[Pages S4730-S4786]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

BORDER SECURITY, ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, AND IMMIGRATION MODERNIZATION
ACT

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will resume consideration of S. 744, which the clerk will
report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 744) to provide for comprehensive immigration
reform, and for other purposes.

Pending:

Leahy/Hatch amendment No. 1183, to encourage and facilitate
international participation in the performing arts.
Boxer/Landrieu amendment No. 1240, to require training for
National Guard and Coast Guard officers and agents in
training programs on border protection, immigration law
enforcement, and how to address vulnerable populations, such
as children and victims of crime.
Cruz amendment No. 1320, to replace title I of the bill
with specific border security requirements, which shall be
met before the Secretary of Homeland Security may process
applications for registered immigrant status or blue card
status and to avoid Department of Homeland Security budget
reductions.
Cornyn amendment No. 1251, Requiring Enforcement, Security
and safety while Upgrading Lawful Trade and travel
Simultaneously (RESULTS).
Leahy (for Reed) amendment No. 1224, to clarify the
physical present requirements for merit-based immigrant visa
applicants.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time
until noon will be equally divided between the majority and the
minority.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip.

Amendment No. 1251

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
45 minutes between now and the time our vote is scheduled this morning
on my amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. I won't be taking all of that time right now. I will
reserve some time and hopefully other colleagues will come down to the
floor and engage in a discussion.
As you know, the past few days I have been talking about the
importance of border security in this immigration bill. To remind
anybody who happens to be listening, I come from a State, Texas, that
has the longest common border with the country of Mexico, 1,200 miles.
While many of our colleagues or some of our colleagues come from
States such as California where in San Diego they have the fence there
that they view as restricting illegal immigration and entry into the
country, Tucson, Arizona, has a little different situation because much
of the land is Federal land. In Texas, our 1,200-mile common border
with Mexico is largely private property on the Texas side. It also is
enormously diverse. You can go out to West Texas near Alpine where Big
Bend National Park is where you will see huge cliffs that go some 1,000
feet down to the Rio Grande River. While some have said we need a fence
across the entire border, I daresay that putting a fence on a 1,000-
foot cliff is not going to enhance border security much. What I have
argued for from the beginning is the need for a comprehensive border
security plan and for Congress to make a sincere and enforceable
commitment to follow through on that plan.
I do believe, in the 6 years since the last time we debated
immigration reform in 2007, there is an emerging consensus in the
country. Many people are mad, and they deserve to be mad, about the
Federal Government's failure to live up to its promises when it comes
to our broken immigration system.
We can go back to 1986 when Ronald Reagan, the father of modern
conservatism in the Republican Party, signed an amnesty for 3 million
people. His rationale was we are going to enforce our immigration
system so this will be the first and last time any President will have
to sign an amnesty.
We know the enforcement component didn't work, that promise was not
kept, causing a lot of deeply seated skepticism in the American people
as to whether Congress and Washington can be depended upon to keep
their commitments when it comes to enforcing our laws and securing our
borders.
My amendment that we will be voting on perhaps as early as noon today
is designed to turn border security rhetoric into reality. More
specifically, what it adds is a trigger. We have been talking about
triggers to the Gang of 8 bill, the underlying bill, but it would
require the Federal Government to have 100-percent situational
awareness of our border, the southwestern border. We can do that from
Border Patrol, radar, ground sensors, and using all of the magnificent
technology the Defense Department and our military have produced--
amazing American innovators--that our military has used effectively in
places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't believe there is any doubt, and I know our Gang of 8, the
people who wrote the underlying bill, believe that 100-percent
situational awareness of our border is possible and attainable if we
have the political will to make it happen and if our law enforcement
authorities are provided the appropriate resources to do it. And 100-
percent situational awareness is one of the requirements.
The second is operational control. Right now we don't have control of
our southwestern border. The latest Government Accountability Office
estimate is only about 45 percent of our southwestern border is under
operational control.
For example, a few weeks ago I was in South Texas in Brooks County in
deep Rio Grande Valley, the Rio Grande Valley sector of the Border
Patrol, visiting with them. On 1 day they detained 700 people coming
across the southwestern border in the Rio Grande sector and 400 of them
came from countries other than Mexico. Some of the rescue beacons they
have down there for people who are in distress--immigrants coming from
Central America, coming from around the world through our southwestern
border into the United States--the rescue beacons they have down there
that I saw with my own eyes, where if people get in big trouble and
they realize they may lose their life unless they call the Border
Patrol in to help them, are in English, Spanish and, get this, Chinese.
Chinese. This is in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
I asked the local law enforcement authorities, why Chinese? They
said: Well, for a while, we got a whole lot of Chinese immigrants
coming across the border, being smuggled across into the United States.
I said: What is the going rate you have to pay the coyotes, as they
call them, the smugglers?
They said: About $30,000.
For $30,000 somebody from China can get somebody to smuggle them into
the United States, which is the reason why those rescue beacons were in
English, Spanish, and Chinese.
Indeed, the Border Patrol statistics reveal we have people who have
come across the border in the last year from 100 different countries
around the world. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity, as a
member of the Armed Services Committee, to ask the Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper and the head of the Defense Intelligence
Agency whether this porous border was a national security issue. Both
of them said it was, which is pretty obvious.
We know if people from 100 different countries can penetrate our
southwestern border because of a lack of appropriate security there, if
they have the money and they are determined enough, they can come from
anywhere in the world, including countries that are state sponsors of
terrorism. Operational control of the border is very important.

[[Page S4731]]

Third, my amendment offers a real trigger that requires a nationwide
biometric entry-exit system. That sounds a little obscure. Basically,
what happens when you come to the United States from another country is
you are required to give fingerprints. That is a biometric identifier
because you can't use phony documents or a fuzzy picture to claim to be
somebody you are not and get into the country illegally.
The importance of the biometric entry-exit system was noted
particularly by the 9/11 Commission, because several of the people who
were involved in the plot to kill 3,000 Americans on September 11,
2001, entered the country legally, but they never left. Hence, the
importance of a biometric entry-exit system to document not just when
people come to America as tourists or students or whatever, but that
they actually leave when their visa is expired.
Right now, 40 percent of illegal immigration is a product of a
failure to have an effective entry-exit system because people come
legally and they simply stay and melt into the great American
landscape. Unless they come into contact with our law enforcement
officials, commit a crime--driving while intoxicated, domestic
violence, or the like--they are never going to be caught.
Fourth, my amendment requires nationwide E-Verify. E-Verify is the
name given to a system with which all Federal offices have to comply.
For example, when somebody wants to be hired in my Senate office,
either in Texas or up here in DC, we are required by law to run their
name through the E-Verify system to verify this person is legally
eligible to work in the United States. That is an important part of the
provisions in my amendment that provide real triggers.
Let me talk a moment about triggers, because you are going to hear a
lot of discussion about a trigger. A trigger is more than a promise. We
know there is a litany--indeed, there is a trail of broken promises--
when it comes to our immigration system that dates back to at least
1986.
What a trigger means is there is an enforceable mechanism that will
prevent people from transitioning, in the case of my amendment, from
probationary status to legal permanent residency until the objectives
set out in the underlying bill, 100 percent of situational awareness
and operational control, are met, together with a biometric entry-exit
system and nationwide E-Verify.
I wish to emphasize that my amendment uses the same standard,
metrics, and targets as the underlying bill. The difference between my
amendment and their bill is their bill promises the Sun and the Moon
when it comes to border security, E-Verify, and entry-exit, but it has
no enforceable mechanism.
I ask the question, why should the American people trust Congress?
Why should the American people trust Washington to enforce this part of
the essential bargain, the security part of the bargain, if it has
failed to do so in the past?
I would suggest to you that given the current trust deficit here in
Washington, with scandals everywhere, that we can't reasonably expect
the American people to rely on ``trust us.'' We need something
enforceable, which is what my amendment provides.
The trigger in my amendment is not designed to punish people. It is
designed to realign incentives. Everybody from conservatives to
liberals to people in the middle of the road--Republicans, Democrats,
you name it--everybody is incentivized to hit the standard set out in
the underlying bill, 100-percent situational awareness and operational
control.
Over the past few days I have cited a number of experts. We in the
Senate have a lot of experts. We have people from different States,
some of whom, to be honest, know more about the subject than others. I
have cited a couple of experts, including the former head of Customs
and Border Protection and the former Under Secretary for Border and
Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, all of
whom believe the border security requirements in my amendment--and
again I stress in the underlying bill--are reasonable and realistic.
No fewer than three members of the Gang of 8--Senator Bennet of
Colorado, a Democrat; Senator Flake of Arizona, a Republican; and
Senator McCain, a Republican from Arizona--have said the 90-percent
apprehension rate for illegal border crossers is a perfectly attainable
goal.
Senator McCain 2 days ago said he had talked to the head of the
Border Patrol who said this is a perfectly realistic goal, 100-percent
situational awareness and operational control. I agree with that.
If the goal is attainable, why not make it mandatory? Why not make it
go beyond the usual promises and platitudes and demand actual results?
That is what my amendment does. It demands results, and it creates a
mechanism that ensures those results will be delivered.
Again, this is designed to realign all of the incentives so all of us
are absolutely focused like a laser in ensuring that the executive
branch and the bureaucracy will do what the bill promises will be done.
If we are able to accomplish that--I believe the American people are a
compassionate people and understand we have a very difficult hand to
play here because we haven't enforced our immigration laws for many
years now. If they believe sincerely this will end the illegality in
our broken immigration system, if this will return law and order to our
broken immigration system, I believe they will accept dealing with the
11 million people here in a humane and compassionate way.
If you think our immigration system is broken, as I do, and if you
think the status quo is unacceptable, that doing nothing is not the
answer, then I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
It is the only way, I believe, to get truly bipartisan and, even more
important than that, truly effective immigration reform.
Mr. President, may I ask the Chair how much time I have remaining.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Thirty minutes.
Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.
As I mentioned a few moments ago, I wish to spend a few additional
minutes talking about a portion of my amendment that hasn't received
much attention because we have been focused so much on the border
security component. Indeed, I think most Americans would be shocked to
learn the underlying bill--the Gang of 8 bill--would allow eligibility
for immediate legalization of people with multiple drunk driving
convictions. Indeed, the bill even legalizes drunk drivers who have
already been deported, amazingly enough.
Just for perspective, in the year 2011, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement deported nearly 36,000 people with DUI--driving under the
influence--convictions. The problem is especially bad in Houston, TX,
where I was born. Just last month, a Harris County Sheriff's Office
sergeant named Dwayne Polk was killed by an illegal immigrant drunk
driver who had previously been arrested for driving under the influence
and illegally carrying a weapon. After his earlier arrest he was
deported, but he eventually came back to Houston and once again drove
while intoxicated, with the tragic results of SGT Dwayne Polk losing
his life.
In May of 2011, Houston police officer Kevin Will was killed by an
illegal immigrant drunk driver who had been deported to Mexico on
several occasions. In August 2007, an illegal immigrant drunk driver,
with a blood alcohol level three times above the legal limit, killed
three people on a Houston area freeway, including a husband, a wife,
and their 2-year-old son. The driver who killed them was out on bail at
the time of the accident after having been arrested for domestic
violence.
For that matter, not only does the underlying bill legalize
immigrants with multiple drunk driving convictions, it also legalizes
people with multiple domestic violence convictions--domestic violence
convictions. That is mind-boggling.
I realize some people, when they hear the word ``misdemeanor,'' think
we are talking about jaywalking or a speeding ticket or something
similar to that or driving a car without a functioning taillight, but
the truth is--and the former prosecutors in this Chamber know--the
technical difference between a misdemeanor and a felony can be as
little as 1 day additional time in prison.
Typically, a misdemeanor is punished, potentially, with up to 1 year
in

[[Page S4732]]

jail. Anything over that is traditionally called a felony. More
clearly, felonious conduct is often pleaded down to a misdemeanor,
particularly in instances such as domestic violence, where the victim
is either married to or lives with the assailant and there is
difficulty getting cooperation. Sometimes the only thing the prosecutor
can do, even in a case of a very serious physical or other assault, is
to get a misdemeanor conviction, even though the underlying
circumstances are very serious indeed.
There are numerous States that classify certain domestic violence
crimes as misdemeanors, and there is a lot of variety in this, but that
doesn't mean the conduct at issue is any less of a domestic violence
offense. By my count, 23 States have specific misdemeanor domestic
violence offenses. These include California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa,
Minnesota, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
Minnesota, for example, defines misdemeanor domestic assault this
way:

Whoever . . . against a family or household member: (1)
commits an act with intent to cause fear and another of
immediate bodily harm or death; or (2) intentionally inflict
or attempts to inflict bodily harm upon another.

As I am sure my colleagues from Minnesota know, crimes that qualify
as misdemeanor domestic violence under Minnesota law include domestic
abuse with a deadly weapon--even domestic abuse with a gun. While it is
called a misdemeanor in the statute books, it is obviously a very
serious underlying offense.
I would love it if some Member of this Chamber would explain why
conduct such as this should not be a bar to the generous opportunity
afforded in the bill to obtain probationary status and eventually earn
a pathway to citizenship. Why should we include people such as this,
who have shown so much contempt for our laws?
We are not just talking about people who have come here to work in
violation of our immigration laws, we are talking about people who have
come in violation of our immigration laws and who have also committed
serious offenses. We should have zero tolerance for anyone who enters
our country and commits such a heinous act.
America has always been a deeply compassionate and understanding
society, and nothing has changed, but when it comes to granting legal
status to people who have violated our immigration laws, our criteria
should be very clear: no drunk drivers and no violent criminals,
period. My amendment guarantees that, which is just one more reason why
this Chamber should embrace it.
For now, I wish to conclude by saying I read in the press, including
the New York Times, a story by Ashley Parker, dated June 19, 2013, that
says, ``Two GOP Senators are close to a deal on border security.'' It
cites the efforts of my colleagues Bob Corker of Tennessee and John
Hoeven of North Dakota, who have been working behind the scenes to try
to improve the border security component of the underlying bill.
I applaud them for their efforts, and I applaud them for moving the
underlying bill in a more positive direction when it comes to border
security. I am going to wait to pass final judgment until I actually
see language because the devil is so often in the details on things
such as this. But I would point out that just before their efforts,
which now reportedly would include an additional 20,000 Border Patrol
agents, the underlying bill had zero additional Border Patrol agents--
zero additional boots on the ground.

My amendment adds 5,000 Border Patrol agents. Reportedly--and, again,
we need to see the details of the proposal--Senators Corker and Hoeven
would add 20,000 additional Border Patrol agents.
To show what a dramatic change that has been, Senator Schumer, one of
the chief architects of the underlying bill, in a speech on June 12,
said: Whatever CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--says, 6,500 border
agents is a multibillion-dollar proposition, unpaid for, which is why I
know my colleagues on the other side rue the day when we vote for
unpaid obligations.
Again, he said--and this is on June 12--how can you manufacture 3,500
new personnel and say it doesn't add to the cost and will be
reallocated? I want to know where it is going to be reallocated from.
Similarly, my colleague Senator McCain said: But those who think we
need more people, we do need more people to facilitate movement across
ports of entry, but we have 21,000 Border Patrol agents. Today there
are, at the Mexico-Arizona border, people sitting in vehicles in 120-
degree heat.
He said, in a speech on June 18: What we need is not more people. He
went on to say: But the fact is, we can get this border secured, and
the answer, my friend, is as is proposed in the Cornyn amendment; that
we hire 10,000 more Border Patrol agents. He said: That is not a
recognition of what we need.
Finally, he said: No expert I have talked to, to say the best way to
control people from crossing the border illegally, which I desperately
want to do, works better with a huge amount of personnel.
So I point out those comments by Senator Schumer and Senator McCain,
two of the leading members of the Gang of 8--their comments on June 12.
So if it is true, as reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, that
Senator Corker and Senator Hoeven have moved them off the zero
additional Border Patrol agents to doubling the size of the Border
Patrol agents, that is a substantial movement in terms of boots on the
ground.
I will conclude, for now, by saying this: I am looking forward to
seeing the language that is being proposed, the alternative language.
But for now, I believe my amendment deserves the support of the Members
of this Chamber because I believe it is the only way we have available
to us to ensure our constituents, to look them in the face and say: We
know we have broken promises in the past when it comes to border
security. We know we promised 17 years ago there would be a biometric
entry-exit system, when President Clinton signed that into law. But you
know what, we didn't do it. But we are serious about doing the
enforcement and security measures now and, in fact, we have put a
provision in the bill which will guarantee it.
That is what my amendment will do.
I reserve the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time
during the quorum calls be equally divided among the Democrats and
Republicans in the Chamber.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Again, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we are looking at a lot of amendments
right now, and I just want to call attention to one that I think is
significant. It is one where, when people find out about it, they are
just outraged that something like this could happen, and it is
something that could be corrected with a very simple amendment.
My amendment addresses the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision of
Zavidas. There, the Court held that immigrants admitted to the United
States and then ordered removed couldn't be detained for more than 6
months. So something has to happen after a 6-month period.
Four years later, the Supreme Court extended the decision to people
here illegally as well. That is what we are talking about today. As a
result, the Department of Justice and Homeland Security had no choice
but to release thousands of criminal immigrants into our neighborhoods.
The problem with these decisions is that the criminal immigrants
ordered to be removed can't be deported back to their country if

[[Page S4733]]

that country refuses to issue the necessary travel documents. In other
words, if the country doesn't want to take them back, they don't have
to take them back. Yet we have to release them.
More importantly, these decisions have a serious impact on public
safety, as recent cases have illustrated.
Six years ago, a Vietnamese immigrant was ordered deported after
serving time in prison for armed robbery and assault. He was never
removed because this Supreme Court decision handicapped our
authorities. Our immigration officials couldn't deport him without the
cooperation of the Vietnamese Government--which they did not--and his
deportation was never processed. Now, this same immigrant, Binh Thai
Luc, is suspected of killing five people in a San Francisco home in
March of 2012.
The story of Qian Wu puts this situation in perspective. Qian Wu felt
a little safer after the man who had stalked, choked, punched, and
pointed a knife at her was locked up and ordered removed from the
country. The man, Huang Chen, was a Chinese citizen who had illegally
entered the United States. As has been the case at least 8,500 times in
the last 4 years, Mr. Chen's home country refused to let its violent
criminal return home.
Frankly, you can understand how this could happen--and it did happen.
So, handcuffed by the Supreme Court decision, immigrant officials
released Mr. Chen back into the community, here in the United States,
when they had nowhere else to send him.
As you can imagine, the story also does not have a happy ending. Upon
his release in 2010, Huang Chen murdered Qian Wu, the very person that
was concerned during this time.
As you can see, this is a real problem with serious consequences.
There are others like these people out there. According to statistics
provided by the Department of Homeland Security, there are many
countries that are not cooperating or that take longer to repatriate
their nationals. Countries such as Iran, Pakistan, China, Somalia,
Liberia are on the list.
The Supreme Court, in making their decision, said Congress should
clarify the law. My amendment No. 1203, which I hope is going to be
voted on in the next short while, does exactly what we need to do by
creating a framework that allows immigration officials to detain
dangerous criminal immigrants such as Binh Thai Luc and Huang Chen.
Specifically, immigrants can be detained beyond 6 months if they are
under order of removal but can't be deported due to the country's
unwillingness to accept them back if several conditions are met,
including if their release would, one, threaten national security; or,
two, threaten the safety of the community and the alien either is an
aggravated felon or has committed a crime of violence.
I understand that the ACLU is scoring against my amendment. I view
that as a badge of honor and an additional reason to support my
amendment. It seems that the ACLU is only concerned with protecting the
rights of criminals. It is time that we stop this nonsense. Again, all
you have to do is go out in public and tell people that we have this
situation where we are forced to release these criminals into our
society merely because their country will not repatriot them.
So I ask support of my amendment No. 1203.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KING. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. KING. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning
business for up to 12 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. KING. Mr. President, I quote:

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these
States; for that purpose obstructing the laws of
Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to
encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions
of new appropriations of lands.

That is the language of the Declaration of Independence.
One of the grievances against King George III, in the immortal words
of Thomas Jefferson, was limitations on immigration: ``Endeavoring to
prevent the population of these States.'' That was an original
formulation, an original idea at the heart of the United States.
Looked at in the context of our history, this debate we are having
this week is somewhat disappointing but not surprising. It is serious
in its particulars, but it is amazing in its totality.
Here we have a roomful of descendants of immigrants arguing about the
conditions of immigration. Sure, most of our ancestors in this room
entered the country legally, but that was because there were virtually
no laws about immigration for the majority of our history. For most of
our history, if a person could pay the cost, a person could enter the
country. That is the fundamental premise of America.
What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of people with courage, people
with imagination, people with initiative, people with perseverance?
Before coming to this body, I taught at Bowdoin College in Maine a
course on leaders and leadership and we attempted to define the
qualities of leadership. At the end of the course each year we took an
analysis of what we had seen, and people with courage, imagination,
initiative, and perseverance are leaders. Those are the people we want
in this country. That is what it takes to come here. That is what it
has taken to come here throughout our history.
And why are they coming? They are coming for opportunity. They are
coming for freedom. They are coming for a better life for their
children, the same reason our ancestors came here. Isn't this what we
all want--opportunity, freedom, and a better life for our kids?
Does this discussion affect the State of Maine? Well, yes, it does.
We have migrants and immigrants picking our crops in northern Maine,
blueberries and potatoes and broccoli. We have a vibrant refugee and
asylum-seeking community in Portland, ME, and in Lewiston. Many of
those from Africa come here with very different cultures. We have 52
languages spoken in the Portland public schools. Yes, we have strains
and difficulties adjusting one culture to another. But we are making it
work and it is making our State richer spiritually, culturally,
intellectually, and, yes, financially. It is working.
But isn't this discussion all about amnesty? I keep hearing about
amnesty. The mail I get says, Don't let them get amnesty. No, it is not
about amnesty. In my book, amnesty is a free pass. Amnesty is a ``get
out of jail free'' card; it is a forgiveness. If a person is convicted
of what we call in our State OUI--other places call it DWI--if a person
is convicted of driving under the influence, that person pays a fine,
loses their license, and sometimes they spend a few days in jail and
they are under a suspension or a probationary period for several months
or perhaps even several years. But when it is all over--when a person
has paid their fine and had their suspension--they get their license
back and they move on with their life and go from there. Nobody calls
that amnesty when a person gets their license back at the end of that
period after they have paid their debt to society.
I would argue that a fine, which is contained in this bill, and 13
years of what constitutes probation is not amnesty. It is not amnesty
in anybody's book. People who are talking about calling it amnesty--
that is not accurate.
Why is this debate so important? Why is this issue so important? Why
is this bill so important? In my view, immigration is the mainspring of
America. It is our secret sauce. It is what has made us who we are. No
other country in the history of the world has been built the way this
country was built. Except for the African Americans who were brought
here against their will and the Native Americans who were here when the
Europeans arrived, everybody else here came by virtue of immigration,
and that immigration is, I believe, what has separated us from the rest
of the world. It is the

[[Page S4734]]

constant flow of new energy, initiative, and ideas, different cultures,
different religions, different backgrounds, and different creative
energies that have made this country what it is today. If we unduly
limit it or cut it off, we are sunk.
We are living in a negative demographic timebomb. Last year, I
believe for the first time in American history, we had more deaths than
births of White Americans. One doesn't have to be a mathematician to
know if that continues, we will shrink and shrivel as a society. We
need immigration to add to our population, to add to the ideas and
creativity.
What would we lose if we unduly limited immigration in this country?
Well, I am standing in the shoes of Olympia Snowe, the daughter of
Greek immigrants. Before Olympia Snowe, the holder of this office was
George Mitchell, the son of immigrants. Before George Mitchell it was
Ed Muskie, one of the great legislators of the 20th century in America
and the son of an immigrant Polish tailor. We have among our number now
a brilliant young Senator from Texas who himself is the son of an
immigrant.
Immigrants are always going to be different and a little scary, and
that has been true throughout American history. We have had waves of
immigrations: Italians, Germans, Scottish people, Chinese, Irish. It is
hard for us to believe, but a lot of the same sort of uneasiness about
new immigrants was applied to those groups. In New York in the 1800s,
if a person went to apply for a job there might be a sign in the window
of the store that said ``employees needed, jobs available,'' and then
in parentheses it might say in big letters, ``NINA''--N-I-N-A. NINA
stood for ``No Irish Need Apply.'' So uneasiness and fear and, yes,
some prejudice against immigrants has been a part of our history. But
in the end, those people are the very people who have built this
country, literally, and who have made this country what it is.
It is who we are.
There is also talk I have heard about wages and how all of these new
people are going to depress wages. Indeed, a couple of weeks ago I had
a meeting on my schedule in Maine with a union group and all it said
was ``union group to discuss immigration.'' I thought, These folks are
going to be worried about wages and they are going to tell me this is a
bad idea. Just the opposite. What they said was, We support the bill,
Senator. We want immigration reform because now we have millions of
people in this country who are in the shadows who don't have the
benefits of the labor protections and that is what is drawing wages
down. That is what is providing a downward motion on wages and
benefits. When an employer knows he or she has that kind of leverage
over an employee--if a person doesn't take the low salary or sometimes
no salary at all--they may say, I am going to report you; you will be
gone and deported, and that is an inherently uneven and unfair playing
field.
That is why I believe, and I think the CBO report has confirmed, that
fixing this problem--putting the people who are here on a pathway to
earn citizenship--will actually be a gigantic stimulus to our country.

So what we are doing here is very important. Yes, I know, we need
controls, we need border controls. We need to control terrorism and
criminals coming into our country. And, yes, I know we shouldn't reward
breaking the law. But 13 years of probation and a fine is not rewarding
law-breaking. Again, we have to ask, Why did these people break the
law? They broke the law for the same reason our ancestors came here,
and the only reason they didn't break the law was there was no law to
break at that time. But they came here for opportunity and for a better
life for their children.
I have quoted Mark Twain before on this floor and I will probably do
so repeatedly because he captures so many thoughts so succinctly. In
this case, what he said was: ``History doesn't always repeat itself,
but it usually rhymes.''
This discussion we are having here today is nothing new in American
history. It has arisen time after time. It arose in the 1840s and 1850s
when indeed a whole political party came up that was designed to keep
people out. It was called the Know-Nothing Party. The reason it was
called that was because when people asked the members of the party what
they stood for, the members of the party would say they didn't know
anything about that because they didn't want to talk about it. But they
were antiforeigner and anti-Catholic and it was designed to lock in the
ethnic and cultural society as it stood in 1850.
Abraham Lincoln was asked, when he was a member of the Illinois
legislature--I wish he had been a member of the Maine legislature but I
have to concede him to Illinois--how he felt about the Know-Nothings
and whether he in fact was a Know-Nothing. Here is what he said:

I am not a Know-Nothing. How could I be? How can anyone who
abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading
other classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy
appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by
declaring ``all men are created equal.'' We now practically
read it, ``all men are created equal except Negroes.'' With
the Know-Nothings in charge it will read, ``all men are
created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.''

