secure our borders are missing. Far more oppose this bill in its present form than support it.
This conference report is supposed to codify the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and insofar as intelligence is concerned, it does. But the 9/11 Commission's charter required it to create a full account of the circumstances of the 9/11 attacks and formulate recommendations for guarding against future terrorist threats. This includes immigration and asylum reform, border protection and identification security. The Commission's recommendations and staff report contained repeated and explicit references to immigration, border, asylum and identification problems of which the 9/11 hijackers took advantage and which need to be solved.
I thought that the House version of the Commission's recommendations, H.R. 10, properly attempted to meet these goals. Yet here we are today, debating a conference report that contains hardly any of the strong Title III measures that were passed by the People's House. This is incredibly disappointing. While the final version of this legislation adds to our border security personnel, tightens up our visa application process, and sets up some identification standards, the fact remains that we need to do much more.
We can have all the intelligence in the world, but if we can't protect our own borders or prevent terrorists from coming into our country, then we're just stupid. I support this bill because it reforms our intelligence, but also because the administration and leadership have promised to pursue additional reforms in immigration and border security.
Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Immigration Reform Caucus, I intend to make sure that these promises are kept. I also look forward to working as soon as possible in the 109th Congress on legislation dealing with serious immigration reform, improving our asylum laws, border control, and identification security. Now more than ever, our immigration policies have national security ramifications. I will not rest until we fix our laws to meet these challenges.