As I've said before, this could certainly have been a better bill. But the fact of the matter is that by passing this bill the way it is now, we'll get it through the House and we'll get it through the Senate, which will mean that it will have a direct positive impact on possibly hundreds of thousands of people who have been wrongfully denied citizenship.
On the day this bill becomes law, we're going to have what I will call “Davidson stateless people” and “Conservative stateless people” created each and every day. Every day that this is law we're going to have more stateless people. The numbers are not necessarily that big, but they will grow.
We as a committee can haul in the officials—not necessarily Mr. Davidson, because we have deep throats in the department—and we will find out where the problems are. We'll have them in and we'll swear them in and we will deal with the problem at that point in time.
But for the immediate situation right now, Jim, I think we want to put it through to deal with all those people who have been suffering because of a bad piece of legislation. We can take comfort in that.
But then we're going to have to be very vigilant, because we are creating another problem. The only sad part for me is that it didn't have to be that way. We could have made a relatively simple amendment, but we're getting a push-back from the bureaucracy.
So we'll take this now, but we will be back very quickly and will make those demands.
So fair notice is served that this department had better come back with a good plan, because it's going to be grilled.