He ended pretty toughly. He said:

When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some
country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to
Russia, for example, where despotism can be taken pure and
without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

I am not suggesting hypocrisy on the part of the people who are
debating this bill, but I do think this is not a new debate and we
can't fear new people coming into our country.
I believe this bill represents a fair-minded resolution of the
current conflict over immigration: control of the border to stem the
tide of illegal immigration; penalties applied to those who broke the
law; but an opportunity to earn citizenship after paying the penalty
and a lengthy period of what amounts to probation.
I don't think this debate is about fences and fines and learning
English. It is about America itself: confusing, chaotic, creative, at
times unsettling, but always erring on the side of freedom and
opportunity.
We have young people coming to this country who want and will achieve
an education and then we send them home. In my view, we should staple a
green card to every diploma of every foreign student the moment they
walk through that graduation line so they can bring their ideas and
creativity to our society.
The constant infusion of new blood, new people, and new ideas isn't a
threat, it is who we are and it is what made us what we are--again, in
the words of Abraham Lincoln--``the last, best hope of Earth.''
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would ask notice from the Chair after I
have expended 10 minutes of my 12-minute time so I know I have a couple
of minutes remaining, please.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 8 minutes
remaining.
Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. I wish to get a 2-minute notice,
please.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator will be notified.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have been here numerous times over the
last couple of weeks to talk about why the essential bargain that needs
to underlie this bill has to be one that is not based on phony promises
such as the ones made in the past about restoring legality and order to
our broken immigration system. It actually needs a mechanism that will
compel results and realign all of the incentives for people across the
political spectrum, Republicans and Democrats alike, to make sure
Congress, and the executive branch in particular, keep their promises
when it comes to border security. That is what my amendment is about
and that is what we will be voting on perhaps in the next half-hour.
The underlying metrics contained in my amendment are derived from
those in the underlying bill: 100-percent situational awareness and 90-
percent apprehension. Some people may question

[[Page S4735]]

that and say, How can we have 100-percent situational awareness? The
fact is by using the technology currently deployed in places such as
Afghanistan and Iraq. Technology such as that was featured in a Los
Angeles Times article a few weeks ago called the VADER, a type of radar
pilot that was being tested on the western part of the border. With it
we can do a comprehensive job of seeing the border.
I am not talking about a Border Patrol agent seeing three people
coming across the border and not seeing a handful of others who scamper
across in some other place. I am not talking about that sort of
imprecision. I am talking about using available technology such as
that, for example, demonstrated by AT&T. AT&T recently came in and
demonstrated in my office the use of fiberoptic cable to create, in
essence, an acoustic system which will identify people crossing the
border and which then will trigger cameras to focus on the individual
coming across to make sure it is not a deer or a javelina, that it is
actually what the Border Patrol should be focused on; that is, people
crossing the border illegally.

They could basically lay that cable down the entire U.S.-Mexican
border for, I think they told me, somewhere on the order of $80
million. It is a lot of money, but it is not too much when it comes to
securing our border.
Likewise, I mentioned the VADER technology. I know there are fixed
towers and radar systems and camera systems that are being used by the
military that need to be used by the Department of Homeland Security
when it comes to protecting our border and keeping our commitments to
keeping America safe.
There are dirigibles, I will call them, blimps that are used
successfully in places such as Afghanistan and which should provide an
ability to see a huge stretch of the border, using, again, radar and
cameras. So this idea of situational awareness--that that is somehow
not possible--simply ignores the technological advances that have been
made and deployed by our U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq and
which could be deployed if we had the political will to make it happen
along the southwestern border.
I do not think it is too much to ask that of the people you actually
see, that the Border Patrol ought to detain 90 percent. Right now,
according to the Government Accountability Office--in 2011--our border
is only 45 percent under operational control--45 percent. So that
means, if you do the rough arithmetic, out of the 350,000 people who
were detained coming across our border last year maybe the Border
Patrol seizes and detains half of the people. Who knows what it is. We
are guessing. We know the enumerator, but we do not know the
denominator. So we need to deploy the technology and assets we have in
order to meet that goal.
Again, I would refer to the New York Times article I talked about a
moment ago of June 19. The headline: ``Two G.O.P. Senators Are Close to
a Deal on Border Security.'' This refers to the efforts of our
colleagues Senator Corker and Senator Hoeven. I have applauded them
publicly, and I will do so again in making sure under their agreement--
which we have not yet seen, and we understand we will see language
maybe tonight--they have helped make sure that we focus more assets on
the border security issue. I think they have added very constructively
to this process, but I think the problem is--and we will have to wait
until we see the language--under this pending agreement it says they
have agreed to make the 90-percent apprehension rate a goal rather than
a requirement--a goal.
Well, the American people will not be fooled. When Congress says to
the American people, on something as important as border security:
Trust us, it reminds me of the old sort of lame joke that the most
feared words in the English language are: I am from the government, and
I am here to help.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 2 minutes
remaining.
Mr. CORNYN. We are saying, in essence, on border security: We are
from the government. Trust us. We have an aspirational goal to actually
secure the border, but you have no guarantee that it will be done.
That is why my amendment is so important, because what it does is not
create any sort of punitive effect, but it realigns all of the
incentives for people across the political spectrum--Republicans and
Democrats alike--to make sure the executive branch and the bureaucracy
keep their commitments when it comes to border security. Then I believe
the American people, demonstrating their typical generosity and
compassion, will say: Yes, we need to find a humane way to deal with
the 11 million people who are here.
Mr. President, I have a sheet in front of me entitled ``What They Are
Saying About Border Security Metrics.'' This sheet has excerpts from a
number of experts in the border security area who talk about the
importance not just of measuring inputs--how many Border Patrol agents,
how many drones, how many radar; I call those inputs--what they say is
that we actually need outputs, we need results, and we need metrics or
measuring sticks to be able to show we are making progress toward the
intended goal.
I ask unanimous consent that this document citing these experts be
printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
I hope my colleagues will vote to take up my amendment. I understand
the majority leader will likely move to table it in short order. I hope
my colleagues will vote no on that motion to table because I think this
is an important building block in terms of restoring Congress's and the
Federal Government's credibility when it comes to our broken
immigration system.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my
time.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record as follows:

What They Are Saying About Border Security Metrics

``Immigration reform proposals need to identify clearer
goals for border security and ways to measure success rather
than simply increasing resources.''--Greg Chen & Su Kim,
Border Security: Moving Beyond Past Benchmarks (Amer.
Immigration Lawyers Ass'n, Jan. 2013), at 1.
``Strategic planning is necessary if [DHS] is to carry out
its border-security missions effectively and efficiently. As
part of that, DHS leadership must define concrete and
sensible objectives and measures of success.''--Henry Willis,
Joel Predd, Paul Davis & Wayne P. Brown, Measuring the
Effectiveness of Border Security Between Ports-of-Entry (RAND
Corp.: Homeland Security and Defense Center, 2010), at xi.
``At present, evidence of significant improvements in
border control relies primarily on metrics regarding resource
increases and reduced apprehension levels, rather than on
actual deterrence measures, such as size of illegal flows,
share of the flow being apprehended, or changing recidivism
rates of unauthorized crossers. The ability of immigration
agencies and DHS to reliably assess and persuasively
communicate border enforcement effectiveness will require
more sophisticated measures and analyses of enforcement
outcomes.''--Doris Meissner et al., Immigration Enforcement
in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery,
(Migration Policy Inst., Jan. 2013), at 6.
``Consternation and skepticism have been among the main
reactions to the Border Patrol's new border security
strategy. The Border Patrol's failure to define what was
really new about the strategy, the plan's lack of details,
and the absence of any metrics to measure the agency's
progress underscored existing concerns about the Border
Patrol's fuzzy strategic focus and lack of
accountability.''--Tom Barry, The Border Patrol's Strategic
Muddle: How the Nation's Border Guardians Got Stuck in a
Policy Conundrum, and How They Can Get Out (Center for Int'l
Policy, Dec. 2012), at 8.
``For two decades, the only issue for border security has
been `how much more?' shift in the debate is overdue.
Congress should be demanding the best answers on what all
those enforcement dollars have purchased, and insist on
better performance measures in the future.''--Edward Alden,
Time to Measure Progress at the Border With Mexico (Geo.
Washington Univ. Homeland Security Policy Inst.) May 2012.
``Congress should direct the administration to develop and
report a full set of performance measures for immigration
enforcement . . . Better data and analyses--to assist
lawmakers in crafting more successful [border security]
policies and to assist administration officials in
implementing those policies--are long overdue.''--Bryan
Roberts et al., Managing Illegal Immigration to the United
States: How Effective is Enforcement? (Council on Foreign
Relations, May 2013), at 3, 52.
``[C]learer metrics for border security must be established
so we can ensure limited resources are directed to where they
can best protect the nation.''--Eric Olson & Christopher
Wilson, Defining Border Security (Politico, Feb. 10, 2013).

Mr. CORNYN. May I ask, Mr. President, how much of my time remains?

[[Page S4736]]

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. CORNYN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this legislation has been pending on the
floor since the beginning of last week. We should have started
disposing of amendments during the first week the bill was on the
Senate floor. But we have seen objection after objection by those who
are opposed--and they are very much in the minority--to this
legislation. They objected to proceeding to comprehensive immigration
reform. That cost us several days. To show that they are a minority, we
finally ended that filibuster so we could proceed to the bill with 84
Senators voting to proceed.
I realize some would rather not have any votes one way or the other.
That allows someone to go home and say, whether they are for or against
it, yes, I am working on that because I voted maybe. Well, is there any
wonder why we are at such a low level of approval in the American
people's eyes, the whole Congress? They expect us to vote yes or no.
Sometimes you have to vote for something that is unpopular. Well, we
are elected to 6-year terms. We are supposed to do that. We are
supposed to represent over 300 million Americans, 100 of us. The
American people do not want us to delay and delay so we do not have to
vote, so we can go back home and say: Oh, I am on your side, no matter
what your side is. No. They expect us to vote yes or no even though it
may be controversial.
Last week and this week I have been working closely with the majority
leader and Senator Grassley and others to make progress. We started
voting on amendments in an orderly fashion, but we still faced
objections. There have been 250 amendments filed to this bill. So far,
we have considered 11--11 votes, endless delays. We could be spending
months on it. The American people expect us to have the courage to vote
yes or no.
A lot of Senators who are not on the Judiciary Committee have
amendments. Some of these amendments are noncontroversial. Many have
widespread support. There ought to be a way to just adopt those. Some
of these amendments are controversial. Well, then, let's vote on them.
In the Judiciary Committee, we considered a total of 212 amendments
over an extensive markup, 35 hours of debate. More than half of the
amendments considered were offered by Republican members of the
committee. We adopted 135 amendments to improve this legislation. All
but three were passed with both Democratic and Republican votes.
I hope Republicans will join me in making an effort to dispose of the
many noncontroversial items. The amendments, including the managers'
amendment, are noncontroversial. They have widespread support. They
have been filed by Senators on both sides over the past two weeks, and
many have already been discussed at length on the Senate floor. The
package contains bipartisan amendments to improve oversight of certain
immigration programs. It also contains non-controversial technical
amendments.
I see the distinguished majority leader on the floor. I am going to
yield the floor. I am going to speak on this further, but my whole
point is that we have all kinds of noncontroversial amendments
cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats alike, both Republicans and
Democrats on the same amendment. We ought to be adopting them and not
stalling because a stall says: I want to vote maybe. I do not want to
vote yes or no, I want to vote maybe.
I have served in this body longer than any current Member. I have
served here with nearly one-fifth of the Senators who have had the
privilege of serving in the body since the beginning of the country. I
have known great Republicans and great Democrats who must be
wondering--in the past--what are we doing?
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have not heard all of my friend's
statement. We have a list of 27 amendments that the chair has come up
with that are noncontroversial. One of them I was surprised we could
not put on the list because a Republican Senator objected because they
thought it was controversial that we should do things in this bill, the
immigration bill, for the best interests of the child. That is
controversial. That surprised me.
Mr. LEAHY. You know, I hear a lot of speeches that we should support
family values, as both the Senator from Nevada and I do, but when you
try to put it in a bill--that it is obviously a family value,
protecting children--then we have an objection. Well, if you do not
like the amendment, vote against it. Let's vote on it.
Mr. REID. While Senator Landrieu was here on the floor last night, we
had a colloquy back and forth for a little bit. My friend the chairman
of the committee and I can lament about the days when we would bring a
bill to the floor and--the Energy and Water appropriations bill. The
two of us have been longtime members of the Appropriations Committee.
Senators Bennett, Johnson, and I, Pete Domenici, when he was the
ranking member with me--we would do the Energy and Water bill in a
couple of hours, a bill that was extremely important for the country.
It provided security for nuclear weaponry. But now we do not do that
anymore. We have 27 amendments here. It is a sad commentary on things.
But these things would be accepted not in a managers' amendment, they
would just be done by unanimous consent. But, anyway, we cannot do
that.
Mr. President, I call for regular order with respect to the Cornyn
amendment No. 1251.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The amendment is now pending.
Mr. REID. I move to table the Cornyn amendment. I ask unanimous
consent that there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to the vote on my
motion to table.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the majority leader has moved to table my
amendment which provides a guarantee of actual results rather than
false promises, which have been the sad litany of most of our history
when it comes to immigration reform and border security.
Starting in 1986, when Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 3 million
people premised on enforcement, the American people, in their typical
generosity and compassion, accepted that based on the representation it
would never happen again. In 1996, 17 years ago, President Bill Clinton
signed into law the requirement for a biometric entry-exit system,
which would address the 40 percent of illegal immigration that occurs
because people enter legally, simply stay, and melt into the great
American landscape, unless they happen to commit a crime or are
otherwise caught by law enforcement.
We cannot ask the American people to trust us because of this litany
and sad story of broken promises when it comes to immigration reform.
That is why we need real enforcement, why my amendment needs to pass
and not be tabled.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I support the tabling of the amendment.
There may be some good parts in it, but most of it is bad. The billions
of additional taxpayer dollars I cannot support, with all of the
billions we already have in here.
The biggest reason I will not support it is because it imposes new
unrealistic triggers. It says to people, we want to give you the
pathway to citizenship, but, guess what. We are going to keep the door
closed. You can pretend you are going to get citizenship, but we are
going to make it impossible as we have a fully biometric entry-exit
system at all air and seaports as a trigger.

[[Page S4737]]

Most airports will not be able to do this, certainly not the little
airports many of us use to fly in and out. That is unrealistic.
I appreciate the effort the Senator from Texas has put into this
amendment. But I must strongly oppose it.
This amendment would impose new, unrealistic triggers that must be
met before the pathway to citizenship becomes a reality.
To take one example, the amendment includes a fully biometric exit
system at all air and seaports as a trigger before those in provisional
status can earn green cards. But this presents extensive technological
and infrastructure challenges that could take many years to fully
address. U.S. airports were not designed to accommodate immigration
exit lanes, where biometrics could be collected.
This approach will not work. An attainable pathway to citizenship is
a central component of this bill. It is how we will bring people out of
the shadows so that we know who is here and can focus instead on who is
dangerous--a critical step if we are serious about national security.
The triggers in this amendment will have the opposite effect. They
are unrealistic. People will not come forward and register if they
believe that they will remain in limbo.
In addition to making the triggers unattainable, the amendment also
makes the pathway to citizenship unfair and irrationally difficult. It
would make immigrants ineligible for Registered Provisional Immigrant
(RPI) status if they have been convicted of a single misdemeanor
offense related to domestic violence and child abuse.
I know this may sound reasonable on its face and we all agree that
domestic violence is unacceptable and that abusers should be punished
for their crimes. I am concerned, however, that this amendment may have
the unintended consequence of harming the very victims it seeks to
protect.
When we considered a similar proposal in committee, more than 150
organizations who work with the victims of domestic violence expressed
their concerns that such a measure would have a chilling effect on
reporting, and could even lead to victims getting caught up in the
criminal justice system. That's why the committee rejected the
proposal.
The amendment would also dramatically increase the cost of the bill.
It would require billions of additional taxpayer dollars be spent on
the border each year. At some point, we must simply say that is too
much. This amendment reaches that point.
This amendment does have some good provisions in it. It takes steps
that would help facilitate cross-border travel and commerce by
improving land ports of entry. I would welcome the opportunity to work
with the Senator from Texas on a few of those proposals.
But overall, the amendment goes much too far, and I cannot support
it.
I strongly oppose this amendment, and I would vote to table the
amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on agreeing to the
motion.
The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Ms.
Klobuchar) and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller) are
necessarily absent.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Idaho (Mr. Risch).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Donnelly). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 54, nays 43, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 159 Leg.]

YEAS--54

Baldwin
Baucus
Begich
Bennet
Blumenthal
Boxer
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cowan
Donnelly
Durbin
Feinstein
Flake
Franken
Gillibrand
Graham
Hagan
Harkin
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Johnson (SD)
Kaine
King
Landrieu
Leahy
Levin
McCain
McCaskill
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Paul
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Stabenow
Tester
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden

NAYS--43

Alexander
Ayotte
Barrasso
Blunt
Boozman
Burr
Chambliss
Chiesa
Coats
Coburn
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Crapo
Cruz
Enzi
Fischer
Grassley
Hatch
Heller
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Johanns
Johnson (WI)
Kirk
Lee
Manchin
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Portman
Pryor
Roberts
Rubio
Scott
Sessions
Shelby
Thune
Toomey
Vitter
Wicker

NOT VOTING--3

Klobuchar
Risch
Rockefeller
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, the managers of this bill and floor staff
are working to try to come up with a path forward on this legislation.
We have a number of Senators who are concerned about amendments that
they feel are not controversial, and that is one track we are trying to
come up with.
The other track is a number of Senators are working with the Gang of
8 to come up with a major amendment dealing with, as I understand,
border security and a number of other things. I am also told that
amendment is being drafted by legislative counsel. So I hope we can
have that amendment soon so people can look at it, and I hope we can do
something with the noncontroversial amendments.
In the meantime, we have to understand this is not easy to do. But I
think we have a path forward. I am grateful to everyone for being as
understanding as they are, because legislation is not easy, especially
on a major piece of legislation such as this.
But I do say this: This is not one of those bills that suddenly
appeared on the Senate floor. People have been working on this
legislation for months. For months the Gang of 8 has been working on
this. We had one of the most thorough markups in recent history in the
Senate. Hundreds of amendments were considered, scores were accepted--
Democratic amendments, Republican amendments. So this legislation we
have on the floor is not as if suddenly it is here and not much has
been done about it.
Again, I repeat what I said before: We are trying to find a way
forward.
Mr. President, in the meantime, I ask unanimous consent that Senator
Toomey, Senator Landrieu, and then Senator Cruz be recognized for 10
minutes each in the sequence I just mentioned.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I wish to begin by commending my many
colleagues who put a lot of time and effort into this bill and attempts
to refine it through this amendment process. But I have to say, with
all due respect, I think a great portion of the debate we have been
having in this body misses the fundamental point, the most important
aspect of what we ought to be addressing in immigration.
We have spent a lot of time working on and talking about what we do
with the people who are here illegally, and there is a path to
citizenship in this underlying bill for these folks.
We have talked an awful lot about border security. And border
security is an important issue. But I am strongly of the view that
while that is important, border security reform is not sufficient to
solve the immigration problem we have. I would point out that however
high we choose to build a wall on our border, someone can always build
a ladder that is 1 foot taller.
I think the most important part of this whole debate ought to be
about, What do we do about the next wave of immigrants, the next group
of people who want to come to this country--future immigration that is
certainly going to happen? I think to address that we have to think
about what drives the immigration that has been happening, much of
which has been illegal.
I think what drives it is poor people who have very meager prospects
who want to come to a rich country where there are great opportunities.
It is people who want to work hard and build a better life for
themselves and their families. It happens to be the exact same thing
that drove every previous wave of immigration.

[[Page S4738]]

I think about the 25-year-old Mexican guy in central Mexico who lives
in a poor community where prospects are grim and the standard of living
is miserable. He wants to come here to build a better life, and he does
so in the same way my grandparents in Ireland and my great-grandparents
in Portugal wanted to come here, for the exact same reason.
My ancestors had very little education and no skills. They came to
this country to work, and that is what they did. When they did that,
they didn't weaken America, they didn't weaken our economy. They helped
to build this country, they helped to build this economy, as all of our
ancestors did. That is true of immigrants who want to come here and
work, and we ought to have a legal avenue that allows these people who
want to build a better life for themselves and, in the process, will
build a better America--we ought to allow that to happen.
In my view, this bill doesn't go nearly far enough in accommodating
the legal immigration we could and should have in this country,
especially with respect to low-skilled workers.
I will be the first to say the bill makes a lot of progress for high-
skilled workers in two big areas: the H-1B visa. The cap that has been
too low for too long is significantly raised. And although we have
created hoops that people have to go through that are probably
unnecessary, it is progress that we have a much higher cap.
There is also a new opportunity for graduate students in the STEM
fields to get green cards, in time, and that is very constructive.
These people come here with a great deal of human capital, intellectual
capital, they are trained in fields where we need these skills, and the
last thing we should do is send them home to compete against us. It is
terrific that this bill addresses that by welcoming these folks.
But for the category of low-skilled nonagricultural legal
immigration, this bill is wildly inadequate. I say that because the
visa that is created to accommodate these folks I think has terribly
low caps. In the first year, the cap is a mere 20,000 people. The next
year it is 35. It goes up to 75 eventually. These are absurdly low
numbers by any reasonable measure. Frankly, you could consider this the
anti-immigration bill because these numbers are so low, and this is the
category where there is the greatest interest in immigrating.

I would point out that early in the last decade, according to the Pew
Hispanic Center, there were 800,000 people coming here every year. In
2007, the Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill was reported out of
committee with the support of Senator Kennedy, and that allowed for
400,000 guest worker visas each year.
Yesterday or the day before, the CBO came out with a score of this
underlying bill, and interestingly they predict that fully 75 percent
of all future illegal immigration that is expected under current law
will occur under this bill. I think part of the reason is because we
are not providing an adequate legal avenue for people who want to come
here and work hard.
So I have an amendment. I will have more to say about this later, but
I want to mention this to my colleagues and urge their consideration.
It is an amendment that lifts the cap each year. The first year it
takes the cap up to 200,000. It then goes to 250,000, 300,000, and
finally 350,000 in the fourth year.
I would point out that these caps on the W visas--the low-skilled
worker visas--would still be lower in the fourth year than Senator
Kennedy agreed to in the first year, a few years ago. It doesn't change
the wage protections that are in the underlying bill. A worker would
still need a sponsoring employer. All of those provisions stay the
same. But we at least would increase the opportunity of people who want
to come here legally and work hard to build a better life.
I know some of my friends, especially on the other side, are going to
oppose this. But I will tell you, if we do not raise the caps for the
low-skilled workers who want to come to this country, then the next
wave of illegal immigration is guaranteed regardless of what we do at
the border. Anybody who thinks more legal immigration of people who
want to come here and work hard for themselves and their family is
harmful to our economy or to America and we need to keep those people
out, as, I am afraid to say, this bill does, that is a profound
misreading of American history. Throughout all of our history, from
before we even became an independent Republic, the story of America has
been one wave of immigrants after another. And while millions of people
were coming to this country, what was happening to America? We were
becoming richer. Wages were rising, our economy was growing, our
standard of living was increasing. That is what happens when people
come here to work; they increase the size of our economy.
We shouldn't view our economy as a pie where we are all fighting for
a slice and we don't want somebody else to get a bigger slice, because
what happens when people come here through a legal system to work hard
is they increase the size of the pie. They are consumers, they become
investors, they become contributors to our economy and to our country,
just as every single wave previous to them--including my grandparents
and all of our ancestors--did as well.
I think this is the central challenge: Fix the broken immigration
system so we won't have the next wave of illegal immigration, so we can
continue to build a stronger economy that these folks will help to
build. I think we need to address these caps as a part of the process
of doing that.
I want to thank my colleague, Senator Johnson from Wisconsin, for
cosponsoring this amendment. I know a number of other colleagues are
interested in sponsoring this. I will have more to say about this later
in the week or next week, but I think this is a very important topic
that we need to address in this debate.
Mr. President, I appreciate the time and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I came to the floor to speak about and
follow up on a 2-hour debate we had last night on the floor about
amendments pending to this bill that are uncontested.
But before I do, let me acknowledge the leadership for allowing
Senator Toomey to come to the floor and offer his amendment. It is not
one--although he has made some good points--that I can agree with or
others will agree with. But at least he had the opportunity to come to
the floor, present his amendment and ideas, make his arguments, and
hopefully at some time the Senate can vote on that amendment. That is
the process.
In the underlying bill, these quotas and goals and numbers of visas
were carefully and very fragilely compromised among Democrats and
Republicans that serve as the basis of the underlying bill. So any
major adjustments to that would undermine a comprehensive immigration
bill.
The bill we have to consider is not the perfect bill. We could have
all written it differently. But the overriding objective to fix a
system that is broken, to secure the border, to require taxes be paid,
English spoken, behind the line after people who have come here
legally, close these borders, improve technology, and give an economic
impact to this country overrides, in my view, these important but not
major issues.
Having said that, there is an issue that I think deserves a
tremendous amount of attention, and it is not just one amendment, it is
27 amendments. The issue is there are currently 278 amendments filed,
including Senator Toomey's amendment. So besides his, there are 277
amendments pending to this bill.
Senator Harry Reid has said actually for 6 weeks now that he wants
this bill finished by July 4. Because the leadership has not been able
to negotiate--which is very difficult, I understand; some of these are
very controversial amendments and who is going to get votes on what, et
cetera, et cetera--it has really slowed us down.
I am not new to the Senate. I have seen this happen before. I am not
whining about it; I am acknowledging that is the world in which we
live. There is no magic button that can be pushed to fix this, but what
we can do is come together in a trusting way to pass uncontested
amendments--amendments that are not contested on the Republican side
and that are not contested on the Democratic side. I am aware of about
27.

