Posted on 10/18/2007 3:46:46 AM PDT by Man50D
WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo wants foreigners seeking visas to join relatives in the U.S. to provide DNA samples to prove their family ties.
The Colorado congressman introduced a bill Tuesday in the House to require the tests, saying documents provided by immigrants to show they are related to U.S. citizens or permanent residents are sometimes sketchy and unreliable.
''This will help protect the integrity of our immigration system,'' said Tancredo, who has based his presidential campaign on curbing immigration. ``It will give us one more tool to make sure that the beneficiaries of these visas are who they say they are.''
Immigrants would pay for the DNA costs through visa application fees under the proposal.
Earlier this month, France's Senate passed an immigration bill that would allow consular officers to request DNA samples from immigrants wanting to join families there.
The U.S. allows spouses, children, parents and siblings of U.S. citizens and spouses and children of permanent residents to apply for visas and green cards to join their relatives in the United States.
Family-based immigration was a hotly contested issue in this year's immigration debate in Congress. A Senate immigration bill that failed to win passage would have limited family-based visas and increased visas granted based on education and work skills.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., an author of a U.S. Senate bill who supports stricter immigration controls, was not ready to endorse Tancredo's bill.
''I was not aware there was a big question whether the chain migration of relatives was potentially bringing in people who are not related,'' Kyl said. ``If this is a big problem, obviously we would want to look at it and understand it, but I don't know this solution proposed by Tom Tancredo would be the right solution.''
Personal experience,in my family,says this is required because it is so easy to get fraudlent docs in third world countries.
Still, a decent idea, though suspect that there are not so many cases of forged familial links (and what about marriage?) in the United States. People can easily cross the porous borders with Mexico and Canada (much longer and less patrolled than the Mexican border, if potential illegal aliens can get to Canada).
Finally someone with sense.
This would certainly speed up criminal investigations where no match can be found for DNA left at many crime scenes.
This is an excellent idea.
Medical testing was good enough for our grandparents and great grandparents, it should be a priority with those sneaking in and caught. No one mentions the diseases that are coming in from other countries and the multitudes filling our emergency rooms that we’re paying for. Next, we can discuss how many terrorists have also walked across our borders and are here awaiting orders.
Of course it’s an excellent idea - scientifically objective and infallible - which is precisely why the open-borders lobbies are opposed to it. It’s a procedure that isn’t affected by time or complexity of relationships. For example, it’s resolved a 200 year old historical question - the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Some lunatics would do away with finger prints because they profile and discriminate against criminals!
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