mr. chairman , i yield myself the balance of the time . 
mr. chairman , several speakers on the other side said that if this bill was law at the time of 9/11 , it would not have made any difference on what id the terrorists used to get on the planes . 
that is flat out wrong . 
what the bill say is that anyone who is admitted to this country on a temporary visa will have their driver 's license expire as to the date of their visa . 
now , mohammed atta , who is the ring leader of 9/11 murderers , entered the united states on a 6-month visa . 
that visa expired on july 9 , 2001 . 
he got a driver 's license from the state of florida on may 5 , 2001 . 
that was a 6-year driver 's license . 
had this bill been in effect at the time , that driver 's license would have expired on july 9 , and he would not have been able to use that driver 's license to get on a plane because it was an expired id . 
read the bill . 
secondly , relative to the asylum issue , what this bill does is two things . 
first of all , it says the burden of proof is on the applicant for asylum to prove that they qualify . 
what is wrong with that ? 
the burden of proof is on anybody who is the plaintiff or an applicant in any type of proceeding . 
they have got to prove that they are entitled to the relief that they are requesting , and i will just read from page 3 of the bill . 
in general . 
the burden of proof is on the applicant to establish that the applicant is a refugee , within the meaning of the law . 
to establish that the applicant is a refugee , the applicant must establish that race , religion , nationality or membership in a particular social group or political opinion was or will be the central reason for persecuting the applicant . 
so nobody , nobody who falls under that definition will be denied asylum under this bill . 
secondly , it says that in sustaining the burden , it allows the trier of fact , the immigration judge in this case , to determine the credibility of the witnesses . 
now , the trier of the fact , whether it is a judge or a jury in any other legal proceeding , bases determinations on the credibility of the witnesses as to what verdict is reached . 
without this bill , a person can come before an immigration judge , be determined by that judge that they are lying through their teeth , and still get asylum . 
that is just flat out wrong , and it is a distortion of the type of jurisprudence that we have had where court proceedings are supposed to determine exactly what the truth is . 
there is no one who is lying through their teeth that should be able to get relief from the courts , and i would just point out that this bill would give immigration judges the tool to get at the blind sheik who wanted to blow up landmarks in new york , the man who plotted and executed the bombing of the world trade center in new york , the man who shot up the entrance to the cia headquarters in northern virginia , and the man who shot up the el al counter at los angeles international airport . 
every one of these non-9/11 terrorists who tried to kill or did kill honest , law-abiding americans was an asylum applicant . 
we ought to give our judges the opportunity to tell these people no and to pass the bill . 