[[Page S4739]]

The staff, both Republicans and Democrats, has been working through
the night to identify off the list of 277 amendments besides that of
Senator Toomey, some of those that are actually really good ideas that
Republicans and Democrats agree to, that do not upset the balance of
the bill, do not spend any major additional funding or minor funding,
that are in the principle and scope of the bill. It is our
responsibility as Senators to legislate. That is what we are trying to
do.
I would like to read this list of amendments that to my knowledge
have no contest. No one is opposing them. This is a list that was put
together by Republicans and Democrats. Perhaps there is another list of
which I am unaware. My only goal is to get the Senate to accept
amendments that are uncontested, that improve the bill, because that is
what we are sent here to do.
I see the ranking member on the floor. I will yield in a minute, but
I am going to take my full time and I will stay on the floor until we
can resolve these things.
But I point out that there are only 17 members of the Judiciary
Committee. I am not one of them. Those 17 members of the Judiciary
Committee, led by Senator Leahy and ably by Ranking Member Grassley,
met for 2 weeks, morning, noon, and night, hours and hours. Senator
Grassley himself filed 77 amendments, and 38 were considered, 16 were
adopted, and 22 were rejected. Senator Grassley as the ranking member
is entitled to more amendments than anyone. The chair gets the most,
the ranking member gets the second most, and I think that is actually
what happened.
The problem for those of us who are not members of the Judiciary
Committee, who are not authorized to offer amendments at the committee
level because we are not on the committee--although we can informally
work with members, and I did that, as many Members did because we know
what our job is around here--the only way we can have input into this
bill acting on behalf of constituents who have come to us with very
good ideas.
Let me say the best ideas come not only from the little group here in
Washington. We have very smart people out in the rest of the United
States who follow things very carefully. They call their Senators and
Representatives--elected officials, nonprofit groups, citizens,
businesspeople--and say: I read the bill. I am thinking this might be a
better idea.
We get our staffs to work on it, and, voila, that is how many
amendments come forward.
What I am so angry about--and I will use the power I have as a
Senator to push this point--is that when these ideas come and we have
Republicans and Democrats supporting them, we cannot even get a process
to get these uncontested good ideas forward because we give all the
time and attention to the most controversial amendments. They are
usually the ones that have no chance of passing whatsoever, that are
message amendments for both sides, that undermine the bill we are
trying to work on, and our ability to legislate has gone out the
window. I am not going to be a Senator with that window closed, so I
plan to open it. I am going to use all the power of my office to open
the window of opportunity to legislate.
I am going to ask for 3 more minutes to read something into the
Record. I have a list of amendments in front of me, starting with
Senator Begich, 1285; Cardin and Kirk, 1286; Carper, 1408; Carper-
Coburn, 1344; Collins, as modified, 1255; Coats, 1288; Feinstein, 1250;
Hagan, 1386; Heinrich, 1342, Heller, 1234; Kirk and Coons, 1239;
Klobuchar and Coats, 1261; Landrieu, 1338; Landrieu, 1382; Leahy and
Hatch, 1183; a Leahy technical amendment that has no number; Leahy, EB-
5 clarification that has no number but is technical; Murray-Crapo,
1368; Landrieu, 1341; Landrieu-Cochran 1383; Nelson, 1253; Reed, 1223;
Schatz and Kirk, 1416; Shaheen, 1272; Stabenow, Collins, and King,
1405; Udall, 1241; and Udall, 1242.
To my knowledge, none of these amendments are contested. Some of them
are Democratic amendments, and some of them are Republican amendments.
At some point I am going to ask for these amendments to be included in
the base of this bill. I am not going to ask that at this exact moment,
but I am going to ask--well, I might ask the chair and ranking member,
is this a list the Senator recognizes? If not, is there another list I
could see, observe, and put into the Record for this discussion? I ask
the ranking member of the committee, the Senator from Iowa.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Has the Senator yielded the floor? I don't think I want
to speak until I have it.
Ms. LANDRIEU. No, I have not. I understand these amendments to be
noncontroversial. It is my understanding that there is no Republican
opposition to the substance of these amendments. I could be wrong. If
someone can tell me what the substantive objections to these amendments
are, I will go back to work. I am happy to work on this all day. It is
very important. We have several days to finish this. If somebody could
tell me either in writing or verbally what are any substantive
objections to these amendments, I promise I will do the work necessary
to see what can be done to work them out.
I am going to ask because no one has come to me. I filed this list,
talked about this 2 hours last night. Everyone knows these amendments.
Everyone has had a chance to look at them. No one has come to me to say
they object to any of these amendments. I am going to simply ask
unanimous consent for them to be added to the bill.
Let me say that after these are added to the bill, we still will
have--let me do my math--we still will have 251 amendments to fight
about. So, you know, we will really enjoy the fight. I can fight as
tough as the next guy. But could we possibly get amendments that
Members have worked together on?
How fascinating that Democrats and Republicans actually worked
together to answer constituent letters and phone calls and concerns
about immigration and found a way to work together and put an amendment
together. But, you know what. We go to the back of the line while
everybody who has not worked, who just wants headlines--and I am not
speaking of Senator Grassley. He has done a great job in his
leadership. But there are others who want to have press conferences and
headlines. I do not. I just want to legislate on behalf of the
constituents who have sent me here now for three terms.
I am going to ask unanimous consent to agree to these uncontested, to
my knowledge, amendments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. GRASSLEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Is there a time limit for me to speak?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana had 10 minutes,
which has now expired. The Senator from Iowa has no time allocated to
him.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Reserving the right to object, and I probably will have
to object, but let me explain first of all that this is a rare moment
that Senator Landrieu and I might be on the opposite side of the fence.
And maybe when this is all done, we will not be on the opposite side of
the fence because 99 percent of the time that she and I have
conversations, it is about foster care and adoption and all those
things. But let me speak to my reservation.
First of all, we have had this list that she speaks of since at least
this morning and maybe even earlier than this morning and we have been
going through it. I will give a bottom line, but I want further
opportunity to explain.
There is now to the chairman's staff a counteroffer that we have that
I would like to have Senator Landrieu and other Senators take a look
at. I had an opportunity last night to spend some time speaking with
Senator Landrieu about this, trying to get a process in place. I guess
that process is in place now. We went through these amendments. But
let's say, first of all, when there are noncontroversial amendments
presented to us by the majority party, it means they have stated that
they are noncontroversial and we go through the list. We may have a
different judgment on some of them because it is my conclusion that not
all of the 27 so-called noncontroversial amendments are, in fact,
noncontroversial. Some of them are in

[[Page S4740]]

another committee's jurisdiction, and we always take the leadership of
other committees, when they are under other jurisdictions, into
consideration.
Normally amendments like this would take place in a managers'
amendment that comes near the end of the process because it takes time
to go through. We could have 100 amendments on a list that somebody
thinks are noncontroversial, so it takes some time to clear.
Despite what has been said, many of these on the list of 27 are not
necessarily easy, but we worked on them, we presented an alternative,
and I ask for that to be discussed. In the meantime, then, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Is there a physical copy of the list you have presented
to the Democrats? Could it be submitted to the Record?
Mr. GRASSLEY. The chairman's staff has it, and I ask the Senator to
consult the chairman.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I would like to ask that that list be read into the
Congressional Record.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I will not submit that list until after the chairman
responds.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent for that list to be submitted
to the Record.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, do I have the floor?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent that the time until 2 o'clock
be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and that
the majority leader be recognized at 2 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask that I take the Democratic
leader's time for 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Well, I am next because there was just a Republican on
the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
The Senator from Texas is in order to be recognized.
Ms. LANDRIEU. What is the next order, please, after the Senator from
Texas?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no order.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes after
the Senator from Texas.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Texas.

Syria

Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong concern
about President Obama's decision to arm the rebels in Syria. That
decision was signaled last week by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben
Rhodes. According to Mr. Rhodes the United States will start supplying
arms to selected rebel groups.
I fully understand the seriousness of the situation in Syria. Bashar
al-Asad is a brutal dictator. Syria has been on the State Department's
state sponsor of terrorism list since 1979. For 2 years this brutal
civil war has raged, leaving at least 93,000 dead--100 reportedly
through chemical weapons attack. The humanitarian situation in Syria is
a calamity. Millions of people have been displaced.
Iran and Russia stand to gain a major strategic victory if Asad
remains in power, and we have to be concerned about the danger this war
poses to our allies Israel and Jordan.
All Americans would like to see secular, democracy-minded forces in
Syria come to power, but President Obama's failed policy over the last
2 years has left us with no good options at this time. In the beginning
of the uprising, there was a moment when the peaceful protesters could
have used the vocal energetic support of the United States. Instead,
the Obama administration stood by for months apparently in the hopes
they could make Asad see reason. Before long, military hostilities
broke out, but President Obama chose not to act, hoping instead to lead
from behind.

In the course of the war, Asad has benefited from weapons from Iran,
Russia, and fighters from Hezbollah. Our repeated entreaties to the
Russians to help us resolve this crisis have fallen on deaf ears--most
recently this week when President Obama tried to reach a diplomatic
solution with President Putin, to have him once again refuse to be the
good-faith partner the administration seems to think he could be.
Meanwhile, the most effective, organized Syrian rebels are affiliated
with al-Qaida. There are two main al-Qaida entities active in Syria:
Jabhat al-Nusra and the resurgent al-Qaida in Iraq. While recent plans
to merge them have foundered, they are both powerful and well armed.
In recent weeks a training video has been posted on an al-Qaida Web
site showing young rebel recruits in Syria singing not only about
overthrowing Asad, but how ``the World Trade Center was turned into
rubble.'' To commemorate the 65th anniversary of the founding of Israel
on June 6, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video calling
for Syrians to unite, bring down the Asad government, and to create a
radical Islamic state.
On June 9, Zawahiri posted a letter on Al-Jazeera announcing that
Jabhat al-Nusra would be acting on his direct orders. As many as seven
of the nine rebel groups that have been identified may have ties to al-
Qaida. Yet these murky connections make them all the more difficult to
properly vet.
As is normally the case when al-Qaida moves in, more and more stories
are spreading about the desecration of churches, kidnappings, rapes,
and beheadings. These forces are engaged in a deadly struggle with the
Asad regime, and President Obama has chosen this moment to signal that
it is now suddenly in our vital national security interests to
intervene in Syria. It seems far more likely a recipe for disaster.
We are told the United States will provide only small arms and
ammunition and only to the more secular democracy-minded rebels, and
that they will not fall into the hands of those who attacked us on
September 11--not to mention more recently in Fort Hood, Benghazi, and
Boston--although there are no details as to how the President plans to
differentiate between good and bad actors.
Even if we could clearly identify the good rebels, so to speak, we
would be backing the weakest of the factions in Syria, and the support
the Obama administration has proposed will not be sufficient to bring
down Asad and put them in power. Once committed to this path, we risk
either being forced to incrementally increase our support or face the
humiliation of losing to either al-Qaida groups or Asad or both, which
would delight both Iran and Russia. We could also see the factions of
the opposition use our weapons to turn on each other and see Asad
triumph in the chaos.
It is far from clear we could get the weapons to the so-called good
rebels, even if we could figure out who they were. President Obama has
just announced another $300 million in humanitarian aid for Syria, but
only about half of the aid already pledged has been delivered. The
other hasn't been delivered because of logistical issues and the
challenges of keeping these resources out of the hands of bad actors.
How on Earth can we expect to deliver guns if we cannot even get MREs
into the country?
Regardless, let me suggest a simple rule: Don't give weapons to
people who hate us. Don't give weapons to people who want to kill us.
U.S. foreign policy should be directed at one central purpose:
protecting the vital national security interests of the United States.
Arming potential al-Qaida rebels is not furthering those interests, but
there is something that is: preventing Syria's large stockpile of
chemical weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.
We know Asad has used these weapons, and there is good reason to
suspect the al-Qaida affiliated rebels would use them as well if they
could get their hands on them. This poses an intolerable threat not
only to our friends in the region but also to the United States. Right
now we need to develop a clear, practical plan to go in, locate the
weapons, secure or destroy them,

[[Page S4741]]

and then get out. We might work in concert with our allies, but this
needs to be an operation driven by the mission, not by a coalition.
The United States should be firmly in the lead to make sure the job
is done right, but our British allies, for example, are actively
bolstering the units that could be used for chemical weapons removal.
President Obama needs to assure us that the dangerous, arbitrary cuts
to our defense budget caused by sequester have not eroded our ability
to execute this vital mission.
News reports suggest that what planning has gone on involves
outsourcing parts of this work to the rebel groups. This makes no
sense. Moreover, it is deeply disturbing that President Obama has
chosen not to communicate his decision directly to Congress or the
American people and, I would note, communicating not through a junior
staffer or a spokesperson. He, himself, needs to communicate to the
American people.
According to a Pew poll taken over the weekend, 70 percent of
Americans oppose arming the Syrian rebels--quite sensibly. In a case
where his policy is so at odds with the will of the people, it is
beholden on the President to make his case and persuade us this
proposed intervention is necessary. But just yesterday in his long
speech on national security at the Brandenburg Gate, President Obama
did not even mention his planned intervention in Syria. He told us he
is a ``citizen of the world,'' but he is also President of the United
States, and he owes the American people an explanation.
President Obama needs to explain why arming the Syrian rebels is now
worth our intervention when it wasn't 2 years ago. He needs to explain
how he has established which rebels are the appropriate recipients of
this support. He needs to explain how this limited support will make a
material difference in Syria, and he needs to assure us that his team
is proactively planning to protect our national security by keeping
Syria's chemical weapons out of the hands of either Hezbollah or al-
Qaida. But we don't know any of these specifics. We are apparently just
supposed to trust the President to manage Syria policy more effectively
than he has over the last 2 years and more effectively than he has
managed events in Iran, Libya, and Egypt.

During the Green Revolution in 2009, the Obama administration stood
by and allowed the Supreme Leader of Iran to brutally suppress his
people as they protested in the streets. Four years later, we have
witnessed the installation of the Supreme Leader's most recent
selection for President of Iran. Some of the mainstream media refer to
him as a ``moderate,'' but he is a man who has referred to Israel as
``the great Zionist Satan,'' and who vows to continue Iran's nuclear
program. That is some moderate.
During the uprising in Tahrir Square in Cairo, President Obama
cheered on the demonstrators but refused to take a leading role in
helping Egypt make the difficult transition to democracy, thereby
opening the door to a Muslim Brotherhood regime that is now taking
systematic steps to hollow out that country's fragile constitution
while turning a blind eye to the persecution of Christians and the
discrimination against women. Just like the rebels in Syria, President
Obama is also working to arm the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
During the revolution in Libya, President Obama decided removing
Muammar Kaddafi was a vital national security issue, and he
participated in NATO's mission to overturn him. But his strategy of
leading from behind meant Kaddhafi's weapons stockpiles went unsecured
and had been transferred to militants from Lebanon to Mali. The new
government in Libya, however well intentioned, proved incapable of
managing the security threat from terrorist militias in the country,
and tragically 9 months ago four U.S. personnel were brutally murdered
in a terrorist attack. We have yet to track down and punish any of the
terrorists who killed our personnel in that attack in Benghazi. With
this track record of incoherent and indecisive action resulting in
setback after setback to the United States, we are supposed to just
trust President Obama to do a better job managing the situation in
Syria?
It seems to me if we are determined to confront Iran's nuclear
program, we would do so better in Iran. Even if Hezbollah is defeated
in Syria, there is little prospect that this would halt Iran's nuclear
program.
I am also concerned about our ability to successfully negotiate what
seems to have become a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Syria. It seems to me
we have no business in the middle of such a civil war. From what we
know of the President's policy, it seems we are backing into an
intractable crisis where there are no good actors but plenty of bad
outcomes for America.
Let me close with two simple observations: No. 1, don't arm al-Qaida.
Don't arm those who hate us, and don't arm those who want to kill us.
That is basic common sense.
No. 2, when it comes to matters of vital national security, the
President of the United States needs to come to the American people.
We, the people, hold sovereignty in this country, and it is not
acceptable for the President to simply send out staffers to pass on his
decision. He needs to come before Congress and the American people and
explain those decisions.
All of us have deep concerns about arming the rebels in Syria, and I
hope the administration will reconsider its policy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, before the Senator from Texas leaves the
floor, could I ask a question unrelated to his speech? I am sorry I
didn't get to hear most of it. I stepped off the floor temporarily.
The Senator has been so active on the debate on immigration, I wonder
if the Senator is aware of a list of 27 noncontroversial amendments
that are from both Republicans and Democrats. Has the Senator from
Texas had a chance to look at that list? And if not, could the Senator
look at it? If he has looked at it, does the Senator have any
objections to the amendments on the list?
Mr. CRUZ. I thank my friend from Louisiana. I was handed that list
about an hour and a half ago today. I looked at the titles on the list
but I have not had the time to study the specifics. I don't know if I
have any substantive objections to those specified amendments.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator for his answer. I ask the Senator
and any other Senators who have not had a chance to look at this list
that has been widely circulated to take the time to look at the list. I
know my colleague is very busy and has many important issues to debate
on this bill, but these are important amendments to colleagues on both
sides of the aisle.
Again, I thank the Senator from Texas for agreeing to look at the
list and let us know.
I am going to come back to the floor in a few minutes and ask
unanimous consent for this list of amendments. I want to read the
amendments into the Record. These are noncontroversial amendments. What
I mean by noncontroversial is, to my knowledge, is they are
uncontested. They are Republican and Democratic amendments that seek to
improve the bill in response to communications from our constituents at
home. It is not just people around Washington and the beltway who have
good ideas about immigration issues. I am sure people in New Mexico
have great ideas, and people have very good ideas in Louisiana. The way
they get their ideas into the debate is by calling their Member of
Congress, calling their Senators' office, writing letters, sending e-
mails, giving us suggestions. This list represents some of that
communication. That is why we come here, to represent those interests
and to say: Look, this was an idea I had; it will strengthen the bill.
One of these ideas which I am very excited about came up through our
small business roundtable for small businesses. They said: Senator, why
don't you mandate a mobile app for us, particularly in rural areas,
because we don't have high-speed Internet. We can't run back 200 miles
to check the local Internet to do this E-Verify. Why doesn't Homeland
Security have a mobile device for the iPhone which everybody is
carrying--either iPhones or BlackBerrys--where a person hits a button
or a mobile app for E-Verify. What an amazing, wonderful idea.

[[Page S4742]]

This bill is going to spend billions and billions and billions of
dollars securing the border. Could we spend just a little bit of effort
helping every small businessperson in America to use the E-Verify
system smartly and efficiently? It would be such a relief to them to
know they don't have to put themselves at risk hiring people who don't
have the right certification. They can just go to the mobile app and
pull it up. That is what we are hoping.
We have 3 years to put this system into place. No small business is
mandated to use the E-Verify system under the bill until these new
systems are in place. That is one of our amendments. There is no one
who has come to me to say: We hate the mobile app idea. We don't want
to do the mobile app idea. It is a terrible idea. So let's put it in
the bill.
There are some other amendments in here--I don't know all of them
because only some of them are mine. Let me read one from Tom Udall. I
don't know it specifically, but it says it makes $5 million available
for strengthening the border infectious disease surveillance project.
I know $5 million is a good amount of money, but compared to the
billions of dollars we are spending in some of our rural States--
including New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Louisiana is rural--I
don't think there is anybody objecting to spending $5 million to
strengthen the border infectious disease surveillance project. That
kind of smart investment--I am sure the Senator has done his homework.
That kind of smart investment could save taxpayers and the livelihoods
of farmers everywhere. What a wonderful idea. We can't even get that
adopted by a voice vote because we have broken down the trust and
respect of the Senate. I am going to do my very best, as calmly as I
can, to try to get that trust and respect back.
One of the other amendments prohibits the shackling of pregnant
women. Now, we shackle a lot of people--and this is Senator Murray's
amendment--when they do wrong things. But I think people can understand
the benefit of expressing some strong views to not put shackles on the
ankles or wrists of a woman who is pregnant. It is a very stressful
situation. We want to support healthy births even in conditions where
the mother may not have all the legal paperwork. I think we can
understand why that would be a sensitive thing to do, and I don't think
there is any Republican who would object to that. I don't think there
is a Democrat who would object to that. That is on the list.
There are a lot of people who wish to speak, so I will just take 5
more minutes.
There is a great amendment by Senators Klobuchar and Coats that
requires certification of citizenship and other Federal documents to
reflect the name and date of birth determinations made by a State court
in the situation of intercountry adoption. Some of our parents are
getting really hassled, American parents are getting hassled by
American courts because they have done God's will, adopted children
from overseas. They have followed all the rules, all the laws, at
tremendous expense to themselves, trying to help a child who is
orphaned or unparented, only to come back to the United States and
because of some technical difficulties with our law, their birth
certificates are not honored.
This isn't right. I realize the Judiciary Committee cannot spend
their time talking about this matter. In the scheme of things, it is
minor. But let me tell my colleagues as an adoptive mother, to an
adoptive American parent who has spent thousands of dollars and days
and months trying to do what their pastors and ministers asked them to
do, to take in the orphaned, this is an outrageous situation, and with
one breath--just a breath--this could be done. But we don't have the
breath anymore because we have just completely fallen apart.
This can be fixed. There is nobody objecting to it, and that is what
I am going to stand here and argue for.
How much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no set amount of time.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I see my colleague so I am going to wrap up in 30
seconds and then yield the floor.
I will come to the floor again this afternoon and talk about these
amendments.
These Members have worked very hard, Republicans and Democrats,
amazingly, together, coming up with amendments that improve the bill.
Some of these amendments are from Senators who are going to vote no on
the bill; some of these amendments are from people who are going to
vote yes on the bill. It is not going to change the outcome of the
vote. That is why I am so aggravated. If it did, then I could
understand not taking them up. The acceptance of these amendments, yes
or no, is not going to change the outcome of this bill, but it will
change the outcome of situations on the ground that are not good for
American citizens.
We are here to fix things, to help, to streamline, to save money, to
improve, to relieve pain, to help and expand opportunity. I am tired of
being around here and not being able to do that. So I am going to ask
for this list--of course, it has been circulated widely and publicly.
It is on our Web site. It is on several Web sites. People can look at
what we are talking about. If anybody on the Senate floor has an
objection, let us know.
Let me say one thing in closing. The counterlist that I am still not
in physical receipt of but have seen, but it is a part of the
Congressional Record because I required it to be, is a list of seven
amendments that are very controversial. So the Republicans have given
us a list of seven very controversial amendments. That is not the list
I am looking for. Maybe Senator Leahy is looking for that. Maybe
Senator Reid is looking for that. I am not in charge of controversial
amendments. I don't even know how we are going to vote on those
controversial amendments. I am not on the committee. I am not the
leader of the floor. I don't know--I will take that and I will be happy
to give it to the leadership.
I am just here on a list of noncontroversial amendments that I think
Republicans and Democrats can agree to that will not change the outcome
of the bill, that will improve the bill. I hope we can make progress.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.

Nuclear Arms Reductions

Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to express great concern
about the announcement regarding plans to drastically reduce the U.S.
nuclear deterrent by over one-third.
The strategic basis for this reduction is entirely unclear. The
President must provide Members of Congress additional information on
the basis and the implications of his announcement. General Chilton,
then-commander of U.S. Strategic Command, testified before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in 2010. He said the New START treaty gave
the United States ``exactly what is needed'' to achieve its national
security objectives.
Given the assessments of our commanders, I am highly skeptical and
gravely concerned about such dramatic reductions in a world of
increasing danger and proliferating threats. Regardless of how one
feels about these particular force levels, I believe there is broad
concern about any unilateral reductions in U.S. nuclear forces.
Mr. President, 2\1/2\ years ago, after lengthy deliberation and
contentious debate, this body ratified the New START treaty which
reduced deployed U.S. nuclear weapons from between 2,200 and 1,700 to
no more than 1,550. This debate was good for the Nation and produced a
bipartisan consensus on arms control and nuclear modernization. Now
this administration is calling for reducing U.S. nuclear forces by one-
third, and it remains an open question if the Senate will even have a
chance to weigh in on this decision. I sure hope we have the
opportunity.
As Commander in Chief, it is the President's prerogative to adjust
nuclear forces. But as Vice President Biden, then serving in this body
as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a 2002 letter
to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell:

With the exception of the SALT I agreement, every
significant arms control agreement during the past three
decades has been transmitted pursuant to the treaty clause of
the Constitution . . . we see no reason whatsoever to alter
this practice.

Secretaries of Defense Panetta and Hagel also testified before
Congress

[[Page S4743]]

that nuclear reductions, if undertaken at all, should be the product of
negotiated, bilateral, verifiable agreements.
I believe a change of this magnitude must be reviewed by Congress and
such dramatic reductions must only be made in concert with other
nuclear powers and the input of our allies.
Moreover, I believe it is premature to announce such dramatic
reductions when the United States has yet to fulfill its obligations
under the New START treaty. Currently, our nuclear force levels exceed
the New START limits. Instead of providing a plan to implement the
reductions required to comply with that treaty--something I and
numerous other Members of Congress have repeatedly asked for--the
President opted to promise the world massive additional cuts.
I wish to repeat: We don't know how we are going to go from about
1,650 to 1,550 warheads--a reduction of about 100. But instead of
answering that question, the President has stated his intention to get
rid of another 500 or so warheads. That is one-third of our arsenal.
What is more, the President has apparently disregarded the advice of
Congress, the bipartisan 2009 Perry-Schlesinger Commission, and his own
Nuclear Posture Review that additional nuclear reductions address the
dramatic imbalance of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Congress has
expressed its view on this subject several times, and the National
Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012 clearly stated the sense
of Congress that:

If the United States pursues arms control negotiations with
the Russian Federation, such negotiations should be aimed at
the reduction of Russian deployed and nondeployed
nonstrategic nuclear weapons and increased transparency of
such weapons.

While the announcement mentioned these weapons, their reduction was
clearly a separate afterthought, not the primary arms control objective
this body insisted it be.
In closing, I must remind my colleagues that the Senate approved the
New START treaty on the condition of modernizing our aging nuclear
deterrent. Although the promise was made before I entered the Senate,
it was a promise made to this body and to the American people, and it
is a promise I will make sure is kept. Modernization funding is more
than 30 percent below the target set by the President during New
START's ratification. That is unacceptable.
I hope the President will address these issues in the coming days and
focus on building a strong bipartisan consensus on these issues and
pursuing commonsense objectives. Rushing toward dramatic reduction is a
bad policy. It is a bad policy for any President, and it could have
grave consequences for our national security.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I want to commend the distinguished--oh,
I am sorry.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I say to Senator Isakson, I think I am next
in order.
Mr. ISAKSON. I apologize.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. No problem. I thank the Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about
comprehensive immigration reform. I believe the Senate is engaged in a
crucial debate to see if we can fix the system that we all know is
broken.
It has been a long road, not just because of the partisan climate
here, but because of the complex challenges we face--the challenge of
11 million undocumented immigrants who live and work and raise families
in communities across our Nation kept uncertain in the shadows; the
challenge of children brought here through no fault of their own, who
love this country as their own; and the challenge of securing our
border.
The majority of Americans know these challenges have to be met.
Immigration reform has to be comprehensive. That is the reality of any
long-term solution.
It is also a reality that such reform will not be perfect, will not
satisfy everyone in every case. That is what compromise means. That is
what bipartisan effort requires. But the American people are not asking
for perfection, they are asking for results; for an immigration system
that works, that makes sense, that secures our borders, that
strengthens families, and supports our economy.
I commend Chairman Leahy and the bipartisan authors of this bill for
their leadership.
The committee made sure the process was open, was transparent, and
was inclusive. Many of the amendments adopted had bipartisan support,
and over two-thirds of the committee voted for this bill. I hope the
full Senate will follow their example.
America has a rich history of immigrants helping to create a culture
and economy that is the envy of the world. I am proud to come from a
State where we celebrate our diversity. Native American, Hispanic, and
European traditions define my State.
We are a border State, and New Mexicans understand what is at stake
with border security. They know how important comprehensive immigration
reform is.
This bill has the essential elements of that reform. It creates a
pathway to earned citizenship for undocumented individuals. This is not
an amnesty. Folks have to pass criminal background checks, pay back
taxes and penalties, learn English, and must go to the back of the line
behind those who came here legally.
This road to citizenship takes 13 years--not an easy road but one
that will bring millions of people out of the shadows and into the hope
and promise of the American dream.
This legislation also makes securing our border a priority. Much of
the debate has centered on this issue. In my opinion, the record is
clear. As Senators from a border State--and I know the Presiding
Officer, Senator Heinrich, also from my great State of New Mexico and a
border-State Senator--we have seen firsthand how things have changed.
Over the past 12 years we have made some real progress. Is the job
finished? Of course not. But that is not a reason to oppose this bill.
It is a reason, in fact, to support it.
We spend a lot of resources on immigration and customs enforcement--
more than all other Federal criminal law enforcement combined. We have
more Border Patrol agents on our southern border than ever before.
Illegal crossings are near their lowest levels in decades. We have
ramped up law enforcement and are deporting more criminals than ever
before.
This legislation will build on that progress with a strong plan and
with the money to pay for it. It does not just call for 90 percent
apprehension of illegal border crossings, it provides $6.5 billion to
do it.
Commitment to border security is real, and this bill will improve on
it with new technology and targeted resources. It makes a difference.
It changes the game plan. This is not conjecture, not pie in the sky.
For example, Congress appropriated $600 million for emergency border
security in 2010, and the effectiveness rate increased from 72 percent
to 82 percent a year later.
So there is a proven record here, an impressive record. With border
security, this legislation has clear goals, has committed resources,
and builds on a demonstrated success. But for some on the other side,
this is not enough. They demand absolute effectiveness or toss out the
path to citizenship.
But let's be clear. No border can be completely secure--not ours, not
anyone else's. So some may still cross illegally, may slip through.
We can do more. I believe additional border security should focus on
violent drug and firearms traffickers and should do more at ports of
entry. But most undocumented immigrants come here to work. This bill
will change that dynamic with an effective universal employment
verification system and crack down on employers who hire undocumented
immigrants. This is as crucial as fences and checkpoints, as crucial as
agents patrolling the border or drones scanning the horizon because the
lure of illegal immigration is jobs, and the jobs will not be there.
There is still work to be done. No one is arguing this bill is
perfect. I have filed and cosponsored several amendments. I will just
mention a few of them. Several of them, I know, are on the list that
Senator Landrieu talks about as noncontroversial amendments. I know
Senator Heinrich, the Presiding Officer, has an amendment on that list
also.

