winning a lottery visa. there is a lot of fraud associated with that program, but i really do not want to get into that issue. the other category that the jordan commission recommended getting rid of was a category that set aside immigrant visas for unskilled workers. that is a fairly small program. nevertheless, the commission felt that it made no sense to be setting aside immigrant visas for unskilled workers when we had so many unskilled workers in the united states who were unemployed. they felt that it simply do not make any sense. we, as an organization, fair supported the jordan commission recommendations wholeheartedly, even though we felt it did not go quite far enough in terms of the reduction in immigration. they also recommended steps for curtailing illegal immigration, and those were the recommendations that were being proposed in the 1969 legislation that i switched to fair to work in support of. we still have various problems -- we still have serious problems with regard to illegal immigration

immigrants and what about all the millions who are actually waiting in their home countries for a visa or the lottery to come through so they can come here illegally? guest: you've made an important point. there are limits on the number of visas that are available set by law, so there are people that do try to come to the united states and immigrate legally but there are restrictions that have been set by congress to prevent freedom doing so in a common man sore it's true to hear about people who have been waiting in line and folks here now undocumented should get to the back of the line is a bit odd and confusing to me, because that's not really reform at all if we're asking people to get to the back of the line which might span years. host: for those waiting for their cases to be heard, where do they stay? guest: for the folks near the country they are here with -- without any rights or additional rights and often are separated from their families. host: how often kit take to get a case heard? guest: it's not uncommon to have the preliminary heareneding and then not have the full merit hearing for

visa and they overstayed. nobody has any checks in it, right? and today's society, we don't have that? we have a system that is a luck of a lottery chain migration. that's probably not the best mode for america. we have an idea where you come here, you become an engineer, one of the best and brightest coming out of our universities and then we tell you, oh, no, no, no. you can't stay here. you need to go to another country and compete against us. that's a backwards thought. there's a lot of places there -- first and foremost, what members, i'll tell you, really on both sides of the aisle, if you're digging yourself in a hole, the first thing is to stop digging. if you don't secure the border or you just going to perpetuate the problem? a lot of things that we asked for in the 1986 immigration reform never came to fruition. so secure first before you do anything, and then i think you'll find the way the house will go about it, issue by issue. i mean, when you deal with an issue of immigration, a lot of people have different opinions. make each issue stand on its own and have that debate. that's the way the house looks at it, and i