Congress took action responding to the influential political leaders that sponsored the bill. The leading sponsor of the Act in the Senate was Senator Edward Ted Kennedy. Kennedy was a Democrat from Massachusetts who had dealt with human resources and immigration since he came into office in 1962 (Ross 1991). Kennedy was responsible for crafting the lottery program that came out of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990. In the program, the United States would give away 50,000 per year to people in countries (particularly European) with close cultural ties (Ross 1991). This was somewhat of compromise Kennedy made himself since his own ethnic group is Irish. He pushed to allow more immigrants from his ethnicity into the United States with work related visas. Kennedy was very supportive of this bill and displayed his support with his statement, “This bill is not amnesty. This bill does not provide a free pass to anyone. This bill does not give an automatic pardon to anyone. This bill does not put those that have been illegal that are here in the United States at the front of the line,” (“Understand Grace”, 2007). He also had help with fellow congressmen. Other co- sponsors that helped Kennedy draft and push the bill through committees and Congress were Republican Alan Simpson from Wyoming, Democrat Daniel Moynihan from New York, Republican Alfonse D’Amato from New York, and Democrat Christopher Dodd from Connecticut. Particularly Alan Simpson played a big role in explaining the different provisions the Act made (Simpson 2006). He corresponded with the House of Representative’s form of the
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