[[Page S4744]]

The first adds a Federal district judge in New Mexico. In the
committee markup, a bipartisan amendment was adopted to add Federal
judges to the southwest border States. Unfortunately, New Mexico was
not included, even though it has a significant immigration caseload,
one that will increase with the additional enforcement provided by the
bill. My amendment remedies this oversight.
I have also filed an amendment to expand the Border Enforcement
Security Task Force units in the four southwest border States. BEST
units are teams of Federal, State, and local law enforcement focused on
disrupting serious border-related criminal activity, such as drug
smuggling and human trafficking.
Finally, I have filed an amendment that provides resources to all 20
border States for vital early warning infectious disease surveillance.
This Federal funding program was created in 2003 to detect, identify,
and report outbreaks of infectious diseases at the borders. But this
important funding has ceased. We need to restore it.
I would urge the bill managers and authors to work with me on these
amendments to improve this bill and to protect New Mexico's interests
as a key border State.
I again commend the members of the Judiciary Committee. I saw Senator
Grassley in the Chamber a moment ago. I want to congratulate him and
our chairman, Patrick Leahy. This legislation arrived on the Senate
floor with support from both sides of the aisle. I hope it will move
forward in the same spirit of cooperation.
This bill is a historic moment for families, for our security, and it
will benefit our economy. As the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office just reported on Tuesday, this bill would reduce our deficit by
$197 billion over the first 10 years and by at least $700 billion in
the second decade.
This bill speaks to the best of our traditions and our values. This
is our opportunity to govern, to fix an immigration system that is
broken, and to move our Nation forward in the 21st century.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I have refrained from being on the floor
during this debate, as I listened to it and watched, and I would
compliment my colleagues in trying to solve a very difficult problem.
But I just heard a speech by my colleague from New Mexico that quotes
all sorts of statistics that are not accurate.
I am the ranking member on Homeland Security. Here is what we know:
We have estimates, and that is all we have. But we do not know the
total attempts to cross our border. We do not know what they are. So
when somebody quotes 70 percent to 80 percent, and you have no idea
what the denominator is, you do not know what the numbers are.
Here is what the Council on Foreign Relations says about our border.
How did they get this data? They went out and interviewed 6,700 illegal
immigrants to find out their frequency of attempts, whether they have
gone home, what their difficulty was, what their communities were like.
Here is what they say right now is the control of our border: It is
somewhere between 40 and 65 percent.
So we have the administration that says one thing, but when you ask
them for details--as I have, as ranking member on Homeland Security--
you cannot get the facts because we do not know.
So I applaud my colleagues for bringing this bill forward. I would
love to get to yes on this bill.
I also want to raise the issue on the CBO scoring. What the CBO
scoring said was we are still going to have 7.5 million people in the
next 10 years come across the border under this plan. So in reaction to
that, we have people who--other than one person on Homeland Security
who actually has sat through the hearings, who knows what is going on
with Homeland Security--we are going to come forward with a bill that
is going to increase Border Patrol by 20,000 people. I can tell you, we
do not need 20,000 Border Patrol agents. What we need is a coherent,
smart strategy, with transparency, in the agency, Homeland Security, so
we as Members of Congress can actually see what is going on.
All we have to do is listen to what the administration says and then
listen to the people who are actually doing the work--who are the
Border Patrol agents, who are the ICE agents, who are the USCIS agents,
who are the CBP agents. When we talk with them, we get a totally
different story.
Why is it that the people who are actually doing the work are telling
us a different story than what the administration is telling us? There
is a disconnect there, and we need to understand what that is.
So I look forward to reading the details of the supposed border
security amendment. But ask yourself the question: Is it possible to
secure our border? If we were to have a terrible outbreak on either our
northern or southern border that had a high fatality rate, a high
infectious rate, and we decided we were going to close the border
tomorrow, could we do it.
There are great things in this base bill that will eliminate a large
portion of the draw coming into our Nation through illegal immigration.
Those are creating a decline in the attitude of those coming. They know
if they come across, they are going to have to be able to prove they
are a citizen to be able to get a job. I think that is absolutely
right. There is some increase in the work visa programs and the special
visa programs--probably not enough.
But if you think, let's just believe the administration, let's
believe what people say about this bill, if you can cut it down to 8,
9, 10 percent, then the people coming across the border are not the
people looking for a job. The people coming across the border are the
people who tend to hurt our society--the drug runners, the human
traffickers, the terrorists.
So the question I would ask is, Shouldn't we know that what we are
doing as we establish a border security amendment will actually send
confidence to the people of this county that, in fact, we are going to
secure our border?
The vast majority of people in this country want to solve this
problem. I want to solve this problem.
The way we are going to go about it is we are going to get to see an
amendment sometime late tonight and then on Saturday we are going to
have to vote on whether to proceed with that amendment, not having had
the full time to actually consider what the outcome of the
recommendations of that amendment are.
So some of the mistakes have been made as we have brought this bill
forward. This bill came through the Judiciary Committee. But almost
every other major thing that is of controversy in this bill is under
the purview and the control of the Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee which got no sequential referral on this bill.
Where we are hung up on this bill is because we did not do regular
order. We did not allow the process to work. We did not let the
knowledgeable members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee have an opportunity to impact this bill in a committee
process. So now we are hung up with people who are not on that
committee writing an amendment for Homeland Security.
We can write a good amendment for Homeland Security. I told Chuck
Schumer and other Members of the Gang of 8 that. But we cannot do it in
2 weeks. We cannot do it with one amendment. What we are going to get
is waste, loopholes, and problems. The last thing we need to do is
waste another $5 or $6 billion on things that are not going to have a
difference in terms of solving the real problem, but we are going to
claim it solves the problem so we can pass a bill.
So I wish to get to yes on this bill. I wish to get to a way where we
solve this problem and do not create it again in the future. But my
concerns are both process and factually; that we are claiming things
that are not true. All you have to do is sit before the committees or
go talk to the leadership of the Border Patrol, ICE units, CPB, go talk
to them. They are sitting there in amazement.
Three weeks ago, I had breakfast with Janet Napolitano. She said she
would send me their border control plan by area, by region, the next
day. A piece of paper came, but there was no border control plan. So
the question I have is, where is the plan?
Of all the good recommendations that are in this bill, it is all
going to be

[[Page S4745]]

contingent on execution of what is in there. So we are going to pass a
bill and pass an amendment and then we are going to ask the very
committee that was excluded from making proper recommendations of the
bill to oversight it. We will oversight it. But the fact is we will not
have any control to control it. So we will be raising the questions and
the ineffectiveness. Yet we will not have accomplished what we are
telling the American people we are going to accomplish.
What is that? It is that we are going to solve the problems with the
illegals who are here. We are going to decrease the demand and draw
across our border. We are going to control our border, even though we
will not put that as a condition for granting people a movement from
the shadows to the open. We will not put that as a condition, even
though now with the supposed new border amendment the Border Patrol
says they can get us to 90 percent. We will not make that a condition.
So my feeling is, right now, there is a great attempt by eight of my
colleagues to try to solve this problem because we are in a hurry and
we are in a time crunch. We should not be because the House is not
going to take up this bill, but they are going to bring their own. So
we ought to do it right. I have a lot of amendments. I would love to
have votes on them, would love to have them considered. I understand we
cannot call up amendments right now, which is the same dysfunction the
Senate has been operating under for the last 7\1/2\, 8 years.
People who are knowledgeable on the committees of jurisdiction do not
have the opportunity to improve the bill, to raise questions about the
bill through their amendments, to refine the bill. It means we just
want to get a bill passed. It does not mean we truly want to solve the
problem. I look forward to a time to be able to come back to the floor
and offer amendments that will actually improve this bill, that will
give transparency to the American public about what we are doing, that
will give transparency on how we are going to spend all this money that
we are going to take from the very people we are trying to move out of
the shadows, and we are not just going to throw money up against a wall
and saying we did something when, in fact, we are not going to
accomplish the very purpose that we put forward in this bill.
People who come to this country--and I would put myself in the same
category. If I was caught in the lack of economic opportunity, I would
try any way I could to get into this country of opportunity. But what
makes this country a land of opportunity is the rule of law. What we
are doing is we are saying--the irony is the people who come here and
break the law to get the opportunity from the rule of law, if we do not
fix it to where that does not happen again, we are going to unwind the
rule of law in this country.
That is the glue that holds this Nation together. It goes something
like this: If they do not have to abide by the law, neither do I. So we
get an unwinding of the fabric and the confidence in the rule of law in
this country. We ought to be very careful with what we do as we say
laws do not apply. That is what we are saying with this bill, to a
certain group of people, the laws we had on the books are not going to
apply. We ought to make sure that does not happen again.
I wish to come back at some time when I can present the ideas of a
lot of people who actually have a lot of experience and a lot of
knowledge on homeland security and how it operates and how the
different divisions within homeland security operate.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until
4 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees
and that I be recognized at 4 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I was scheduled to come in at 2 o'clock. I
appreciate the leader accommodating me 5 minutes early. There is talk
about an imminent compromise among the Gang of 8 and perhaps a couple
of others that would move this bill along. I have made it clear that
the bill, as currently written, is flawed and would not be something
that would get my vote. So anything that would move us toward a better
solution, toward better enforcement of the border, such as 20,000
additional security agents on the border, would be a positive step.
I do wish to make it clear, however, that the bill as written would
not stem the tide of illegal immigration. The bill as written would not
provide a solution to our broken immigration system. Without further
amendment, my understanding of the new compromise that is about to come
forward also would be deficient.
I appreciate people working toward a consensus. I look forward to
reading the amendment as it is presented, if it is indeed presented
later this afternoon or later this weekend. But there are still changes
that need to be made so we can improve the bill. I would point out to
my colleagues that a Congressional Budget Office report released the
day before yesterday indicates that border security components of the
immigration bill as written will not stem the tide of illegal
immigration in a meaningful way, because large numbers of people are
projected still to overstay their visas.
Should the legislation pass in that form, even the Congressional
Budget Office, a bipartisan, independent call-it-by-the-numbers office,
predicts that the reforms agreed to by the so-called Gang of 8 would
reduce illegal immigration by only 25 percent, far short of what the
bill's supporters have contended.
Dependable border security and interior security are crucial to the
success of the entire immigration system. This means putting in place
the proper infrastructure and technology, including a national E-Verify
system for employers. I congratulate and commend and encourage the
junior Senator from Ohio Mr. Portman for his efforts to move toward a
consensus in that very important area of the bill too. These steps,
securing the border and strengthening E-Verify, should proceed efforts
to grant legal status. I think most Americans agree with that.
I have offered a number of amendments. I wish to take these few
minutes to make my suggestions about how to improve this bill. But
first and foremost, I wish to urge my colleagues, urge the leadership
of the committee on both sides of the aisle and the leadership of this
Senate to give this Senate an opportunity to speak on the issue of
sanctuary cities.
Most people are aware that one of the great ways to flout the law, as
it has been, has been for a local jurisdiction to say to people who
have overstayed their visas, to people who have come here illegally or
stayed here illegally: Come to our city and we will provide you
sanctuary. Come to our city and we will ignore the law of the land and
make sure we do our part that it is not enforced against you--so-called
sanctuary cities.
As a Member of the other body, I voted for legislation and amendments
to crack down on this.
If this bill works as it should work, then there should be no
illegals in the country seeking sanctuary in a sanctuary city. My
legislation to prohibit the practice of sanctuary cities, in my view,
should be accepted by consensus. If the authors of this bill believe it
is a solution to our broken immigration system, then there should be no
need for a city to say we are going to take in people who are not here
legally because, by definition under this bill, we will have said the
system is fixed.
Under my amendment, these jurisdictions would be denied State
Criminal Alien Assistance Program funds if they insist on continuing to
be sanctuary cities. We would deny, under my amendment, law enforcement
grants from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice for the
continuation of so-called sanctuary cities.
My amendment would also encourage information-sharing by law
enforcement officials and stipulate that individuals who violate the
immigration law should be included in the National Crime Information
Center database. Why would that be the least bit controversial? It
would also ensure States have access to Federal technology that is
helpful in identifying immigrants

[[Page S4746]]

who are not here by permission and who are deported.
I would say to my colleagues, any bill that comes out of the House of
Representatives will almost surely have a sanctuary cities provision.
We need a vote on this Senate floor so our constituents back home and
our individual States can know where we stand on this issue.
I would again emphasize if we believe the law will work, if we
believe this new plan will fix the broken system, then there should be
no need for any jurisdiction to call itself a sanctuary city.
Secondly, I have a separate amendment that would double penalty fees.
It would double from $1,000 to $2,000 the fee illegal immigrants must
pay at various steps of the process. We all know $1,000 amounts to far
less than what is often paid to so-called coyotes who smuggle people
across the border. Penalties are supposed to hold people accountable
for breaking the law and not serve as merely an inconvenience.
I have a second amendment that would increase the penalty in the
legislation from $1,000 to $2000.
I have a third amendment that would require the Secretary to adjust
these statutory fees and penalties for inflation, index them for
inflation. What could be simpler than that? A $1,000 penalty in 2013
might not amount to the same degree of penalty in 2015 or 2019. We
index many of our amounts and figures under statute according to
inflation. My third amendment would simply allow for annual inflation
adjustment.
Fourthly, I have an amendment that would strike the ability of
illegal immigrants to apply for provisional legal status if they have
previously filed a frivolous application for asylum, one that has been
determined by the authorities to be frivolous. By law those who have
knowingly filed a frivolous application, for example, containing
statements that are deliberately fabricated, or responses that are
deliberately fabricated, should be permanently barred from receiving
any benefit under the new act.
Another amendment I have would expedite removal proceedings of
illegal immigrants with serious criminal offenses. What could be
simpler and more straightforward than that. It would require the
Secretary of Homeland Security to initiate expedited removal
proceedings against those who are deemed ineligible for provisional
legal status, for example, by law, because they would belong to a gang
or they have committed an aggravated felony, committed an offense
against a child or a domestic violence offense. It would seem to me
this sort of an amendment should be the sort of amendment the Senator
from Louisiana, Senator Landrieu, was speaking about only a few moments
ago that should be accepted by consensus through a voice vote.
Finally, I have an amendment to ensure that those found ineligible
have their provisional legal status revoked. If an application is
submitted and the duly constituted authorities under this new act
determine the individual is not entitled to the relief requested, then
provisional legal status should be revoked. For example, this would be
if he or she is found to be ineligible, if he or she used fraudulent
documentation or did not fulfill the continuous physical presence
requirement of the bill, then that status is denied and the individual
should then have conditional status revoked.
I conclude by saying I appreciate the good-faith effort that has been
made by the leadership on both sides of the aisle, by the leadership of
the committee, and by people acting ad hoc as a self-appointed group of
8 or group of 10. We need to make it clear that any agreement announced
with great fanfare this afternoon, or perhaps this weekend, is not the
end of it.
We have a lot of time left for excellent ideas to improve this bill,
to bring it around to the point where people such as myself could vote
for it, where people such as my constituents back home can feel that it
is, in fact, a solution to a broken system, and we can forward this
legislation on to the House of Representatives with a national
consensus behind it.
No great changes have been made in the Congress to broad policy
disagreements without bipartisan consensus. I hope that amendments such
as the six I have described, particularly my amendment with regard to
sanctuary cities, would be adopted so we can move toward a consensus
that we do not have at this point.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. HOEVEN. I appreciate the comments of the distinguished Senator
from Mississippi.
I rise to speak on immigration reform and to discuss an amendment I
will be introducing to S. 744, the comprehensive immigration reform
legislation the Senate body is carefully considering and debating. That
amendment is the Hoeven-Corker border security amendment. It is being
finalized, and I plan to introduce it this afternoon, along with the
Senator from the great State of Tennessee, Senator Bob Corker, who is
here with me. I want to thank him for the tremendous work he has done
on this legislation. He has been absolutely inspirational to work with,
a great leader, and somebody who is working to do immigration reform
the right way, to get a bipartisan solution that truly addresses the
challenges we face with immigration reform and to get it done the right
way.
In addition to Senator Corker and myself, other sponsors include
Senator John McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Marco Rubio,
Senator Jeff Flake, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senator Dean Heller, and
others who are joining us on this legislation. I believe a number of
them will be down here to provide their comments as well.
I believe the first order of business for immigration reform is to
secure the border. I will repeat that. I believe the first order of
business for immigration reform is to secure the border. Americans want
immigration reform, of that there is no doubt, but they want us to get
it right. That means, first and foremost, securing the border.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan and the Congress granted legalized
status to between 3 and 4 million illegal immigrants. The intent was to
once and for all resolve the illegal immigration problem, but obviously
it didn't. Here we are today with more than 11 million illegal
immigrants in this country. Here we are today with a border that has
still not been secured.
Ironically, illegal immigrants continue to come into our country
because we have not secured the border at the same time--at the same
time--our immigration laws do not meet the needs of our modern-day
workforce for STEM-trained workers, other specialty and high-demand
areas. In fact, one of the strengths of the underlying bill, the
underlying legislation drafted by the Gang of 8 on a bipartisan basis,
along with amendments that have already been added in committee, one of
the strengths is it includes provisions that will help us with our
workforce needs. These provisions were adopted from legislation myself
and other Senators fostered, such as legislation led by the esteemed
Senator from Texas John Cornyn, which would allow an increased number
of college graduates, postgraduate degreed individuals with degrees in
STEM--science, technology, engineering, math-trained individuals--and
other highly skilled, highly trained people who could stay in this
country. These are people we need to help grow our economy and to help
create jobs.
We also want people who can bring capital and job-creating
opportunities to come to our country. I believe the underlying bill has
captured these concepts. The immigration innovation legislation I was
proud to cosponsor with Senators Hatch, Klobuchar, Coons, and others is
included in this bill.
We are not done. We must do more to secure the border in this
legislation. That is exactly what we are offering here today. It is a
very straightforward way to secure our border and to do so before
allowing a pathway to legal permanent residency for those who came here
illegally.
Furthermore, it will ensure that we do not repeat the error we made
before, failure to secure our border while at the same time fixing our
immigration laws. It builds on what is already in the underlying bill,
and it provides objective, verifiable standards and metrics to do so.
Our legislation will provide significantly more resources to secure
the border, more manpower, more fencing, more technology. Those
resources must

[[Page S4747]]

be fully deployed and operational before green card status is allowed.
The legislation provides five specific conditions which must be met
before anyone in RPI status, registered provisional immigrant status,
can be adjusted or transitioned to LPR, lawful permanent resident
status, green cards.
These conditions are: First, we are including a comprehensive
southern border security plan right in the legislation. This is a $3.2
billion high-tech plan. The plan is detailed border sector by border
sector, and it includes combinations of conventional security
infrastructure such as observation towers, fixed and mobile camera
systems, helicopters, planes, and other physical surveillance equipment
to secure the border.
The plan also includes high-tech tools such as mobile surveillance
systems, seismic imaging, infrared ground sensors, and unmanned aerial
systems equipped with infrared radar cameras, VADER radar, and long-
range thermal-imaging cameras. The Secretary of Homeland Security,
together with the Secretary of Defense and the Comptroller General of
the United States, the GAO, must certify to the Congress that this
comprehensive southern border security strategy is deployed and
operational. That means in place and operating, other than routine
maintenance. That is the first requirement before the adjustment to LPR
status.
Second, DHS must deploy and maintain 20,000 additional Border Patrol
agents on the southern border. That is in addition to the number of
Border Patrol agents on the border now, which is right at about
20,000. So we will double the number of armed Border Patrol agents to
detect and turn back those individuals who would try to cross our
border illegally.

Third, DHS must build 700 miles of fencing. That is double the amount
required in the underlying bill, which calls for 350 miles of fencing.
So 700 miles of fencing--that compares to about 42 miles of fencing we
have in place right now.
Fourth, the Secretary of Homeland Security must verify that the
mandatory E-Verify system has been implemented to enforce workplace
laws so that illegal immigrants are not employed.
Fifth, the electronic entry-exit identification system must be in
place at all international airports and seaports in the United States
where U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are currently
deployed.
So these are the requirements. These are the requirements, and they
must be met before lawful permanent residency is allowed. No green
cards, other than for DREAMers and blue card ag workers, until these
requirements are met.
Once again, simply put, we must secure the border first. That is what
Americans demand, and that is what we must do to get comprehensive
immigration reform right. That is what this legislation does, and it
does it with objective and verifiable methods. We ask our colleagues on
both sides of the aisle to join with us and pass this legislation.
Madam President, at this point I would like to turn to my
distinguished colleague from Tennessee, whom I want to thank again for
his tremendous work, which is ongoing. I can't say how much I
appreciate his good efforts and his good faith on a bipartisan basis. I
turn to him now for his comments as well as to then enter into a
colloquy with our colleagues who have worked so hard and played such a
leadership role in this legislation.
Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota
for his outstanding leadership. One would expect that from someone who
served in such a distinguished way as Governor of his State. He has
done an outstanding job on this issue, and I thank him for being a
greater partner.
I know we still have some work to do. The fact is that we still have
to introduce this amendment, and work is underway right now, but I want
to thank him, his staff, and those all around him for the way he has
dug into this issue, solved the problems that I think Americans are
looking at relative to security issues, and for working with us in the
way he has. So I thank him very much.
I thank the Gang of 8 for the work they have done over the last
multiple months to bring us to the place we are, where we have an
opportunity to do something America needs; that is, solve the
immigration issue we have and also ensure that in doing so we
absolutely have secured the border.
One of my colleagues called this amendment--and again, it is being
vetted right now. We hope to introduce it a little later today. There
is a broad agreement about what the content is, and it is being vetted
and will be introduced later today.
Some people have described this as a border surge. The fact is that
we are investing resources in securing our border that have never been
invested before--a doubling, again, of the Border Patrol and $3.2
billion worth of technology that the Chief of the Border Patrol says is
the technology he needs to have 100 percent awareness and to secure our
border; dealing with the exit program and dealing with E-Verify. So all
these things are in place.
I thank Senator Cornyn of Texas, who began the process of focusing on
border security. I realize his amendment failed earlier, but I think
what he helped us do is build momentum toward an amendment that I
consider to be far stronger and even better. But his efforts in looking
at a border security measure helped us in this regard.
I am not the kind of person who speaks for a long time--I think
people understand that--but I want to say that the Senator from North
Dakota has done an outstanding job of laying out the many elements of
this amendment that hopefully will be voted on in the very near future.
And I do think the American people have asked us, if we pass an
immigration bill off the Senate floor, to do everything we can to be
sure we have secured the border. That is what people in Tennessee have
asked for, that is what people in North Dakota have asked for, that is
what people in Arizona have asked for, and that is what this amendment
does.
This amendment has the ability, if passed, to bring a bipartisan
effort behind immigration reform that would then send the bill to the
House. Look, I do wish this amendment had some other measures relative
to interior security, but I think the House can improve this. I think a
conference can improve this. So I hope we have the opportunity down the
road to see that occur.
I thank all those involved in crafting an amendment that tries to
deal with the sensibilities on both sides and at the same time secures
our border in such a way that we can put this issue mostly behind us
and we can have an immigration system in our country that meets the
needs of a growing economy--the biggest economy in the world--and that
focuses on making our country stronger, not weaker, and hopefully we
will put this debate behind us.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. CORKER. Yes.
Mr. McCAIN. First of all, could I say that all of us who have had the
honor of working with the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from
North Dakota are greatly appreciative of the work they have done. If
there is going to be broad bipartisan support for the final product, it
will be because of what the Senators from Tennessee and North Dakota
have done, and I am very grateful for that.
I think it is important--wouldn't the Senator from Tennessee agree--
that people understand that this is a very tough bill, and it required
a lot of cooperation from our friends on the other side of the aisle to
go along and agree with this. I think they have shown a great deal of
compromise in order to reach this point and agree with us on this
legislation, for which clearly we need bipartisan support.
But I would like to ask the Senator for a couple of specifics
because, again, I think it is important that we understand how tough
this legislation is. Is it not true that we know already that E-Verify
must be used by every employer in the country before anyone under this
plan could be eligible for a green card? Isn't that true? It is already
there?
Mr. CORKER. That is correct.
Mr. McCAIN. And the electronic entry-exit system at all international
airports and seaports has to be up and operational before anyone is
eligible for a green card; is that true?
Mr. CORKER. That is correct.
Mr. McCAIN. Now, thanks to the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator
from North Dakota, is it true that

[[Page S4748]]

additional technology must be deployed and operational in the field--
and that includes new VADER radar systems, integrated fixed towers,
unmanned aerial systems, fixed cameras, mobile surveillance systems,
ground sensors--to the point where the head of the Border Patrol has
assured us that if these technologies are in place and operational, we
can have 100 percent situational awareness and 90 percent effective
control of the border?
Mr. CORKER. That is correct.
Mr. McCAIN. So to put the final piece of this puzzle together, is it
not true that the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from North
Dakota have called for 350 miles of additional border fencing in
addition to the 350 miles already there and that 20,000 new, full-time
Border Patrol agents be hired and deployed before someone is eligible
for a green card? Is that a fact?
Mr. CORKER. That is correct. I don't know of anybody who has proposed
a tougher measure, when we look at it all combined, than the measure
that hopefully will be on the floor in the very near future.
Mr. McCAIN. I wonder if the Senator from North Dakota would like to
respond to that.
Mr. HOEVEN. Well, I appreciate the esteemed Senator from Arizona
again emphasizing these points. That is what this is all about. This is
about securing the border. And all of the things the Senator from
Arizona just identified are in the bill. They are requirements. The
plan itself, this $3.2 billion comprehensive southern border strategic
plan, is detailed border sector by border sector. And again, this puts
everybody in the same place saying that we are going to secure the
border first because there are no green cards until we secure the
border.
Mr. McCAIN. And is it not true, I say to my two colleagues--Madam
President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with both
the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from North Dakota.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Is it not true, I say to my friends, that on our side of
the aisle there is understandable skepticism--and well-founded
skepticism on the part of my friend from Texas--because we have seen
this movie before. In 1986 we gave amnesty to 3 million people and we
said we would secure the border. Then in 2006 we passed a border
security appropriations, and there was going to be plenty of money. Yet
it was never funded.
So for those of us from the Southwest particularly but people all
over America, is it not true that there is understandable skepticism
that we would not pass legislation that is binding? And is it not true
that we can't make this, as far as border patrol and as far as miles of
fencing, any more binding than it is in my colleagues' amendment?
Mr. CORKER. Absolutely.
Mr. HOEVEN. I would like to add that it is not just all these things
that we are putting on the border and that we are requiring that these
things be in place and certified and operating before we go to green
card status, but also it is about eliminating the incentive to try to
get across the border. When we put E-Verify in place and we have a
proper guest worker program, we take away the incentive to try to get
across the border. So we secure the border, but we also take away the
incentive to come across because someone can come across legally
through the guest worker program. And if they come across illegally, we
are going to find them and they can't get a job. So it is both. That is
what we mean when we talk about comprehensive border security and a
comprehensive approach.

Mr. McCAIN. I would ask my colleagues one more question. With all due
respect to every Member of this body, when we look at this legislation
and we look at these triggers and the technology that is going to be
required, which, if operational, the head of the Border Patrol has said
will give 100 percent awareness and 90 percent effective control, plus
this increase in fencing, plus Border Patrol agents and the already
existing in legislation E-Verify--and I think the Senator from North
Dakota is very correct. If we remove the incentive, if people know they
can't get a job in this country unless they have the proper documents,
then people will stop coming illegally. It also addresses the issue of
the 40 percent who are here who never crossed our border illegally but
came on a visa and overstayed it.
So I would just ask for maybe a subjective opinion. Is it possible
that one could ever argue against this legislation now by saying that
it does not give us a secure border?
Mr. CORKER. I think it would be very difficult. And I thank the
Senator from Arizona for raising this issue. If the issue one has is
securing the border, with this immigration bill, if this amendment
passes, which I hope it will, I don't know how anybody could argue that
the reason they are not supporting this legislation is because we
haven't addressed securing the border. We have addressed that. We have
addressed that in spades in this legislation.
Again, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his leadership on
this issue and the other side of the aisle for working with us. I don't
think anyone who votes against this bill could argue as their reason,
if we pass this amendment--and we need to get it to the floor. We are
still working out some issues, and hopefully we will be done in a few
hours. But I don't know how anyone could argue that we haven't dealt
with the issue that many people have been concerned about, many people
in Tennessee, and that is we have--if this legislation passes in the
form it is, with this amendment as we have agreed, we have secured the
border.
Mr. CORNYN. Would the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. McCAIN. Could I have the Senator from North Dakota finish
answering this question?
Mr. HOEVEN. I would respond to the good Senator from Arizona and say,
look, all of the ideas that have been brought forward to secure the
border we have worked to include in this package. We have tried in a
bipartisan way to listen to everybody and say: What can we do? What can
we put on the border to secure the border? We have tried to bring all
those resources to bear.
To the good Senator from Arizona I would say we want to bring in our
Senator from Florida, who has worked so hard, along with the Senator
from Arizona, to provide truly the right kind of leadership for
comprehensive reform on a bipartisan basis. I also want to reach out to
the good Senator from Texas. A lot of the ideas in this bill came from
legislation he put forward. Look, this is about all of us putting our
ideas into securing this border. We have tried to include everybody's
ideas in this effort. That is exactly what we did.
I would yield for the Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I honestly respect and value the work
the so-called Gang of 8 has done on this legislation, as well as the
contributions made by my colleagues from North Dakota and from
Tennessee. I think they have moved this bill in a constructive
direction to give people more confidence that we are actually serious
about dealing with border security.
But I want to ask them to distinguish, if they will, between the
provision I know they both supported in my amendment that was tabled
earlier which makes the progress from probationary status to green card
contingent upon 100-percent situational awareness of the border and a
90-percent apprehension rate which is defined as operational control.
How does their amendment differ from that?
I know it hasn't been completed yet, but my understanding is Senator
Schumer and the Democrats would not agree to that. I know they object
to it. Senator Schumer has been quite clear in his telling me that. But
my impression is this is a promise of future performance, and there is
no contingency in the same sense that there was a trigger that
prohibited the transition from probationary status to legal permanent
residence.
Could the Senator please clarify?
Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I appreciate very much the question from
the Senator from the great State of Texas. I thank him for the work he
did and the work we did together, and the fact that we absolutely tried
here to build on concepts the Senator put forward. It is not the same,
but we tried to build on those concepts.
In terms of the actual border security plan, the comprehensive
southern

[[Page S4749]]

border security strategy, the $3.2 billion plan that includes
technology, helicopters, planes, all these different things I detailed,
that is exactly what the Senator was talking about in his legislation.
Physically we do deploy all the things the Senator laid out in his
legislation, and then we add to it 20,000 agents, and an additional 350
miles of fence on top of the 350 miles of fence called for in the
underlying bill. We put all of the physical resources out there, and
then we add all of the fencing and all the manpower to make sure we
accomplish exactly what the Senator was laying out. In terms of the
trigger, all those things are triggers before going to a green card.
It is different in that the discussion was, How do we set up
verifiable metrics? And that is what we are doing by clearly
delineating all these things we are putting in, and then we actually
add to what the Senator had in the legislation.
Mr. CORNYN. I have one last question, because I know there are others
who want to talk and it is not my intention to interfere with their
colloquy here.
The 20,000 additional Border Patrol agents, here is an area where the
movement has been pretty dramatic, because we started with zero
additional Border Patrol agents. My amendment was disparaged by the
distinguished senior Senator from Arizona and the distinguished senior
Senator from New York as being a budget amendment buster, 5,000 Border
Patrol agents. I was told we don't need more boots, we need technology.
Now I find, to my shock and amazement, the distinguished senior Senator
from Arizona saying we need 20,000 more Border Patrol agents. How much
is it going to cost? That is the question.
Mr. HOEVEN. And if I may respond to that. Again, that makes my point.
I say to the Senator from Texas, I want to thank him for his work.
That is a great example of how we have built on the foundation he laid.
That was a great example. He asked for 5,000 Border Patrol agents and
we got 20,000. So this is a great example. It is all paid for, and this
is important.
Mr. CORNYN. I would repeat my question: How much is it going to cost?
Mr. HOEVEN. That is where I am going right now.
Remember, in the CBO score, in the first 10 years, $197 billion. We
use about $30 billion to make sure that border is secure. But overall,
this bill with this amendment creates border security and more than
pays for itself.
Here is the other point. Remember, in that CBO score it showed $197
billion in terms of revenue creation. So we used $30 billion of that to
add the border agents and secure the border.
But here is the other thing we have to look at in that CBO score. It
said without our amendment, with the underlying bill, we would have 7
million more illegal immigrants in this country in 10 years. Without
the bill we would have 10 million more. So what does that say? It
didn't get the job done on border security. That is exactly why we are
adding this amendment, and it will get the job done.
Mr. CORNYN. Let me express my appreciation to the Senators for their
answer to the question.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Senator from Texas for his engagement.
As usual, the Senator from South Carolina has a very busy schedule. I
ask unanimous consent that he be allowed 10 minutes and then I regain
the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAHAM. I thank all who made this better.
To Senator Cornyn's question about cost: I never objected to more
Border Patrol agents. I didn't know how we would pay for the bill. I
hoped it would be deficit neutral. Boy, did my hopes come true. It is
not deficit neutral. According to the Congressional Budget Office, we
reduce the deficit in the first 10 years by $190 billion and over a 20-
year period $700 billion. So the reason I didn't want to agree to 5,000
agents without somebody showing me how we would pay for it, we are
borrowing enough money from our grandchildren and great-grandchildren
to run the government. We don't need to do any more borrowing unless we
absolutely have to.
The good news is the bill we have written will create economic growth
in the country at a time when we need economic growth. It will allow
employers access to labor they don't have today so they won't be
tempted to cheat in the future. This bill helps the economy. Don't take
my word for it, take CBO's word for it.
If you had some more money to spend in this bill, how would you want
to spend it? Let me tell you what Senator Graham would wish to do. He
would wish to hire 20,000 Border Patrol agents to let everybody in the
country know I get it when we say we have got to secure the border.
You are right, we have had two waves of illegal immigration. We don't
need a third. And why are we doing this? Why 20,000 Border Patrol
agents? That is three brigades of troops. That is taking the equivalent
of three brigades of Army troops, trained law enforcement officers, to
supplement the 20,000 we have. We will have a Border Patrol agent every
thousand feet on the border 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It costs
over $20 billion, but I can tell you this: It is money well spent,
because it makes the border more secure, which helps us with our
sovereignty.
Why are we hiring 20,000 agents on top of the 20,000 we have? Because
our country can't control who comes in. We cannot maintain our
sovereignty if every 10 and 20 years 3 million to 11 million illegal
immigrants come into our country. If you want the border secure, as I
do, your ship has come in. The 20,000 are now affordable and they are
needed. The 700 miles of fence will be built because it is needed. The
$3.2 billion of technology that has been proven to work in Iraq and
Afghanistan will go to the border because it will help back up the
Border Patrol agents.
As to my good friend from Texas: How do we know all this works? The
bill requires us to hire the agents and put them on the border before
you can transition to green card. It is not talking about hiring the
agents, it is not talking about training them. You have got to hire and
deploy.
The bill also says the fence has to be built. The bill says the $3.2
billion of new technology that worked in Iraq and Afghanistan has to be
purchased, deployed, and operational.
Here is my belief: If you hire the Border Patrol agents and you put
them on the border, they are not going to read a comic book. They are
going to do their job. You don't need to prove to me they are going to
do their job. You just need to get them on the border so they can do
their job.
And if you have the 18 drones versus the 6, you don't need to prove
to me somebody will fly them. They will fly them. If you have the
technology deployed and operational in addition to the drones, the
VADER radar and the sensors, people will look at the radar because they
want to protect our country.
What has been missing is capacity. This is a border surge. We have
militarized our border, almost. Why? Because we have lost our
sovereignty. We have lost the ability to control who comes into
America.
My belief is if you can't get a green card until all of this is
purchased and deployed, that is enough. There will come a point to
where it is enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have been working on this for almost a decade
with Senator McCain. I can look anybody in the eye and tell them that
if you put 20,000 Border Patrol agents on the border in addition to the
20,000 we have--that is one every thousand feet--that will work. If you
buy technology that helped us fight and create success in Iraq when we
did the surge, that will help the Border Patrol agents. If you build a
fence, that all helps. So I don't need any more than getting it in
place.
Finally, to my good friend from Tennessee and my good friend from
North Dakota: The bill when we wrote it I thought was good, but they
have made it a lot better. To anybody in America who believes border
security should be robust and it is a national security priority, we
have in every sense of the term ``reasonable'' met that goal. We
couldn't have done it without more people.
To the Gang of 8 Members, it has been a joy to work on this bill.
To our colleagues who have weighed in and tried to get the bill
better and get to yes, you are doing this country a great service.

[[Page S4750]]

I hope Monday night we will pass legislation that will mandate that
20,000 additional Border Patrol agents will be on the border working
before you can get a green card; that the technology that worked in
Afghanistan and Iraq will be up and operational before you can get a
green card; the fence will be built before you get a green card. And to
me, ladies and gentlemen, that is enough. That is enough.
The people we are talking about deserve a hard-earned process to get
into America. They need to pay a fine, learn our language, get in the
back of the line, and they need to earn their way into good standing.
But they are people.
I am very pleased to support what I think is the most dramatic
amendment in the history of our country to secure our border at a time
when we need it secured.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. SESSIONS. What is the order, if I might ask?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The order was to recognize the Senator from
Arizona after the Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. McCAIN. I thank my friend from South Carolina for his usual
eloquent exposition of what this situation is all about.
I have other colleagues who are waiting to speak, but I want to say
again, the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Tennessee
have shown the best of what this institution can be all about. Not only
did they reach agreement between the two of them, not only did they
reach agreement with I believe a significant number of our colleagues
but they also reached agreement with my colleagues on the other side of
the aisle. In this day and age, that is a signal success. I thank them
for not only what they produced but the many compromises they had to
make along the way.
I won't try to embellish what the Senator from South Carolina said,
except to say I come from a State that has probably been torn apart
more than any other by this issue. We passed legislation in reaction to
our broken borders, where ranchers in the southern part of my State
were actually murdered; where our wildlife refuges were destroyed;
where people died in the desert by the hundreds, their bodies were
found months later; where coyotes bring people across the border and
then hold them in drop houses in Phoenix for ransom under the most
unspeakable conditions; where drugs are brought freely across the
border and guided by guides on mountaintops, guiding these drug cartels
as they bring the drugs to Phoenix. The drug people will tell you that
Phoenix, AZ, is still the major drug distribution center in the United
States of America.
So I take a backseat to no one, even from the great State of Texas,
of the enormous challenges and controversies associated with illegal
immigration.
We tried before and we failed. I won't go into why we failed and all
the people who were responsible. I will take responsibility. I didn't
do a good enough job in selling my colleagues on the absolute need for
immigration reform. The fact is 11 million people live in the shadows,
they live here in de facto amnesty, and they are being exploited every
single day.
Should not it be for a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles
to bring these people out of the shadows? Yes, punish them because they
committed crimes by crossing our border illegally. But isn't it in our
Nation to come together and pass this legislation and not manufacture
reasons for not doing that? Isn't there enough of a penalty? Isn't
there enough border security now, thanks to my colleagues from North
Dakota and from Tennessee--isn't there enough now?
All I can say is I urge my colleagues to vote overwhelmingly in favor
of this hard-fought, well-crafted amendment and let's move on to other
issues that face this Nation. Then I believe we can look back years
from now and say to our children and our grandchildren that we did the
right thing.
I yield floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Donnelly). The Senator from New York.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I understand that both my colleagues from
New Hampshire and Florida wish to speak. I will be happy to have each
of them speak for 5 minutes and then me speak for 5 minutes, if that is
OK. I ask unanimous consent: 5, 5, and 5.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none, and,
the Senator from New Hampshire is recognized.
Ms. AYOTTE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New York for
giving us that courtesy. I rise in support of the amendment that will
be offered by my colleagues from Tennessee and North Dakota. I
appreciate the hard work they have done to enhance the border security
provisions in the current pending immigration bill on the floor. To all
of us, securing our border is very important to preventing another wave
of illegal immigration in this country.
But what they have done is incredibly important. It is very strong,
the strongest measure that I think this body has considered--20,000
Border Patrol agents, essentially doubling those agents that will be
along the southern border; in addition to that, significantly
increasing the fencing. In fact, at least 700 miles of fencing will
have to be completed along the southern border, almost doubling what
was already in the bill for fencing and specifying what types of
technology the Department of Homeland Security will have to deploy,
including the best technology, using sensors and drones, to make sure
we can apprehend those who are illegally trying to cross our border and
then making very sure we prevent a further wave of illegal immigration,
along with the strong reforms in this bill to our legal immigration
system, making sure we can keep the best and the brightest here to help
us grow our economy, to make sure we have the workforce we need to
ensure that we will create jobs here.
Let us not forget we are a country of immigrants. I daresay for most
of my colleagues either their parents or their grandparents came from
another country and worked very hard in this country. We need legal
immigration that works for our country, that makes sure our economy
continues to grow and that we have people here who want to work hard
and live the American dream. But we also cannot ignore securing our
southern border.
That is why I am proud to cosponsor the amendment that will be
offered by Senator Corker and Senator Hoeven. This doubles the number
of border agents, doubles the amount of fencing, specifies the type of
technology that is required, and gives the resources to finally secure
our border.
To my Republican colleagues, I think there was an op-ed in the Wall
Street Journal today that is worth mentioning. I share their concerns
about securing the border, but I hope--with the strong enhancements
that have been put in this amendment to double the amount of border
security, to strengthen and double, almost, the amount of fencing, to
make sure the right technologies are in place to secure our border,
this will prevent another wave of illegal immigration--they will not
use border security as a ruse not to vote for a bill to fix an
immigration system that is absolutely broken.
The status quo is not working for anyone. None of us wants to find
ourselves, another 5 years from now, debating this issue again and
finding that we have a larger population of illegal immigrants and we
have legal immigration that is not working for our country and is not
making sure we have the right people here, people who are working hard,
living the American dream to grow our economy and great American jobs.
I think today the Wall Street Journal has said this border security
issue cannot be used as a trick not to want to support a strong bill
which is on the floor--and this amendment will make it very strong on
the border security provisions--and finally work in a bipartisan manner
to fix a broken immigration system that is not working for anyone and
not working for our country.
I yield the floor for my colleague from Florida. I commend my
colleague from Florida who has worked--along with the other Members of
the group, the Senators from Arizona as well as the Senator from South
Carolina--but the Senator from Florida, I know how focused he is on
making sure our borders are secure. I appreciate his strong leadership
in fixing this broken immigration system and making sure we do

[[Page S4751]]

not have another wave of illegal immigration in this country.
Mr. INHOFE. Parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry.
Mr. INHOFE. My inquiry is it was my understanding we were getting
equal time back and forth. My question is, is this based on party, so
Democrats and then Republicans will alternate time; is that correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no agreement for alternation.
Mr. INHOFE. There is no agreement? Because all I have heard in the
last hour is those in support of the bill. My question is, when can
someone be heard who is not in support of the bill?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time is equally divided between majority
and minority, not between proponents and opponents.
Mr. INHOFE. I see.
Mr. SESSIONS. There you go.
Mr. INHOFE. All right.
Mr. SESSIONS. Inquiry. Was that by unanimous consent?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It was.
Mr. SESSIONS. That explains it, then.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity and I will be
brief. My colleagues have already stated what this entails and the
details of it. I think that is important.
I got involved in this issue earlier this year after spending the
better part of my first 2 years in the Senate thinking about this issue
because, frankly, not just from being from Florida but living in south
Florida I am surrounded by the reality of it every single day. When I
started this effort, I became deeply convinced this is something that
needed to be fixed and needed to be dealt with, but from the very
beginning, the early days of my involvement, I made clear border
security was an essential component of it.
This is not against anybody. Border security is not an anti-anyone
effort. That is not what it is. We understand that America is a special
country. It is so special that people want to come from all over the
world and they do. One million people a year come here legally, every
single year.
We also understand it is so special, unique, some people are willing
to risk their lives to come here illegally. As compassionate people, we
understand that reality and our heart breaks at the stories of what
people are having to go through to come. But we also understand the
United States of America is a sovereign country. Every single sovereign
country on the planet, every single one, tries to or does control its
borders and who comes into the country and who leaves. Every country in
the world does that. The United States of America should not be any
different.
At the end of the day, that is what this issue is about. It is that
we have a sovereign right to protect our border and we have a crisis on
the southern border of the United States. For many different reasons,
people have chosen to cross that border illegally, consistently, for
the 20 or 30 years, and the results are obvious to all of us. That is
why border security is such an important part of this bill and this
measure.
When we introduced our bill, the bill said basically the Department
of Homeland Security would be given some money, and they would get to
decide what the border security plan looked like. Many people in the
public and many of our colleagues were unhappy with that proposal. They
raised valid concerns that we were turning over border security and
deciding what the plan would be to people who claim it is already
secure. What this amendment does is it takes that back and it says that
we, instead, we in the Senate, will decide what that plan is after we
get input from border agents and others about what will work.
What this amendment reflects is what we know will work. We know that
adding border agents, doubling the size of the U.S. Border Patrol, that
will work. We know that completing fence work will work. We know an
entry-exit tracking system, since 40 percent of our illegal immigrants
are those who overstay their visas, will work. We know E-Verify will
work. It is something many of my colleagues in my party have asked for,
for the better part of 10 years. It will work because it takes away the
magnet of employment.
We know these new technologies that were not available to us in 1986
or 2006 or even 5 years ago will work. What this bill says is you must
do all of those things, and it is linked to legal permanent residence.
In essence, someone who has violated our immigration laws cannot become
a legal permanent resident in the United States until all five of those
actions happen. That is the guarantee this will happen.
Let me close by saying I understand the frustration. I truly do. I
know these promises have been made in the past. In a moment, the
Senator from Alabama whose position on this is well stated will point
out these promises were also made in 1986. By the way, in 1986, I was
15 years old, and I have to tell you immigration was the last thing on
my mind at that time. But here is the reality of it. The choice before
us is to try to fix this or to leave it the way it is. What we have is
a disaster of epic proportions. We have 10 or 11 million human beings
living among us. We don't know who they are. They are working but not
paying taxes. There are criminals among them. That has to be solved. A
legal immigration system built on the 19th century? We need to fix this
and this is our chance to fix it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, first from New
York and Tennessee, for the good work they have done. My Gang of 8
colleagues--seven of the Gang of 8 colleagues who are my colleagues, we
are working real hard to get a bill done and it is not easy. It is one
of the hardest things I have ever done as a legislator. But we keep
making progress and we keep improving. Today I think is a breakthrough
day.
Let me go over it. First, speaking on behalf of the Democratic
Members of my bipartisan group, let's say this. There is still some
drafting of the legislative language to be completed. We are continuing
to inform all our allies on our side about the contours of the
proposal. But barring something unexpected, we are extremely
enthusiastic that a bipartisan agreement is at hand.
I know there have been a number of news reports this morning. It is
accurate. We are on the verge of a huge breakthrough on border
security. With this agreement, we believe we have the makings of a
strong bipartisan final vote in favor of this immigration reform bill.
From the beginning of the floor debate on this bill, we have known
there were a group of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who
were inclined to vote for immigration reform but first wanted to see a
strengthening of the bill's border security section. That makes sense
because most Americans will be fair and apply common sense toward the
11 million in the shadows and future immigration if and only if they we
will not have future flows of illegal immigration.
We took those concerns seriously. Our bill is tough on this stuff. We
wanted it tough. The amendment makes it tougher still.
Last week, Senators Corker and Hoeven emerged as leaders of the group
of like-minded colleagues from the other side of the aisle seeking a
tougher approach. My friends Senators Graham and McCain and I sat down
with them and we began talking, along with Senator Menendez. We began
meetings with them ourselves this week.
For us on the Democratic side, it has been an important bottom line
throughout this process that the path to citizenship not be put in
jeopardy. The path is tough, as it should be, but must always be fair.
So we could not go along with efforts, such as in the bill of my
colleague from Texas, that would tie the path to citizenship to
unachievable benchmarks for the border. Senator Cornyn's amendment,
which was defeated on this day, went too far in that regard, and I was
not sure whether the new negotiations would produce agreement either.
As recently as Tuesday night, Senator Hoeven and I had an extended
phone conversation that lasted 45 minutes. It would probably best be
described as spirited. But about 24 hours ago we had a breakthrough.
The idea that broke the logjam is the so-called border surge plan.
The border surge is breathtaking in its size and scope. This deal
will deploy an unprecedented number of boots on

[[Page S4752]]

the ground and drones in the air. It would double the size of Border
Patrol agents from its current level to over 40,000. It will finish the
job of completing the fence along the entire 700-mile stretch of the
southwest border, and it will enumerate, on a sector-by-sector basis,
lists of cutting-edge tools and equipment that will boost surveillance
and apprehension efforts, including sensors, surveillance towers, and
more unmanned drones. In other words, the border surge plan calls for a
breathtaking show of force that will discourage future waves of illegal
immigration.
This compromise will inundate the southwest border with manpower and
equipment. It not only calls for finishing a literal fence, it will
create a virtual human fence of Border Patrol agents. Under the border
surge, the Border Patrol will have the capacity to deploy an armed
agent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to stand guard every 1,000 feet
from San Diego, CA, to Brownsville, TX.
We came up with this idea of the border surge Wednesday morning after
the CBO report was released. My colleague from Texas asked: Why not a
week ago? We didn't have the CBO report. We didn't know we had the
dollars. We have them now, and we still keep to our goal of not costing
the Treasury a nickel. The CBO report was the game changer. It gave us
the budgetary flexibility to consider massive new investments in border
security that we didn't think we could previously afford.
The surge shows the commitment to border security our colleagues have
been asking for. I was heartened to see that our friend the junior
Senator from Illinois already announced that based on this agreement he
is prepared to support final passage of the bill. This is a significant
development considering Senator Kirk initially opposed the motion to
proceed. It is safe to say this agreement has the power to change minds
in the Senate.
This agreement on border security continues the spirit of bipartisan
compromise that has marked this legislation from the beginning. In
fact, in the forthcoming Corker-Hoeven amendment, it will be a vehicle
for accommodating some other compromises in other areas of Republican
concern as well.
With this agreement, we have now answered every criticism that has
come forward about the immigration bill.
First, critics expressed worry that the process would be closed and
that no amendments would be allowed. The bill was available for perusal
weeks before we went to committee. Under Senator Leahy's leadership,
the committee was an open process, with 300 amendments filed, and now
we are spending weeks on the floor trying to move as many amendments as
possible. Some on the other side of the aisle have blocked that from
happening as quickly as we would like--as well as some on our side
too--but we are moving through these amendments.
The next criticism was that it would cost a fortune. CBO debunked
that one pretty well. This adds to the Treasury. It cuts the deficit
$900 billion over the next 20 years, $175 billion over the next 10
years.
Finally, the last argument: We have to secure the border. Securing
the border is vital before anyone could support the bill--or some could
support the bill. We have answered that resoundingly with the Corker-
Hoeven amendment.
We have much more work to do, but I am more confident than ever
before that the Senate will pass a strong bipartisan immigration reform
bill and that it will ultimately reach the desk of the President for
signature. It is a great day for the cause of immigration reform and
for the Senate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for
up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I know Senator Schumer and the Gang of
8 have worked hard on this legislation. I respect their efforts and
goals. I share their goals, and I share many of the principles they
stated. But what we learned is that the legislation came nowhere close
to fulfilling those goals. That is why, here in the middle of the
debate after the bill has been exposed, after it has been hammered for
failure after failure, they have come up with a bill that says: Don't
worry now. We are going to throw 20,000 agents at the border, and now
you all have to vote for it because we fixed it. Now you got what you
wanted.
I say to my colleagues, too often the phrase ``border security'' has
been used to include all legal and illegal activities that occur. What
we know is that not only do we have problems at the border, 40 percent
of the people who are here illegally today are visa overstays. CBO's
report, which just came out, indicates that is going to grow--as I had
predicted it would--in the future. We are going to have twice as many
people come to the country on visas, and they are coming to take jobs--
jobs that Americans need to be prepared to take. We need to get them
prepared if they are not already prepared. We need to get them off of
welfare and into self-sufficiency so they can make good wages that
allow them to pay for their health care and have a retirement plan with
enough left over to take care of their families. That has not been
happening. Wages for average American workers have been declining since
1999, and it is a serious problem. I thought perhaps initially with the
Republican agenda that this was a temporary thing and might bounce
back, but we have seen that sustained.
Senator Schumer referred to the Congressional Budget Office score,
but he didn't refer to this: This bill will accelerate that decline.
Wages will drop more than they would have if the bill didn't pass. CBO
found that unemployment would go up. They found that although there
would be some increase in the economy, with millions of people coming,
per capita, per person, the GDP would decrease. So this is a real
problem we need to be honest about.
How large a flow of people can we sustain and create jobs for? Do we
want to invite good people to come to America to take jobs and then
they are not here for them? Do we want to bring in so many people that
wages for American workers decline or Americans can't get the jobs? But
somebody who comes from a very poor country, willing to work at the
lowest possible wage--won't that pull down the wages of Americans who
were hoping to get a pay raise instead of a pay cut?

I submit that this is a serious issue, and that is why Professor
Borjas at Harvard has said it will adversely impact the wages of
American workers, particularly low-income American workers. They will
face the most adverse economic impact. This fact has not been disputed
so far as I can see.
Now, the Senator says the bill is paid for. Know what they do? They
count the off-budget money. This is what happened. Under the score the
Congressional Budget Office gave to us, they found that it would
increase the on-budget deficit by $14 billion. It will increase the on-
budget debt of America by $14 billion over a period of 10 years. But
they say they have a surplus over 10 years in the off-budget accounts--
some $200 billion. They have counted that up and said: We have a net
surplus. Hallelujah.
What is the off-budget money? What are we talking about for the off-
budget money? That is Social Security money. Everybody who pays into
Social Security, when they get ready to retire, is going to draw out
that money. It doesn't add to the net financial benefit of America if a
person who is here illegally is given a Social Security card, starts
paying into Social Security, and will end up drawing from Social
Security.
We cannot count the off-budget money. That is how this country has
been going broke. We have been using that budget gimmick for way too
long, and that is not correct. We should not be doing that, and it is
not going to improve the deficit over 10 years. The statement of the
Congressional Budget Office and their important report are quite clear
about that.
It says some other things. With regard to wages for American workers,
the Congressional Budget Office report says that if this bill passes,
wages will go down. It says that if this bill passes, unemployment will
go up. That is their analysis of it. It has a chart in there that shows
that for over 10 or 20 years per capita GDP is below what it would be
if the bill had not passed and that wages are going to be low for years
to come.

[[Page S4753]]

Why in the world would we as Americans want to dramatically increase
the legal flow of immigration above our current generous rate and
double the guest worker program? In addition to legalizing the 11
million people who would be legalized under the legislation, there are
4.5 million people who will be given speeded-up allocation under the
chain migration system. So there will be 4.5 million accelerated under
the chain migration as a result of lifting limits on those individuals
and the people who are here illegally. In addition to that, we will
have a large flow of other workers.
Now, I have an amendment. This is a number of pages of it, some 30
pages, very similar to what the House is working on today. It deals
with the visa overstay issue. It deals with people who get into the
country legally but don't go home and don't cross the border. It is a
growing percentage of the illegality we see today, and it will soon be
over half of the illegality, and it certainly will be if this
legislation is passed. Does this legislation Senator Schumer refers to
fix that problem?
With the amendment, does this legislation solve the complaints of the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents? They have written us
multiple times. They pleaded to be allowed to meet with the Gang of 8
and to be able to explain the realities of enforcement difficulties in
America. We are having an impossible time making enforcement work. Why
is this administration blocking them from actual enforcement of the law
as they are sworn to do? They voted no confidence in their supervisor,
Mr. Morton. They filed a lawsuit against Secretary Napolitano, and they
asserted to her that she is blocking them through regulations and
policies from enforcing the law they are sworn to enforce. The matter
has been in the court, and the court is considering this lawsuit. I
have never heard of Federal agents suing because they are not allowed
to enforce the law. That is going on in America today. The ICE agents
have written us a letter, and they said this legislation will make it
worse. They said it will endanger national security.
What about the other part of the immigration process? Citizenship and
Immigration Services is a group of officers who have to review the
amnesty applications, review applications from abroad, and do those
sort of things. Well, what do they say about it? They say the bill will
make the situation worse, it will make it impossible for them to do
their job. They do not have the capacity to process the 11 million
people who are going to be asking for amnesty. It is not going to work.
It will make the system worse. They have not been listened to in this
process either.
Now, Senator Schumer said--and I hope everybody heard it--we have a
plan. Don't worry. We are going to throw 20,000 agents at the border,
and now you can quit complaining, you complainers, and just be happy
and vote for our bill.
Well, then he said something like: Well, we don't have it written
yet. We don't have it written yet, and we are working on it. We are
sharing it with our allies, and we have not shown it to anybody else
yet. But trust us, we have a bill that will work.
That is what they said when the bill was originally filed. They said
they had a sufficient fencing system at the border. We read the bill,
and there was no requirement in the bill to build any fences at the
border. It was totally up to the Secretary. So now he seems quite
happy--not having been able to run that past the Senate, having been
caught on that deal--he is now willing to enhance some fencing. But
current law, the law we passed a decade ago, required 700 miles of
double-layered fencing, which would actually be very effective. This
bill now, after having had the bill endangered, they ran out and said,
well, we will do 700 miles of single-layer fencing, which is quite less
secure and not what we voted on in the Senate 10 years ago. President
Obama voted for it and Vice President Biden voted for it and former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voted for it. That has never been
done. We promised to do that too. We passed a law, we even passed
funding for it, and it never got built. Only 30 miles of the 700 miles
of double-layer fencing was ever built.

So this is a problem we have, along with the American people. So I
say to Senator Schumer: I want to read this Corker amendment. Who is
writing it, Senator Corker, Senator Hoeven, or Senator Schumer? Senator
Schumer is telling us what is in it. He is saying he is still working
on it. He is saying he is sharing it with his allies but not with those
who have doubts about it. I would like to see this bill we have heard
so much about. Also, will it deal with other issues?
So we know this: We know the legislation gives amnesty first. We were
told originally by the Gang of 8 we were going to have border security
first, right? They finally had to acknowledge that isn't so. That is a
pretty big promise.
Border security first. Not so in the bill, not so in the Hoeven-
Corker amendment. The toughest enforcement ever. Clearly, the bill was
weaker than the 2007 bill. Members of the Gang of 8 have acknowledged
that. It is nowhere close.
On visas, current law requires that under the visa policy of the
United States, we have entry-exit visas, biometric at land, sea, and
airports. What does this bill say? This bill says, well, we will have
electronic entry-exit visas at air and seaports but not at land ports.
And if we don't have the land ports in the mix, then we never know who
came into the country if they left by land.
The 9/11 Commission says the system will not work. The system will
not work.
Proponents of the bill said an individual would have to pay back
taxes. That is so ridiculous. That is utterly unenforceable. It is just
a talking point. It has no reality whatsoever.
They said a person has to learn English. Not so. A person can be in a
English course 6 months before their time comes up. They don't have to
complete the course. That is all it requires.
They say no welfare benefits, but there are benefits as scored by the
Congressional Budget Office, the largest of which I suppose is the
earned-income tax credit.
They said it would end illegal immigration, and the Congressional
Budget Office report, amazingly--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Amazingly, the Congressional Budget Office said the
bill that is before us would only reduce illegal immigration by 25
percent. So we are going to give amnesty for the toughest bill ever,
and all of this. Then the bill gets in trouble on the floor and they
scurry around and they get an amendment that throws in, say, 20,000
agents who are going to be hired somewhere on the border in the future.
We promise. We are going to give amnesty first, though, and we promise
that these agents will all be hired and the problem will be fixed. They
promised to build a fence in 2008. It never happened.
So we are going to read this Hoeven-Corker amendment. We are going to
evaluate it fairly. It seems to me it doesn't come close to touching
all of the issues necessary to have a lawful system of immigration that
serves the national interests in a way that Americans can be proud of.
We believe in immigration. We want to be compassionate and helpful to
people who have been here a long time, but we have to have a system we
can count on in the future.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Madam President, yesterday we received some very positive
news about the future potential impact of this bill that is being
debated on the floor today from the Congressional Budget Office
regarding the expected economic impact of this bill. I think it is
worth repeating. It has been discussed and debated, but I think it is
worth repeating for the benefit of those who are watching and for the
benefit of those who are crafting a path forward.
The CBO report details how successful reforms to our immigration
system called for in this bill will, in fact, boost our economy not
only in the next 10 years but in the 10 years to follow. Specifically,
the report details how immigration reform will cut the deficit by
nearly $200 billion--I think it is $197

[[Page S4754]]

billion over the next decade--and then $700 billion in the following
decade. CBO projects over 20 years, nearly $1 trillion in savings.
While economic growth and deficit reduction are both great things and
important for our country, what is particularly interesting and
valuable about this bill is that the growth and jobs, according to CBO,
will be experienced by Americans all across the country and all along
the labor spectrum. The CBO report is consistent with a statement last
month from the Social Security Administration that this bill would
create over 3 million jobs in the next 10 years. Simply put, this is a
jobs bill.
The immigration bill before us creates jobs in a number of different
ways that I think are worth taking a minute to look at. First, the bill
creates jobs by making needed investments, as we have heard at great
length today, in border security. The brave men and women who defend
our country's borders will get the support they need to reduce illegal
immigration and save lives. Many of these men and women, in fact, will
have served honorably and previously in our Armed Forces abroad, and
this bill provides a specific opportunity at which our heroes will
excel.
The bill also creates jobs by creating and enhancing immigration
programs that encourage investment in American companies and in
American workers.
The permanent authorization of such demonstrated programs such as EB-
5 and the new INVEST visa, which build upon years of demonstrated
success and create years of jobs through targeted investment capital,
is another benefit of this bill.
In the last Congress I worked with a bipartisan group, including
Senators Warner, Rubio, and Moran, in crafting something called the
Startup visa, and I am thrilled this includes the INVEST visa, quite
similar to the Startup vise idea, that encourages foreign nationals
with capital who are entrepreneurs to come to the United States and
invest in job growth in our country.
New companies create new jobs, and the contributions of immigrant
entrepreneurs are well known in every corner of this country, including
in my own home State of Delaware. By encouraging rather than limiting
immigrant entrepreneurs, this bill will ensure the American dream
remains alive and well for future generations.
This bill also, in my view, will create jobs in the short term and in
the long term by encouraging companies to invest in growth in the
United States rather than abroad. It balances the need to attract and
retain high-skilled foreign-born individuals, many of whom are
currently trained at American universities at public expense, while
also ensuring that companies recruit Americans for open positions in
high-skilled jobs--typically those who focus in the engineering and
science, math and technology areas.
The reforms in this bill to our employment-based visa system are long
overdue. It does a wide range of things, including clears backlogs,
eliminates the per-country caps, and permits so-called dual-intent for
students. I think all of these are positive for improving the quality
and the availability of the American workforce. I think we should get
this done.
At the same time, this bill makes an important contribution to the
health and welfare of American workers by cracking down on unauthorized
illegal employment and bringing workers out of the shadows and into our
open economy. I am particularly happy this bill includes clear guidance
that immigrants authorized to work in this country are able to provide
services in all parts of the economy by accessing appropriate licensure
standards. This provision will ensure that once legally authorized to
work, immigrants who abide by the same laws and safety measures as
Americans will be able to bring their full skills and talents into our
economy.
For the long-term health of our economy, this bill also contains an
important investment in training our children. I had the pleasure of
working with Senators Hatch, Rubio, and Klobuchar on a STEM fund
concept in our immigration innovation bill, and I am glad to see the
inclusion of that STEM education fund that will improve the science,
technology, engineering, and math education of U.S. national children
in schools across this country.
At a time when we have to make difficult decisions about how best to
cut the deficit and grow the economy, this bill is perhaps the best
chance we have at making significant, bipartisan progress while also
making our country more fair, more just, and more secure.
If I might for another few minutes, I wish to also speak about what
it means to make our immigration system more just.
America has earned its place in the world in part because of the
immigrants who have come before us bringing their culture, their
passion, their ideas, and their skills to our shores. When I ask
Americans what they expect of our immigration system as we try to fix
this badly broken system, they say they want one that keeps us safe
from foreign threats, from terrorism, and dangerous individuals. They
want a system that protects the American workforce and that grows our
economy. They want a system that is fair and transparent and that
reflects our most basic values.

It is clear to me, as it is, I suspect, to the Presiding Officer and
many of our colleagues that our current immigration system just isn't
consistent with our most sacred values. We are failing to resolve legal
disputes through a judicial process worthy of our world-renowned
justice system, and we are failing to safeguard taxpayer dollars which
we are needlessly wasting with a slow and inefficient and poorly
managed immigration legal system.
Our immigration system jeopardizes our values and mistreats those who
would adopt them as their own. So I think we must act.
Fortunately, this bill before us today better aligns our immigration
system with our most basic values. It is not perfect, but it is a vital
and needed step forward. It makes critical progress, for example, in
the treatment of children who are forced into our immigration courts.
Under our current system, children as young as 8 years old--often with
limited English language skills--are forced to stand in front of
immigration judges and argue whether they have some basis to remain in
our country. These children aren't represented by counsel. The
proceeding is adversarial. The judge is an employee of the same agency
as the prosecutor. This, in my view, doesn't look anything like
America, and in some essential ways it must change.
By expanding access to representation for children, this bill will
not only seek better justice for immigrant children, but also help
administer cases in a more efficient manner. In our immigration courts
where immigrants are regularly brought before judges without
information central to their own cases, this bill will ensure
immigrants have access to their own case files before they appear in
court. In our own civil and criminal court systems, this sort of basic
information exchange is the bare minimum.
This is an improvement that reflects our values, by letting people
understand the consequences before them when they step into a
courtroom. It is also a commonsense way to save money by expediting
immigration proceedings where dockets are currently backlogged not just
weeks and months but years. While immigration courts deal with mounting
backlogs, many immigrants remain in detention at enormous cost to
taxpayers.
Finally, this bill also proposes a rational detention policy that
keeps immigrants who pose a real threat to society in detention while
recognizing the value, the capability of modern technology to provide
alternatives to detention when the only concern is appearing for a
hearing. Our values tell us that individuals who pose no threat to
society don't belong in protracted detention, and technology has
allowed us to exercise better alternatives.
By addressing the backlog of cases through improvements to the court
system and by making steps toward a more rational detention policy, I
believe this bill in its current form will save money while reflecting
our shared values.
I wish to draw the attention of my colleagues to one amendment that
raises concerns for me on this exact point. It is amendment No. 1203,
and Senator Inhofe is the lead sponsor. It would, in my view, require
essentially mandatory indefinite detention of

[[Page S4755]]

those who are currently detained in the American immigration system for
whom we can find no country that would accept them, but with no
pathway, no alternative to discretion for an immigration judge to
choose to use technology to allow them out of detention while ensuring
that they pose no threat to security for our communities. I think this
takes away necessary opportunities for immigration judges to exercise
discretion as to who belongs in detention for very long periods of time
at great public expense. It is my hope my colleagues will act to defeat
this amendment.
In closing, in my view, it is critical for the future of our country
that we address all of these issues now. I look forward to the passage
of this legislation. When our laws are so inconsistent with our basic
values, we should act without delay. When we have right in front of us
an opportunity to reduce the deficit and to grow jobs, to make this
country safer, stronger, fairer, and more prosperous, we should act in
a bipartisan and progressive way.
With that, I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the
absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. VITTER. I would ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.
Mr. VITTER. I would ask to go to regular order to the Leahy
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.
The amendment is pending.
Mr. VITTER. Great, Madam President.

Amendment No. 1507 to Amendment No. 1183

At this point, I would send a second-degree amendment to the desk to
make that pending.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Vitter] proposes an
amendment numbered 1507 to amendment No. 1183.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To ensure that aliens convicted of crimes of violence against
women and children are ineligible for registered provisional immigrant
status)

On page 945, between lines 20 and 21, insert the following:
``(III) an offense, unless the applicant demonstrates to
the Secretary, by clear and convincing evidence, that he or
she is innocent of the offense, that he or she is the victim
of such offense, or that no offense occurred, that--
``(aa) is classified as a misdemeanor, in the convicting
jurisdiction; and
``(bb) involved--
``(AA) domestic violence) (as defined in section 40002(a)
of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C.
13925(a)); or
``(BB) child abuse and neglect (as defined in section
40002(a) of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C.
13925(a));

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). Is there objection?
Mr. LEAHY. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Madam President, what is the pending amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Vitter amendment No. 1507 to the Leahy
amendment No. 1183.
Mr. REID. I raise a point of order against the Vitter amendment that
it is improperly drafted to the Leahy amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The point of order is well taken. The
amendment falls.
Mr. REID. The Vitter amendment falls; is that right?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It falls.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I now ask unanimous consent that there be
a period of debate only until 6:30 p.m., with the time equally divided
between the two leaders or their designees, and that I be recognized at
6:30 this evening.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I don't know if there is any
particular order. I see other colleagues on the floor. I am not in a
particular rush. I would be happy for them to speak, but I wish to
speak for 5 minutes as in morning business.
I thank the Senators.
I know the leadership--Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley--are
working very hard to negotiate some very controversial and serious
amendments to the underlying bill, and there have been negotiations
going on all day on the immigration bill, and actually for weeks, both
in the Judiciary Committee, where 17 Members serve, and then here on
the Senate floor, where the rest of us have our only opportunity to
engage and to be part of legislating a bill that is likely to pass.
There is no guarantee, but it looks as though it is moving in that
direction.
The bill has been strengthened as it has gone on, and we have had a
very vigorous debate. But I have come to the floor several times only
to say this: There is a series of amendments that are completely
uncontested. In other words, there is no opposition to them. The list
is approximately, from what we can tell at this point, potentially
around 30 to 35. It could be more, but there are clearly 30 to 35
amendments that have been filed by Republicans, by Democrats, and some
of these amendments are cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats, each
together.
I have been talking about this for a couple of days because I think
we have to get back to trusting each other and working together across
party lines on major bills such as this and actually working to pass
amendments that nobody objects to. Wouldn't that be amazing. We used to
do that routinely through a practice called the managers' amendment. In
the last couple of months or years everybody is so angry and aggravated
at the end of the debate there is no managers' package. So I have
decided to start early identifying amendments while the leadership is
focused on the more controversial amendments both sides are still
arguing about that are significantly meritorious. I have been focused
on amendments that are very good ideas, and to which, to my knowledge,
there is literally no opposition.
I want to adjust the list and remove from the Landrieu list Collins
amendment No. 1255. There has been some objection on our side to that.
Heller No. 1234, there has been some objection to that. Now, this is
not final. I am not managing the bill. I am just saying, to be honest,
we have heard objections as to these two.
There are additional amendments that come to our attention that may
not have any opposition that I may want to add to this list. One is
Toomey No. 1236 which clarifies that personnel, infrastructure, and
technology used in the comprehensive border security strategy is
procured through existing or new programs. It is a clarification to the
underlying bill. I don't think anyone objects to that.
Senator Grassley has an amendment No. 1306 that he is well aware of
that authorizes the Attorney General to appoint counsel to represent an
unaccompanied alien child with serious mental disabilities. I most
certainly would support that. He and I have worked together on many
pieces of child welfare legislation. There is no one opposing that
amendment.
Johanns amendment No. 1345 requires CBO to report on revenues and
costs generated by the bill and requires the DHS Secretary to generally
adjust fees under the bill to cover costs that are not fully offset. As
the cosponsors of this bill have said, this bill will not cost
taxpayers any money. It is offset by fees. This amendment is simply
clarifying that statement. It would be a good amendment. I think that
is an example.
Senator Coats' amendment No. 1372 requires, similar to Senator
Grassley, to consult on children coming through with mental
disabilities to make sure they have legal counsel. No one would object
to that.
Finally, Senator Flake, amendment No. 1472, requires the GAO to study
the use of non-Federal roads by Customs and Border Protection.
These amendments are not striking lightning anywhere, not upsetting

[[Page S4756]]

Western civilization. These are perfecting amendments that we came here
to legislate on behalf of our constituents because there are people or
groups or entities in our States that are following the big bill and
the big controversies of it, but some people are actually following the
specifics and want to make suggestions to make the bill better. So
people who are going to vote against the bill can still vote against
it. People who are going to vote for it can still vote for it. But we
can make the bill better. That is what we are here to do.
I can't, under the order, have any motions, but I will just bring it
to the attention of the Senate that I am going to submit this to the
Record. If there are any objections to those that I have talked about,
please let us know.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about a couple
amendments that I hope will make it on the Landrieu list. I think they
are entirely consistent with what she has talked about; that is,
amendments where there should not be any controversy, where we can come
together as Republicans and Democrats and support them, in order to
improve this underlying piece of legislation on immigration reform.
I do think it is important for us to resolve this issue of an
immigration system that is broken--a legal system that fails to
actually uphold the laws within it.
As the Presiding Officer knows, and I talked about it yesterday, I
still have concerns about the legislation in a number of areas.
One is the internal enforcement of the legislation, particularly with
regard to the workplace. I think the magnet of work that encourages
illegal immigration can be addressed through a stronger and more
comprehensive E-Verify system, and we plan to offer an amendment to
that effect, and will work with both sides of the aisle.
I also have concerns about Federal benefits going to noncitizens. I
know that Senator Hatch has been working diligently on that issue as
have Senator Rubio and others, and I am hopeful that we will be able to
work something out to address that issue.
Border security, of course, is an issue which we have talked a lot
about today. It is important, but the provisions concerning it are not
sufficient, in my view.
Finally, I do have concerns about the eligibility for legal status of
convicted criminals. That is what I want to talk about today.
Again, Senator Landrieu has talked about supporting a number of
uncontested amendments that will improve the underlying bill. I think
these two amendments that I am going to talk about today fit well into
that category.
These amendments would apply a uniform and fair standard to anyone
convicted of a felony. I think that is, at a minimum, what we have to
be doing. If you are convicted of a felony crime, there ought to be a
fair standard applied, and you ought not to be able to obtain a legal
status. They would also ensure that dangerous criminals who prey on the
most vulnerable among us are not given legal status under this
legislation.
Yesterday I talked in general terms about what these amendments would
accomplish. One problem I identified is that the underlying bill
requires an applicant for legal status to have served at least 1 year
in prison in order to make that person ineligible, regardless of the
crime, even if the crime they committed was a felony.
I think it is also important to understand the kinds of criminal
convictions that, under the current bill before us, would not prevent
someone from beginning the process of becoming a citizen, so I am going
to give a couple examples. These are the kinds of incidents that we see
on the nightly news and that fill us with disgust and outrage. They are
not hypothetical:
A man convicted of felony child abuse for beating his children ages 6
and 8 with a riding crop, shooting them with BB guns and bottle
rockets, and choking and burning them with cigarettes; a woman
convicted of aggravated child abuse for giving alcohol to an 8-pound,
7-week-old infant to the point that its blood alcohol level was more
than four times the legal limit for an adult; a man convicted of felony
domestic violence when he broke into the home of his ex-girlfriend,
choked her, pulled out her hair, and beat her to keep her from getting
help.
All of these criminals were convicted of felonies; none of them
served the full year imprisonment required to be inadmissible under S.
744, the underlying bill. So if somebody were convicted of these
horrible crimes, they could still be admissible to go into legal status
because they didn't serve that 1 year minimum.
By the way, this can result from several different factors. One is
the disposition of the sentencing judge. Another is the recommendation
made by prosecutors, possibly for reasons that were valid such as to
get more information out of these criminals. It could also be because
of overcrowding in our State prisons, which, unfortunately, is endemic
in this country.
So I think making decisions based on time served is not the right way
to go. It means that if two individuals are convicted of the same crime
of violence--in this case domestic violence--but one serves 1 year in
prison, and the other is sentenced to 6 months; the first person is
barred from citizenship while the second would still be eligible. It is
unfair, it is illogical, and it is not in keeping with the spirit of
the legislation before us to treat all violent felons in the same
manner.

My very simple amendment would ensure that those convicted of
domestic violence, stalking, or child abuse, who could have been
sentenced to not less than 1 year imprisonment for the crime at the
time of conviction, are not eligible for citizenship.
My second amendment ensures that crimes against children involving
moral turpitude--things like child abuse, child neglect, and
contributing to the delinquency of a minor through sexual acts--are not
subject to the discretionary authority of the Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security and the immigration judges with respect
to removal, deportation, or admissibility of an individual. Crimes
involving moral turpitude look past a conviction and the elements of a
crime because these acts are conclusively against our values as a
people.
This amendment would continue the standards we have always had
enshrined in our immigration system. For that reason, just like the
previous amendment, I believe, in a sense, that this is just a
clarification that is necessary to make this underlying law work.
A quirk in the bill before us would change that. It weakens the laws
designed to protect our kids. That is the kind of reform we don't need.
Discretionary authority has its place, I acknowledge that, but there
is no excuse for committing acts of violence against children, and
those who would do so are not worthy of citizenship. But under the
legislation as currently written, someone who commits a felony
assault--for example, a man who gets in a bar fight with another man--
would be deported, but a father who goes home from that same bar and
beats his children or hits his wife would not necessarily face the same
consequences.
I can't believe that this was the intention of this legislation or
that anybody in this Chamber would find that acceptable.
We want to make sure that this immigration bill only benefits those
who are worthy of it. This bill is for the men and women who have come
to this country to build a better life for themselves and their
families, not those who would abuse them. It is for those who are
willing to work hard, not for those who have served hard time. It seeks
to open the door to American citizenship for those who share our values
of respecting and protecting human life, not those who would commit
crimes against the most vulnerable among us.
The debate on immigration reform has been long and at some points it
has been difficult. I saw that on the Senate floor earlier today. And
many of the amendments that have been offered have been highly
contentious.
Again, I will be offering some amendments on ensuring that there is
proper enforcement of the legislation later in this process. But I
would say that these amendments we have offered, which are before the
Senate, amendments Nos. 1389 and 1390, are amendments that shouldn't be
contentious. They are intended only to protect our children and

[[Page S4757]]

to ensure that the creation of a path to citizenship does not leave the
victims of domestic violence as second-class citizens.
There will be hard votes in the days to come. This is not one of
them. I urge my colleagues to support both of these amendments.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I appreciate the recognition, and I
ensure my colleagues I will be brief. I appreciate very much the work
of the Senator from Ohio on this bill.
I wanted to come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the
agreement that we have reached with Senators Corker and Hoeven that
will significantly increase security measures taken at our borders.
We have spent a lot of time talking about this issue over the last
months with some proposals that would have simply gone too far by
sacrificing the path to citizenship, perhaps completely, in some of
these proposals.
I thank Senator Corker, Senator Hoeven, and the other Senators who
have been involved in this discussion for striking the balance in a
different place and giving us a path to another bipartisan agreement
that has required compromise--principled compromise--on all sides
throughout this process.
A number of us have said that this bill is not the bill each of us
would have written left to our own devices. But the nature of this
place, when it is working, is that it is a place where people make
principled compromises and come together.
I want to thank Chairman Leahy, who is on the floor today, for the
process that he led in the Judiciary Committee to get us here. There
were over 300 amendments considered. I think there were 141 amendments
adopted by both Democrats and Republicans.
This is the way Colorado expects the Senate to work--a State that is
one-third Democratic, one-third Republican, and one-third Independent,
and doesn't care very much about what labels people put on each other
or themselves but would like the institutions in Washington to actually
reflect their priorities and reflect the way they do business, which is
by coming together and figuring out how to deal with principled
disagreements.
So while we have said this bill isn't the bill that I would have
written alone, it is a good bill. It is a bill that has gotten stronger
in the committee and stronger on the Senate floor. That is the way it
is supposed to work.
People at home know that doing big things means we are going to have
to be willing to come together from time to time on compromised
solutions, and that is what we are doing here. We are protecting the
principles the eight of us laid out when we started this process, which
includes ensuring a pathway to citizenship that is real and attainable,
in addition to preventing future illegal immigration through, among
other measures, securing our borders.
Our agreement had additional support for securing the border even
after the improvements we have seen over the last 10 years. But now
what we have before us is what some have called a border surge plan
that will significantly expand resources at the border beyond what is
already in the bill.
It will double the number of border agents--an agent, it has been
estimated, every 1,000 feet on the border. It will significantly expand
fencing. It will implement new technology and resources such as fixed
towers, surveillance cameras, and aerial surveillance units. It will
provide for full monitoring of our southern border.
We have already dramatically increased security at the border. This
bill will double the number of border agents on our southern border.
And while these items will add more cost to the bill, we know such
costs are offset by fees and fines on visas throughout our bill.
Yesterday's news from the Congressional Budget Office that the bill
as written would achieve nearly $900 billion in deficit savings over
the next 20 years--coupled with the gigantic steps we are already
taking at the border, along with the growing coalition of support for
fixing our broken immigration system--is leaving opponents with less
and less to undercut the bill. The case is simply slipping away for
maintaining the status quo that is holding back our economy, keeping us
less secure, and tearing apart families.
At home, people actually think securing the border is a virtue. They
support securing the border at home. People at home think a pathway to
citizenship that resolves the question for the 11 million people
working in this shadow economy, in this cash economy, is a virtue.
People at home believe both of those things would be positive. In
Washington, somehow it becomes a trade: border security for
citizenship, depending on which side you are on.
I want to say how grateful I am to the other Members of the Gang of
8, particularly to Senator McCain, Senator Graham, Senator Rubio, and
Senator Flake, my Republican colleagues, and to Senator Hoeven and
Senator Corker for creating the opportunity for us to have a big
bipartisan vote on this Senate floor next week; to be able to show the
American people there is hope, that we can finally resolve not just the
issue for the 11 million, but we can also begin as a country to have
the talents of people from all over the world who want to contribute to
our economy, who want to build their businesses here.
I thank them for legislating in such a constructive way, so as we
move forward, to have the chance for each of us to vote to reaffirm two
essential principles that make our country so special: One, that we are
committed to the rule of law and the other that we are a nation of
immigrants.
I yield the floor. I thank the Senator from Utah for his patience.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the
pending amendment and call up an amendment, No. 1207.
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I object.
Mr. BENNET. I object.
Madam President, I did not know that was the purpose of the Senator
rising, so I will keep going on another topic.
Through the Chair, does the Senator from Utah want to speak?
Mr. LEE. Through the Chair, the Senator from Utah would like to
speak.

The Farm Bill

Mr. BENNET. Through the Chair, two sentences, which are: Our farmers
and ranchers in Colorado have been suffering through the worst drought
that we have had in a generation. This is the third year in a row of
that drought. We have passed a bipartisan farm bill twice on the floor
of the Senate, I think with over 70 votes. It is not perfect. There are
things in it I would change. It is the only bipartisan deficit
reduction, other than the immigration bill, that has been achieved by a
committee in this Congress, either on the Senate side or House side--
the only one.
We make important reforms to our conservation title. We end direct
payments to producers. The Senate bill is not a perfect bill, but it is
a good bill. Today the House of Representatives voted their own bill
down. Farmers and ranchers in Colorado who are working hard to try to
support their families, to create a condition where they can leave
their farms and ranches to the next generation of Coloradans, are left
to scratch their heads once again why Washington cannot get its work
done.
I urge the House of Representatives to pass the bipartisan Senate
farm bill so our farmers and ranchers can get the relief they need.
I yield the floor.
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, will the Senator, before he yields the
floor, yield for a question?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. BENNET. I yield.
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I believe the Senator is aware of this. I
ask, does he know when we passed the farm bill last year by a huge
bipartisan margin, and again this year, that on the Senate committee
are several former chairs of that committee in both parties as well as
a former Secretary of Agriculture, and we came together as Republicans
and Democrats to pass a bill that saves $23 to $28 billion? I believe
the Senator is aware of that.
Mr. BENNET. Through the Chair, I am aware of that. I appreciate the
Senator from Vermont, the former chair of the committee and now the
chair of the Judiciary Committee, reminding the

[[Page S4758]]

Chamber that the Senator from Vermont has been here longer than I have
been, just being honest about it. But I wonder sometimes what it would
have been like to serve in this body when it did not have a 10-percent
approval rating. The chairman was here when the Congress did not have a
10-percent approval rating. I don't know why anybody in the world would
want to work in a place that had that level of approval.
I came down to the floor once with a slide that tried to find other
enterprises that had the kind of approval rating we have in this
Congress. It is very hard to do. The IRS had a 40-percent approval
rating. There is an actress who had a 15-percent approval rating.
Eleven percent of the American people say they want the country to be a
Communist country--I don't, by the way. I think Fidel Castro had a 5-
or 6-percent approval rating.
We have to start working together. That is what the American people
want. That is what the people in my State want. They know we are not
always going to agree on everything, but they expect us to actually get
things done. One of the matters we have in front of us, this
immigration bill, is an excellent example of Republicans and Democrats
coming together to do their work.
The chairman is exactly right. The Senator from Vermont is exactly
right. We have differences on the Agriculture Committee sometimes, but
they are not partisan differences. They are not differences between
Republicans and Democrats. They are regional differences, and we find a
way to hash those out. We were able to pass this bill on the floor with
broad bipartisan support. That is what we should do with this
immigration bill and that is what the House of Representatives should
do with our Senate farm bill.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I certainly share the concern of my friend
and colleague from Colorado, and I thank him for his remarks. We do, as
an institution, have an alarmingly low approval rating. I have even
said we are slightly less popular in America than the Castro brothers
and slightly more popular than the influenza virus, but the virus is
gaining on us rapidly.
There are many reasons for this. One thing is we are trying to gain
too much control over too may aspects of the lives of the American
people. There is so much of what the American people do that is
governed, even micromanaged by the Federal Government and by what it
does every single day. So much of their wealth has to go to pay their
taxes to the Federal Government. So many of their communications are
potentially susceptible to being monitored. So much of what they do is
in one way or another restricted by the Federal Government.
I would like to discuss amendment No. 1207, which would address one
of the many implications of the fact that we have a Federal Government
that is simply too big. It deals specifically with the ownership of
Federal land.
In my State, the State of Utah, the Federal Government owns about
two-thirds of the land. That is two-thirds of the land that has to be
managed by bureaucrats, bureaucrats ultimately working out of
Washington, DC, who, for the most part, don't tend to share the same
values or the same interests in land development as do people from my
own State. That is land we cannot tax and land we therefore cannot
access as a resource. It is land that, because it cannot be taxed,
cannot provide tax revenue for local governments to fund fire
departments, police services, and schools.
It has other implications too when the Federal Government owns this
much land. It is significant that about 40 percent of the land along
our border is owned by the Federal Government. It is significant that
in a lot of that stretch of border, Federal agents from the Bureau of
Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, are not allowed to do their job.
Even our own Federal officers cannot do that which they need to do,
that which they have sworn an oath to do, at least not very
effectively, for the simple reason that this is Federal land and there
are a whole host of environmental restrictions that often accompany the
use of Federal land or traversing on Federal land of any kind.
This is foreign to many of my colleagues, many of whom come from
States where there is very little Federal land. It is significant that
in every State in the Rocky Mountains or west of the Rocky Mountains
the Federal Government owns 15 percent or more of the land in those
States, and in every State east of the Rocky Mountains the Federal
Government owns less than 15 percent. In many cases it is much less
than that--in some cases \1/2\ of 1 percent.
I don't expect all of my colleagues to sympathize with this
immediately, but I hope, in time, when they come to understand what we
face in these States where there is so much Federal land ownership,
they would be sympathetic to this amendment.
The idea of this amendment is we have a problem. We have a problem
when CBP agents cannot adequately enforce the law, cannot adequately
enforce the border, protect it for national security purposes and
immigration purposes and the like, simply because of the fact the land
is federally owned and environmental restrictions get in their way and
interfere with their ability to do that.
The net result of this is not environmental protection because, as we
have seen, in many of these areas, because coyotes and others who bring
people illegally across the border are well aware of these
restrictions, they will make sure illegal immigrants come across these
very same tracts of land in order to get into the United States
illegally. They leave in their wake, in some cases, a trail of
destruction or at least a trail of litter as they drop things along the
way.
This also, by the way, creates very dangerous conditions for many of
these immigrants who are trying to cross very remote sections of land.
It makes it difficult, not just for the agents but also for the
immigrants alike. It is not good for anyone.
This amendment tries to change that. This amendment would provide
immediate access to land at the border for the purpose of maintaining
or building roads, fences, also driving patrol vehicles, and for
installing surveillance equipment. It is interesting. People are dying
on the border as a result of the fact that immigrants very often will
cross these very remote sections of land. They run out of water. They
run out of food. They run out of other supplies. They get lost.
It is scary. This would happen less if we were adequately enforcing
our border. Again, border lands are littered with the trash left behind
by these illegally crossing illegal aliens.
This has not gone completely unnoticed in the past. In fact, this has
been reported in the press. Just a few years ago, the Washington Post
reported, November 16, 2009, the following:

In a remarkably candid letter to members of Congress,
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her
department could have to delay pursuits of illegal immigrants
while waiting for horses to be brought in so agents don't
trample protected lands, and warns that illegal immigrants
will increasingly make use of remote, protected areas to
avoid being caught.
The documents also show the Interior Department has charged
the Homeland Security Department $10 million over the past
two years as a ``mitigation'' penalty to pay for damage to
public lands that agencies say has been caused by Border
Patrol agents chasing illegal immigrants.

Every one of us in this body whom I am aware of has been saying we
need to secure the border and that we do. I am here to reiterate that
very point. If we are serious about that, as we claim to be, then we
have a certain obligation to make sure our CBP agents, officers have
the ability to enforce the law; that they are not fighting this battle
with one hand or perhaps both hands tied behind their back; that we are
not ordering them to make bricks without straw. We have to give them
the ability to do their job and certainly not interfere with it.
It is not just that we are placing a minor incidental burden on their
ability to enforce the laws, we are talking about 40 percent of the
land along the southern border that is federally owned. So we are
dealing with an awful lot of land. Everyone knows if we enforce the
border in some areas but make it impossible to enforce in others, we
are going to drive the illegal immigration traffic toward those areas
of the border where enforcement is not ongoing.
That is what my amendment does. This has been debated and discussed
in

[[Page S4759]]

the House of Representatives. My understanding is that in prior
legislation the House of Representatives has even adopted this
provision.
I urge each and every one of my colleagues to take a close look at
amendment No. 1207, which I hope to call up in the near future, and I
hope we will pass this measure.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first, let me thank my very good friend
from Iowa who graciously allowed me to make a very short statement. I
am concerned about this. Several of us have amendments we have been
trying to get up for a long period of time. Frankly, I do not know what
the current status of the amendments and the bill are right now,
whether we will be getting to some votes sooner or later. I have no way
of knowing. But I have one amendment that is one I thought would be so
acceptable that there would not be any opposition to it. Let me just
briefly tell you what it is.
My amendment addresses the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision in
Zadvydas. This is one where the Court held--we all remember this--that
immigrants admitted to the United States and then ordered removed could
not be detained for more than 6 months.
Four years later, the Supreme Court came along and extended the
decision to people here illegally as well. That is what we are talking
about right now. We are talking about illegals who come into this
country. As a result, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security
have no choice but to release thousands of criminal immigrants into our
neighborhoods. The problem with these decisions is the criminal
immigrants ordered to be removed cannot be deported back to their
country if that country refuses to accept them back.

Let's stop and think about that. I certainly could not criticize a
country for not taking back a hardened criminal into their country, and
that is what happens. More importantly, these decisions have a serious
impact on public safety, as recent cases have illustrated.
Six years ago a Vietnamese immigrant was ordered to be deported after
serving time in prison for armed robbery and assault. He was never
removed because the Supreme Court decision handicapped our authorities.
Our immigration officials couldn't deport him without the cooperation
of the Vietnamese Government, which they didn't get. The Vietnamese
Government said, we don't want this guy back. As a result, his
deportation was never processed.
This same immigrant, Binh Thai Luc, is suspected of killing five
people in a San Francisco home in March of 2012.
The story of Qian Wu puts this situation in perspective. Qian Wu felt
a little safer after the man who had stalked, choked, punched her, and
pointed a knife at her was locked up and ordered to be removed from the
country. She naturally felt better at that time because the guy was
behind lock and key and then was going to be ordered back to his
country. The man, Huang Chen, was a Chinese citizen who had illegally
entered the United States. As has been the case at least 8,000 times in
the last 4 years, Mr. Chen's home country refused to let its violent
criminal return. So here is a guy who is a violent criminal, ordered to
be sent back to his country, but his country didn't want him.
Handcuffed by the Supreme Court decision, immigration officials
released Mr. Chen back into the community when they had no place else
to send him. They released the guy. As anyone can imagine, this story
does not have a happy ending. Upon his release in 2010, Huang Chen
murdered Qian Wu. He murdered her. She suspected this was going to
happen. As we can see, this is a real problem with serious
consequences, and there are others like these people out there.
According to statistics provided by the Department of Homeland
Security, there are many countries that are not cooperating or take
longer to repatriate their nationals. Countries such as Iran, Pakistan,
China, Somalia, and Liberia are all on that list. The Supreme Court, in
making their decision, said Congress should clarify the law. I have an
amendment that clarifies the law by creating a framework that allows
immigration officials to detain dangerous criminals and immigrants such
as Binh Thai Luc and Huang Chen.
This is specifically what this amendment does: Immigrants can be
detained beyond 6 months if they are under orders of removal but cannot
be deported due to the country's unwillingness to accept them back into
their country.
There are several conditions that have to be made, including if the
release would threaten national security--keep in mind that a
determination has been made that they threaten national security,
threaten the safety of the community, and the alien either is an
aggravated felon or has committed a crime of violence.
I understand the ACLU is opposed to this, and that should make
everyone excited about getting this passed. By the way, we are going to
hear people say there are no conditions. There are a lot of safeties
built into this.
For example, in order for the Secretary to keep someone past 6
months, they will have to certify every 6 months that this is not
indefinite and certify the threat is still there. The alien still has
access to our Federal courts. So this would be in effect only under the
condition of the person being a threat to the safety of the community
and that person must have also committed a crime of violence or
aggravated felony.
I cannot imagine that anyone would object to this and as a result
potentially put all of these people in danger. We have already had some
deaths. I think it is very reasonable that we go ahead and take care of
some of these things that would be acceptable.
So for that reason, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 1203
be brought before us for its immediate consideration.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cowan). Objection is heard.
The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am not going to make a unanimous
consent request. I want to speak about a piece of legislation I hope to
introduce before we finish the bill on immigration.
This is a Grassley-Kirk amendment numbered 1299, and I am having a
difficult time getting it put in place so we can get it brought up. I
believe there is a lack of understanding of what my amendment does. I
want to take this time to explain it so everyone can fully understand
it and get it to a rollcall vote.
I thank Senator Kirk for joining me on this amendment as a cosponsor.
This amendment would address language in the bill that creates a
convoluted and ineffective process for determining whether a foreign
national in a street gang should be deemed inadmissible or deported. I
offered a similar amendment in committee because I believe this to be
such a dangerous loophole that requires closing.
My amendment even had the support of two Members of the Group of 8.
Specifically, in order to deny entry or remove a gang member, section
3701 of the bill requires the Department of Homeland Security prove a
foreign national: one, has a prior Federal felony conviction for drug
trafficking or violent crime; two, has knowledge that the gang is
continuing to commit crimes; and three, has acted in furtherance of
gang activity.
Even if all of these provisions could be proven under the bill, the
Secretary could still issue a waiver. That is just one of many
opportunities for the Secretary of Homeland Security to forget about
what the legislation says. As such, the proposed process is limited
only to criminal gang members with prior Federal drug trafficking and
Federal violent crime convictions and does not--can you believe this--
include State convictions such as rape and murder.
The trick here is that while the bill wants everyone to believe there
is a strong provision, foreign nationals who have Federal felony drug
convictions or violent crime convictions are already subject to
deportation if they are already here or denied entry as being
inadmissible. So the gang provision written in this bill adds nothing
to current law and obviously will not be used. It is, at best, a feel-
good measure to say we are being tough on criminal gangs while doing
nothing to remove or deny entry to criminal gang members.

[[Page S4760]]

It is easier to prove someone is a convicted drug trafficker than both
a drug trafficker and a gang member. So as currently written, why would
this provision ever be used? Simply put, it would not be used.
My amendment would strike this do-nothing provision and issue a new,
clear, simple standard to address the problem of gang members. My
amendment would strike this do-nothing provision and create a process
to address criminal gang members where the Secretary of Homeland
Security must prove: one, criminal street gang membership; and two,
that the person is a danger to the community. Once the Secretary proves
these two things, the burden then shifts, as it should, to the foreign
national to prove that either he is not dangerous, not in a street
gang, or that he did not know the group was a street gang. It is
straightforward and will help remove dangerous criminal gang members.
My amendment also eliminates the possibility of a waiver. Under my
amendment, the vast majority of people here illegally who could be
excluded based upon criminal gang membership would be able to appeal
that determination to an immigration judge. Even if they are found to
be a gang member, if they can show they are not a danger to society,
they can gain status. This gives the Secretary--in the event they
appeal to an immigration judge--the ability to make these two
determinations before denying entry or starting deportation. It is a
real solution to dangerous criminal gang members who are either here in
the country now seeking legal status or who are attempting to enter
from abroad.
I urge my colleagues to look at this amendment and hopefully get it
on the list of issues we can discuss and vote on before we have final
passage.
To summarize, the current bill is simply a feel-good measure that has
very limited impact. It will rarely be used because it is written in a
way with many loopholes. And, even if it is, the Secretary can waive
the deportation.
To a greater extent, we ought to be emphasizing how many waivers
there are in this bill, which give too much delegation to the
Secretary. We ought to be legislating more in these areas and making
more determinations here instead of leaving it up to the Secretary. A
vote against my amendment is a vote against commonsense legislation to
address criminal gang members.
I am sure somebody is going to argue this might be too high of a
burden. My amendment simply requires the Secretary make the initial
determination for purposes of admissibility. Under my amendment, the
vast majority of people here illegally who could be excluded based upon
criminal gang membership would be able to appeal that determination to
an immigration judge. So there is review of these decisions to deny
status if the Secretary believes the individual to be a gang member.
Criminal street gangs, as everyone knows, are dangerous. They survive
by robbing their community of safety. They are involved in drug
trafficking, human trafficking, and prostitution. The way the bill
deals with criminal gang members would allow gang members to simply say
they are no longer a gang member, with no further determination, and
they would be able to gain admission.
In reality, it is hard to walk away from a gang, and some will claim
they did gain status. The only way to prevent gang members from gaming
the system is through my amendment. It provides the Secretary and
immigration judges the discretion they need. Even if they are a gang
member, if they can show they are not a danger to society, they can
gain status. This is a reasonable standard that allows the alien to
argue they are not a gang member and/or dangerous.
There is a precedent in the immigration code related to group
membership as a bar: namely, membership or association with a terrorist
organization. Criminal gangs--although not legally terrorist
organizations--can be just as dangerous as terrorists. Why would we not
want to give the Secretary this authority?
This bill provides sweeping waiver authority and discretion to the
Secretary to make all sorts of decisions. I don't know why the sponsors
would oppose discretion to the Secretary to deny gang member admission.
A vote against this amendment--if it is brought up--is a vote to allow
dangerous gang members a path into our country.
Some may argue that it should be tied to some sort of criminal
conviction. Well, criminal gang members are not often convicted of a
crime of gang membership. In fact, the Federal crime of being a gang
member is almost never used. To only limit gang member restrictions to
those convicted would be a huge loophole given the difficulty of
prosecuting someone for simply gang membership. The underlying bill
doesn't even consider State-level convictions for gang membership as my
amendment would.
Simply put, my amendment will help prevent gang members from getting
into this country, and the bill will not. I hope we can get this
amendment on the list to be voted upon.
I yield the floor.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I yield to the distinguished Senator from
Hawaii.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise to speak on my amendment No. 1504,
cosponsored by Senators Murray, Murkowski, Boxer, Gillibrand, Cantwell,
Stabenow, Klobuchar, Warren, Baldwin, Mikulski, Landrieu, Shaheen, and
Leahy. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I object.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, the immigration bill clearly and
inadvertently disadvantages women who are trying to immigrate to the
United States. The bill, S. 744, reduces the opportunities for
immigrants to come under the family-based green cards system.
The new merit-based point system for employment green cards will
significantly disadvantage women who want to come to this country,
particularly unmarried women.
Many women overseas do not have the same educational or career-
advancement opportunities available to men in those countries. This new
merit-based system will prioritize green cards for immigrants with high
levels of education or experience. By favoring these immigrants, the
bill in effect cements into U.S. immigration law unfairness against
women. That is not the way to go.
The bill inadvertently restricts the opportunities available to women
across the globe. Currently, approximately 70 percent of immigrant
women come to this country through the family-based system. Employment-
based visas favor men over women by nearly a 4-to-1 margin as they
place a premium on male-dominated fields such as engineering and
computer science. But across the globe women do not have the same
educational or career opportunities as men.
Immigrant women make many contributions and positive impacts to
communities. Economically, women are increasingly the primary
breadwinners in immigrant families. They often bring additional income,
making it more likely for the family to open small businesses and
purchase homes. In addition, women provide stability and permanent
roots, as they are more likely to follow through on the citizenship
application process for themselves and their families.
Ensuring that women have an equal opportunity to come here is not an
abstract policy cause to me. When I was a young girl, my mother brought
my brothers and me to this country in order to escape an abusive
marriage. My life would be completely different if my mother wasn't
able to take on that courageous journey. I want women like her--women
like my mother--who don't have the opportunities to succeed in their
own countries to be able to build a better life for themselves here.
The Hirono-Murray-Murkowski amendment evens the playing field for
women. This amendment would establish a tier 3 merit-based point system

[[Page S4761]]

that would provide a fair opportunity for women to compete for merit-
based green cards. Complementary to the high-skilled tier 1 and lower
skilled tier 2, the new tier 3 would include professions commonly held
by women so as not to limit women's opportunities for economic-focused
immigration to this country. This system would provide 30,000 tier 3
visas and would not reduce the visas available in the other two merit-
based tiers, while maintaining the overall cap on merit-based visas.
This amendment is supported by We Belong Together: Women for Common-
Sense Immigration Reform; the Asian-American Justice Center; the
National Domestic Workers Association; the Leadership Conference on
Civil and Human Rights; Church World Service; Family Values at Work;
National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum; MomsRising; National
Immigration Law Center; American Immigration Lawyers Association;
National Organization for Women; Center for Community Change; Lutheran
Immigration and Refugee Services; the Episcopal Church; Unitarian
Universalist Association; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops;
Catholic Charities USA; Caring Across Generations; Coalition for Humane
Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles; American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees; Sisters of Mercy; Asian Pacific American Labor
Alliance; AFL-CIO; the International Union, United Automobile,
Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America; the National
Council of La Raza; the United Methodist Church; National Queer Asian
Pacific Islander Alliance; Hispanic Federation; Service Employees
International Union; Immigration Equality Action Fund; Out4Immigration;
Sojourners; and Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO.
I believe our amendment would address the disparities for women in
the new merit-based system, and the dozens of organizations I mentioned
believe likewise.
Let's work together to improve the new merit-based immigration system
and make this bill better for women.
I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
Mr. LEAHY. Would the Senator withhold, please.
Ms. HIRONO. Yes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I wish to speak about the immigration bill
as we approach the end of this week because we are obviously hearing
from many people outside of the building who are concerned about this
issue, and I think it is important to make a few things clear as we
head into next week and what I hope will be final passage of this
measure.
First, let me describe how this program works because immigration is
complicated. It can sometimes even be confusing. We throw around these
terms here, and we assume everybody understands what they mean, so I
want to explain. The way I will explain it is how this bill will work
if we pass the amendment filed by Senators Hoeven and Corker, which I
believe will pass and should pass with significant bipartisan support.
First, let's describe the problem we have today. No. 1, we have a
broken legal immigration system. We have a system of legal immigration.
About 1 million people a year come here legally. But the system is
broken because it is designed, for example, solely based on primarily
family reunification, which, by the way, is how my parents came in
1956. The problem is that the world has changed, and as a result,
because we live in a global economy where we are competing for talent
and not just workforce, we need to have more of a merit-based and
career-based immigration system, and this bill would move us in that
direction.
We have a broken legal immigration system, by the way, because it is
cumbersome and complicated and bureaucratic. One really has to lawyer
up to legally immigrate to the United States, especially in certain
categories.
If we look at the agriculture sector, there is no reliable,
sustainable way for agriculture to get foreign labor. By and large,
while there are Americans who will do labor in the agriculture
industry, there is a significant shortage of Americans who will work in
the agriculture industry. And we don't have a program for agriculture
that works for people to come legally here, but the jobs are there, so
people are coming illegally.
So we have a broken legal immigration system, and that has to be
fixed and modernized, and this bill does that. That is why we haven't
heard a lot of discussion about it.
The second problem we have is that our immigration laws are only as
good as our ability to enforce those laws. If we want to get to the
heart of the problem we are facing in terms of opposition to the bill,
it is because in the past, both Republicans and Democrats have promised
to enforce the immigration laws and then have refused or have been
unable to do it. Part of it has just been an unwillingness, to be
frank.
We have talked about 1986 and 2006 and other efforts. In the past,
people have been told we are going to enforce the immigration laws, and
then we don't do it. As time goes on, the problem gets bigger and
people say: We have been told this before, and we are not going to do
it again. That really is standing in the way of more support for this
measure.
Another problem we have is the systems we use to enforce the law are
broken. For example, on the border there are sectors that have
dramatically improved, and so from that experience we have learned what
works, but there are sectors that have actually gotten worse or have
not improved significantly. So to say the entire southern border has
been secured is not true, and we really shouldn't say that to
Americans, especially those living near that border who understand that
is not true.
We also have a problem with visa overstays. What that means is people
come into the United States legally on a tourist visa, and then when it
expires they don't leave. So they came in legally--they didn't jump a
fence or cross the border--but then they get here and they stay. That
is a visa overstay. That is 40 percent of our problem. We don't have a
system to track that. Even though it is mandated by law, we do not have
a system to track that. We track people when they come in, but we don't
track them when they leave in real-time, so we don't have a running
tally of who has overstayed their visas, leading to 40 percent of our
illegal immigration problem.
The third problem we have is the magnet that brings people here. I am
not saying every single person who comes here illegally is coming
looking for jobs and opportunity, but I am saying the enormous majority
of people who come here are coming because they believe there is a job
in the United States for them so they can feed their families. That is
a magnet. We have jobs and we have people willing to do those jobs, and
those two things are going to meet. They are going to come. The choice
we have is, do they come through a legal process that is organized and
secure or do they come in a chaotic way that contributes to illegal
immigration? And that is how they are coming now.
So that is why in this bill we have an entry-exit tracking system but
also have something called E-Verify, which simply means that
employers--any business, any company, anyone who hires someone, when
they hire them, they have to ask their name. The employee has to
produce their identification. The employer runs that name through the
Internet on a system called E-Verify, and it will confirm whether that
person is legally here. If they are hired after that person says they
are illegally here, we double and sometimes even triple the penalties
for employers who do that.
So those are important measures this bill takes. And that is the
second problem we face.
The third problem we face is even more fundamental. As we speak, as I
stand here before my colleagues today, estimates are there are upwards
of 11 million human beings living in these United States who are here
illegally. They have overstayed visas, they were brought as children,
they crossed the border, they are here. They don't qualify for welfare,
they don't qualify for any Federal benefits, but they are here. They
are here and they are working. They are working for cash. They are
working under someone else's identification, but they are here. The
vast majority of them have been here for longer than a decade. They are
here.

[[Page S4762]]

Let me tell my colleagues, that is not good for them because when a
person doesn't have documents, they are unprotected. When a person is
here illegally, that person can be exploited, and that happens. But it
is also not good for the country. It is not good for this country to
have that many people. We don't know who they are. They are not paying
taxes. They are working, but they are not paying taxes. We have no
idea--the vast majority of them are not criminals, but a handful of
them are, and we don't know where they live, who they are, how long
they have been here. We know very little about them. That is not good
for our country either. We have to deal with that.
That is my point. If we don't do anything--let's say this bill fails
or let's say we pass it and the House doesn't do it or let's say we
decide not to do anything at all on immigration. All of those things I
just described stay in place. If we don't do anything, the border stays
the way it is, we still don't have E-Verify, we still don't have an
entry-exit tracking system, and we don't have any idea who the 11
million people are, and we still don't have an immigration system that
works. That is what happens if we do nothing.
That is why I got involved in this issue. It isn't politics, and I
disagree with my colleagues who have said this is about politics. This
is not about saving the Republican Party or anybody else. This is about
correcting something that is hurting the United States of America.
I can certainly say it is not about my personal politics because this
is an issue that makes a lot of people unhappy, a lot of people who
have supported me and support me now, people whom I agree with on every
other issue. If you pull out a list of issues facing this country, I
agree with them on every other issue, but they disagree with me on this
issue, and I respect and understand why. They are frustrated because
they have been told in the past that this is going to get fixed, and it
hasn't, because they feel and see and know that this is the most
generous country in the world on immigration, and it has been taken
advantage of and they are frustrated by it.
I have seen some describe opponents of immigration reform as haters
and anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration. That is just not true. It is
not true.

These are people who are just frustrated that the laws have not been
followed and they do not want to reward it. I honestly do understand
that. What I would say to them is, look, I get it. I do. I do not like
this either.
I do not like the fact that we have 11 million people here illegally.
I do not like the fact that people have ignored our laws and crossed
our borders or overstayed visas. I do not like it either. But that is
what we are going to get stuck with if we do not do anything about it.
That is what this bill tries to do. Let me explain how it does it.
First we outlined--because when we filed this bill, what was said
was, Department of Homeland Security, here is $6.5 billion. Go out and
design a border fence plan and a border plan. Submit it to Congress.
Issue a letter of commencement. And then you can begin the process of
identifying these people who are here illegally. That was our bill.
Then I went around my State, sometimes the country--and my colleagues
did as well--and people told us: Look, we don't trust the Department of
Homeland Security. These people say the border is already secure, and
you are going to tell them to design a plan?
I thought that was a good point. So now we have an amendment before
us by Senator Hoeven and Senator Corker that actually defines the plan.
Let me describe this new plan because I think it is the most
substantial border security plan we have ever had before any body of
Congress.
No. 1, it does not say you can, it does not say you should, it says
you must have universal E-Verify for every business in America, and you
have to wrap that up within 4 years. It starts with the big businesses,
until it gets to ag and the small businesses. The reason why you need 3
to 4 years is because for a really small business, it is going to take
them time to buy the technology to do this. That is No. 1.
No. 2, it says you have to finish the entry-exit tracking system.
After this bill was amended in committee, it says that eventually the
30 major international airports in this country will have it
biometrically--this entry-exit tracking system.
The third thing it says is that you have to deploy upwards of $3
billion in technology. This is technology that was not around in 1986.
This is technology that was not around in 2006.
Let me describe that technology: radar, sensors on the ground, night
vision goggles, motion detectors, even unarmed drones--things that
allow you to see people, and even if they get past you at the first
stop on the border, you can follow them and then apprehend them a few
miles down the road. This technology did not used to exist.
We go further than that in the amendment. We do not just say you have
to deploy this technology, we tell you where you have to deploy it. We
do not even leave that to DHS. And those ideas did not come from
Senators, they came from members of the Border Patrol on the
frontlines. They have told us: Here is where we need this stuff. So in
a level of detail unprecedented in the history of this body, we
actually say: 50 goggles in this sector, 100 radar in this sector. That
is the third thing this bill requires you to do.
The fourth thing it requires you to do is to double the size of the
Border Patrol, adding 20,000 new border agents. This is a dramatic
increase in the number of people because cameras and sensors are great,
but if you do not have people to actually do the apprehension, it does
not work.
The last thing it says is that you have to complete this fencing.
That includes, where it is practical, where it is possible, getting rid
of these vehicle barriers because one of the things they did with the
fencing is they would put up some barrier on the road and say that is a
fence. The problem is that may keep a vehicle out, but it does not keep
somebody from climbing over it. We actually say that, where it is
possible, where the terrain allows it--there are places where the
terrain does not let you build a fence, but where the terrain allows
it, you have to put a fence there. In some places the fence is doubled,
especially in urban areas. It has been very successful in San Diego.
These are five things we require. We do not say you can, you might--
you must. You must do these five things before anyone who has violated
our immigration laws can even apply for permanent legal residency in
the United States of America--10 years from now, by the way.
One of the criticisms people have said is that this bill is
legalization first. It is not that simple. Real legalization is
permanent legalization; it is what we call a green card. You have to
have a green card before you can apply to become a citizen of the
United States.
Under this bill, illegal immigrants cannot get a green card, cannot
even apply for a green card until 10 years have passed and these five
things I have just described--E-Verify, entry-exist tracking system,
full technology implementation, 20,000 new border agents, finishing the
fence--all five of those things have to happen.
People say: Well, why are you linking the two things?
Here is the answer: Because of the problems we had in the past. The
only way we can make sure that a future President or a future Congress
does not go back on these promises is if we tie it to something we know
people want. That is why they are linked.
So no one who is here illegally--they cannot apply for that permanent
residency until these five things happen, and that is the trigger that
is going to guarantee that this happens.
Their argument is, though, legalization first because you are
allowing the people who are here illegally now to stay in the meantime.
Let me tell you the problem with that issue. The problem with that
issue--first of all, we are talking about 11 million people who are
already here. They are already here. We are not talking about 11
million new people. We are not talking about people who are outside the
country who might come in in the meantime. We are talking about people
who are already here. More than half of them have been here longer than
a decade, so that means the chances are they have children who are U.S.
citizens. They are definitely working because somehow they are eating.
They do not qualify for Federal benefits because--we do not even know
who they are. OK. They are already here. You have to do something about
them in the meantime.

[[Page S4763]]

You cannot build a fence and you cannot hire 20,000 border agents in
6 weeks. It takes a little bit of time. It does not take 10 years, but
it takes some time to do that. So here is what we do. We say: If you
are illegally here and you have been here for--you could not have come
last week or even last year--if you have been here for a while and you
are illegally here, you have to come forward. You are going to have to
pass a national security background check. You are going to have to
pass a criminal background check. You are going to have to pay a fine
because you broke the law. You are going to have to start paying taxes
and working. And the only thing you get--to the extent you get
something, the only thing you get is you get a work permit that allows
you to do three things: work, travel, and pay taxes. When you get this
work permit, you do not qualify for food stamps, you do not qualify for
welfare, you do not qualify for ObamaCare subsidies, you do not qualify
for any of these things.

People may say: Well, we are rewarding them. But I want people to
think about this for a second. They are already here. They are already
working. We are not going to round up and deport 11 million people, so
it is basically de facto amnesty. The only thing that is going to
change in their lives is they are going to start paying taxes, they are
going to have to pay a fine, and we are going to know who they are.
By the way, this work permit is not permanent. It expires every 6
years. So if you come forward and get this work permit, which is
temporary, in 6 years you have to go back and apply for it again. If it
is not renewed because you have broken a condition, you are illegally
here, but now we know who you are, and you will not be able to find a
job because of E-Verify. And when you go back and renew it after 6
years, you are going to have to pass another background check, pay
another fine, pay another application fee, and you are going to have to
prove that in the previous 6 years you have been here working and
paying taxes. You are going to have to prove that, that you are self-
sustaining, that you are not dependent. This whole time, you do not
qualify to apply for permanent status, not to mention citizenship.
After 10 years have gone by in this status--not 10 years after the
passage of the bill, 10 years after you, the applicant, have been in
this status--then--and only if those five things I talked about--E-
Verify, entry-exit tracking system, the technology plan, the border
fence, and the 20,000 new agents--only if those five things have
happened, then you can apply for a green card through the green card
process.
That is another mistake people are making. They think, all right, 10
years is here, you made the five conditions, they are going to hand you
a green card. Not true. You can apply for it. It is not awarded to you.
Now, is this perfect? I do not think this problem has a perfect
solution. But I can tell you, if we do not do anything--let's suppose
immigration reform fails. Suppose we do nothing. We are still going to
have the 11 million people here. We are still not going to know who
they are. They are still not going to be paying taxes. They still will
not have undergone a background check. And you will not have E-Verify.
You will not have border security. You will not have the agents. You
will not have the technology. You will not have the entry-exit tracking
system. You will not have any of that.
Life is about choices. Legislating is about choices. And the choice
cannot be between what you wish things were like and this bill. The
choice is between the way things are and this bill--or some alternative
to it. Again, if we defeat it, then we are stuck with what we have. And
what we have is a disaster. It is a disaster.
I want to make clear another point. People have said: Boy, all this
border security is overkill and so much stuff. Look, the United States
is a special country. That is why people want to come here. A million
people a year come here legally--1 million people a year. There is no
other country in the world that comes close to that. Do you understand
what that means? Other countries do not want people coming or people do
not want to go. When is the last time you heard of a boatload of
American refugees arriving on the shores of another country? People
want to come here. We understand that. In fact, this country is so
special that there are people who are willing to risk their lives to
come here and willing to come illegally to come here. We are
compassionate. Our heart breaks when we hear stories about that.
But I also have to remind people that we are also a sovereign
country. Every country in the world secures their border or tries to.
Many of the countries that people come here from secure their border--
sometimes viciously. We are not advocating that. We have a right as a
sovereign country to secure our border. We have a right to do that.
While we are compassionate, no one has a right to come here illegally.
So I will close by saying that I know this is a tough issue. I do. I
really do. I understand that on the one side there are the human
stories of people you have met. And this issue really changes when you
meet somebody. It is one thing to read about 11 million people who are
here illegally; it is another thing to meet one of them: a father, a
mother, a son, or a daughter, someone whom you know as a human being
and you know about their hopes and dreams and how much they are
struggling. It is one thing to know about that. It changes your
perspective.
But I also understand the frustration people have--that they have
heard all these promises before, that people have violated our laws,
they have ignored them, and that is wrong, and we should not reward
that. I do understand that. But ultimately I ran for the Senate because
I wanted to make a difference. I know I could have just stayed back on
this issue and come to the floor and--I am not making any criticism of
anybody else, but that I could have just come to the floor and offered
up what I would have done instead and be critical of efforts that
others were making. That was an option for me, but I could not stand
it. I could not stand to see how this problem is hurting our country
and leaving it the way it is. How is this good for us?
We have to do something about this. That is what we are trying to do.
With this new amendment, we will do more for border security than
anyone has ever tried to do before. All I would ask my colleagues and
members of the public to do is to think about that. Think about it.
What do you want? Do you want things to stay the way they are or do you
want to try to fix it? I will just say to you, our country desperately
needs to fix it.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Tax Reform

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, just outside this Chamber is a bust of
President Theodore Roosevelt. When I walk past it, I am often reminded
of one of my favorite T.R. quotes, which is, ``Far and away the best
prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth
doing.''
For the past 3 years, I have been working with my colleagues on the
Senate Finance Committee on comprehensive tax reform. It has been hard
work, but it has certainly been work worth doing. We have had more than
30 hearings. We have heard from hundreds of experts about how tax
reform can simplify the system for families, help businesses innovate,
and make the U.S. more competitive.
Our efforts have been ramping up over the past several weeks, and we
are starting to build momentum. Senator Hatch and I have been working
very closely with members of the Finance Committee on a series of 10
discussion papers, examining key aspects of the Tax Code--each of the
discussion papers on a different aspect of the Code. We began back in
March, with a discussion on simplifying the system for families and
businesses.
There have been nine others. We then met as a full committee every
week the Senate has been in session to go through different topics,
presenting a range of options, and sitting around a table asking
questions of staff, what about this and that, and asking questions of
each other. It is a very informative process that is bringing us even
closer together, establishing trust and confidence in what we are doing
and learning a lot more about what the code is and is not.

[[Page S4764]]

We concluded these meetings this morning with a discussion on non-
income tax issues; for example, payroll taxes and excise taxes. That is
not income taxes. The meetings have been very beneficial. We are
building trust and getting everyone's buy-in. I also speak weekly with
the Treasury Secretary about tax reform, getting his ideas and what
seems to make sense for him and for the administration.
I have been working for quite some time with my counterpart in the
House, Chairman David Camp. In fact, we have been meeting weekly,
Chairman Camp and I, face to face for more than a year now discussing
matters that apply to the Finance Committee, as well as Ways and Means,
but especially tax reform. He is working just as hard on his side in
the other body.
Our shared goal is to make the code more simple, to make it more fair
for families to spark a more prosperous economy. I believe very
strongly if we can simplify the code, as well as other measures that
need to be taken, people will feel better about it. They will not think
the other guy has a big loophole that he cannot take advantage of. It
will help people feel better about themselves. It will certainly help
small businesses because the code is so complex for small business. I
think that in and of itself will help create some innovation, some
entrepreneurship and energy for more jobs.
Together, Chairman Camp and I have also recently launched a Web site.
It is called taxreform.gov. The site will enable us to get even more
ideas and to hear directly from the American people, not people in
Washington, DC, but from around the country. People all around can tell
us what they think. We want to know what people think, what they think
the Nation's tax system should look like, how we can make families'
lives easier, and how we can ensure a less burdensome Tax Code.
We have received a lot of hits, if you will, to the Web site. Over
30,000 so far, 10,000 submissions. That is ideas people have from every
State in the Nation. People are overwhelmingly--I must tell you, if you
were to categorize the character of the submissions, overwhelmingly
they are calling for a much more simple code. People want the code a
lot more simple. It is too complex.
For example, a fellow named David from Redmond, WA, wrote:

I'm a retired lawyer and I cannot prepare my own tax
returns--

Why--

because of the technical and incomprehensible language of the
code. I commend you and hope you are successful.

That is just an example. Richard, from my hometown of Helena, MT,
noted that the current Tax Code is outdated and does not work
effectively or efficiently. He said, ``It needs to be simple,
effective, and fair.''
Again, another representative submission. I think Richard and David
hit the nail on the head. Over and over, that is what we are hearing:
simple, effective, and fair.
Chairman Camp and I are going to be making a big push in the coming
weeks to further engage our colleagues in Washington, as well as people
all across America. How are we going to do that? Well, we are going to
travel. We are going to travel to other cities, Chairman Camp and I
together. We are going to travel outside of Washington, DC, where the
real Americans reside. We are going to talk to individuals, we are
going to talk to families, business owners, big and small, to hear
directly what the people have in mind.
Again, we are doing this because we want to hear directly from the
American people, not just people in Washington, DC. We will be
announcing our first visit outside of Washington, DC, next week. We
want to hear what people think.
Momentum is building. Now is the time to do reform. I might say, in
my view, if we cannot get tax reform passed in the Congress, I do not
think we will ever be able to address the issue for maybe 3 years. I
doubt we will do it next Congress because that will be a Presidential
election year. We will have to wait for the new President. It is going
to take a long time. That is critically dangerous because the last time
the code was significantly reformed was 1986.
The world has changed dramatically since 1986. The code is too dated.
I might say this: Since 1986, the last time the Tax Code was reformed,
there have been 15,000 changes to the code--15,000. No wonder it is
complex. No wonder people want it more simple and more fair. I think
working together we in Congress can improve the code and update it to
the 21st century.
This comes down to working together. It comes down to building trust
on both sides of the aisle, both bodies. It is going to help the
American people when we do reform the code in this Congress. I do not
know how many months it is going to take, but we are going to do all we
can. As Teddy Roosevelt said: Hard work is worth doing if it is for a
good cause. This is clearly hard work, I can tell you that, but it is
also for a good cause.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know things seem like they are speeding
by us at the speed of light on this bill. We received an announcement
of a breakthrough on the part of some of our colleagues that is going
to give this bill the momentum to pass and come out of here with a
bunch of votes. But I think there are some questions we need to ask.
First of all, I see the distinguished chairman of the Finance
Committee. I know he has probably looked at this. The underlying bill
provides that $8.3 billion is immediately appropriated as emergency
spending to fund the trust fund that will fund at least some of the
operations in this immigration reform bill. But when I started to look
at it a little more closely and consider the fact that even though the
underlying bill had zero funds for new Border Patrol personnel, this
new bill--this new proposal, I should say, that we have yet to see--
supposedly it is going to come around 6 o'clock--has an additional
20,000 Border Patrol. That is doubling the size of the Border Patrol.
Senator Hoeven, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota, said
earlier in response to a question I asked him, that would cost an
additional $30 billion. So we have $8.3 billion, if my arithmetic is
correct, and $30 billion. That is $38 billion.
I noticed on page 48 of the Congressional Budget Office cost
estimate, the CBO estimates that implementing this bill, the underlying
bill, would result in net discretionary costs of about $22 billion
more. That is starting to be real money, it seems to me, $60 billion. I
know we have been having some spirited debates about whether the 85 or
so billion dollars that was sequestered under the Budget Control Act
was something we could live without or not, or whether it had to be
made up through additional revenue. But this strikes me as very
significant that we are talking about $60 billion of additional deficit
spending--or additional spending, adding to the deficit, which has not
been paid for, if my numbers are correct.
I would welcome anyone else to come help me figure that out.
Now, one of the rationale, as I was talking to our colleagues--they
looked at the original score and said this actually generates
additional revenue because people who come out of the shadows and are
working will begin to pay Social Security taxes. But the $211 billion
in the score is Social Security trust fund money, which, of course,
must someday be paid in terms of benefits to these very same people.
So it appears that there is double counting going on here. Our
colleagues are saying: Hey, we have additional revenue because of the
negative score. But that is money that is going to require an IOU to
the Social Security trust fund and will have to be paid back at some
point in the future.
So, as Senator Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Budget
Committee pointed out, the on-budget deficit will increase by $14.2
billion. That is before you add the additional $30 billion for 20,000
Border Patrol and $22 billion in additional spending to fund this
underlying bill.
So my only point is I think we need to take a deep breath. First, we
need to read the proposal that is coming out supposedly at 6 o'clock.
But already

[[Page S4765]]

there is talk about what the end game in the Senate is. Potentially,
the majority leader will file cloture on this Corker-Hoeven amendment.
Then we will have a vote on Monday or maybe Tuesday. I think it is
extraordinarily important when you are talking about numbers like this,
and a bill this big, that we take our time and are careful and we know
exactly what the impact of this bill is because if, in fact, what is
happening is double counting, which is my suspicion based on my review
of this CBO documentation, that is a serious matter, indeed, because
that money is going to need to be paid back.
On another but related note, I would say we have been told this surge
that is going to be funded under the Corker-Hoeven amendment, and the
additional 20,000 Border Patrol agents and a whole bunch of new
technology and other assets, that this will be sufficient to secure our
borders and make illegal immigration a thing of the past. We have been
told that supporters of the bill welcome a robust and extensive debate
over its provisions. Yet when we look at the way this is happening,
where people are announcing breakthroughs, people are saying, well, I
am going to cosponsor that, only to find out the bill itself has not
even been written or released, it seems to me we have the cart ahead of
the horse. We better be careful about what we are doing.
We have Members of the Chamber calling for a vote this weekend on an
as yet unreleased amendment. I know, I, for one, and others, I suspect,
would like to read it and know what is in it.
I commend our colleagues--I mean this in all sincerity--for trying to
do their best to improve this bill. But I worry their solution amounts
to throwing more money at the problem without any real system of
accountability. We have talked about how important it is to have inputs
into the bill. But really what we all want are results or outputs. And
what we have under this amendment, as I understand it and as I asked
the distinguished Senators from Tennessee and North Dakota, they
conceded that because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle
object to any sort of contingency between the probationary status and
legal permanent residency based on accomplishing the situational
awareness requirements in the underlying bill or operational control,
because they object to that, then all we have are more promises about
future performance.
I must say our record of keeping our promises when it comes to
immigration reform are beyond pathetic, starting back in 1986 with the
amnesty and promise of enforcement, then in 1996 where, as I mentioned
earlier, President Clinton signed a requirement of a biometric entry-
exit system which has still not been deployed at the exits, at airports
and seaports even though the 9/11 Commission noted that some of the
terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, included
people who came into the country legally but simply overstayed their
visas, and we lost track of them because we had no effective entry-exit
system. The 9/11 Commission said this is something we need to fix. That
was 2001. Still it has not been done.
Until today, our colleagues on the so-called Gang of 8 argued that it
was too expensive and too impractical to add even 5,000 Border Patrol
agents, to say nothing of 20,000 agents. As I pointed out earlier in
asking some questions of our distinguished colleagues, Senator McCain
from Arizona, and Senator Schumer, the senior Senator from New York, it
is amazing how quickly their tune changed.
Their underlying bill had zero Border Patrol agents. When my
amendment had 5,000 Border Patrol agents, they said that was a budget
buster. Imagine my surprise when their amendment comes out with 20,000
Border Patrol agents, doubling the Border Patrol, $30 billion.
I wish to know whether the proposals that have been made here are
being sufficiently vetted. I don't know exactly what all the new border
patrol is going to be doing. While I think it is important we get the
advice of the experts in terms of what sorts of new technology can be
deployed here, I worry that by being overly prescriptive about both the
number of the boots on the ground and the technology they are going to
use that we are going to freeze in place legislatively a solution that
will quickly become antiquated and become inefficient.
That is why I prefer, and why I think it is much better, an output
for a result metric we could look at. Let the experts--let the Border
Patrol, let the Department of Homeland Security, let the technology
experts who developed great technology we have already paid for and
deployed in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan through the Department
of Defense--advise us and the Border Patrol what they need in order to
accomplish the goals in order to meet the mark. Let's not let a bunch
of generalists such as ourselves, who are not expert in this field,
prescribe this solution for a 10-year period of time when it will
become quickly outdated.
From everything I have heard and everything I have read--and I think
it was confirmed by the Senators this afternoon--the Hoeven-Corker
amendment creates a border security trigger based on inputs rather than
outputs. It is, I think it is accurate to say, aspirational. In other
words, they promise to try to meet those goals.
Ten years from now, I daresay half the Members of this Chamber will
not even be here. Since 2007 we have had 43 new Senators. The promises
we make today in exchange for the extraordinary generosity toward the
11 million people--to provide them an opportunity to gain probationary
status and then potentially earn legal permanent residency and
citizenship--that extraordinary offer made in the underlying bill--we
have no idea whether the border security, whether the entry-exit system
or the E-Verify will actually work and accomplish the goals we all hope
they will accomplish.
Once again, Washington is saying trust me, trust us. We mean well. We
are going to try.
Do you know what. We have no means to compel the bureaucracy and the
executive branch to actually do what we say they should do here. This
is why we need a trigger, a hard trigger, to realign the incentives so
that all of us, from the left to the right, Republicans and Democrats,
join together in putting the focus on the problem like a laser and
making the bureaucracy hit those objectives.
We have promised a lot of things. We have had 27 years of inputs into
our immigration system since the 1986 amnesty, and we still don't have
secure borders. There were 350,000-plus people detained at the
southwestern border last year.
GAO says we have about 45-percent operational control of the border.
Who knows how many people actually made their way across--although we
do know that among those who made it across who were detained, they
came from 100 different countries, including state sponsors of
international terrorism.
I am not suggesting there are massive incursions of terrorists coming
from other countries, although I am saying the same porous borders that
will allow people to come into this country from other countries around
the world can be exploited by our enemies. It is a national security
issue.
When I go home to Texas, people tell me they simply don't trust the
Federal Government when it comes to securing our borders. Why would
they? Based on the historical experience, there is no reason for them
to do so. Three decades of broken promises have destroyed Washington's
credibility. The only way to regain that credibility is to demand real
results on border security and create a mechanism that incentivizes all
of us to make sure it happens.
I am afraid this amendment, the Corker-Hoeven amendment, no matter
how well-intentioned--and I do believe it is well-intentioned; everyone
is eager to find a solution to the broken immigration system, including
me. The status quo is unacceptable, and it benefits no one.
In the rush to try to come up with something that seems good at the
moment, in failing to take the care to look at the detail, whether it
is financial or whether it will actually produce results, and based on
text we haven't even seen yet, I think we are rushing to judgment here.
I think it is something we ought to reconsider.
Looking beyond border security, I am eager to know whether the
proposed amendment includes other issues that were contained in my
amendment that was tabled earlier today.
I know, speaking to Senator Hoeven and Senator Corker, they did
include a border security component. As I understand it, there are
other Senators who

[[Page S4766]]

are coming to them and saying we want to be included in your amendment,
so we don't know what subjects are also included in that amendment.
I wish to know whether it includes things such as does it prohibit
illegal immigrants with multiple drunk driving convictions from
receiving legal status? What about people who have been guilty of
multiple instances of domestic violence? What about immigrants who fall
into one of those categories and have already been deported?
Believe it or not, under the underlying bill, people could have
actually been deported for committing a misdemeanor and be eligible to
reenter the country and register for RPI status. I think that would be
shocking to most people if they think about it, if they knew about it.
Under the Gang of 8 bill, all of the people I have just described are
available for immediate registered provisional immigrant status.
Earlier this year, I mentioned a remarkable statistic, at least it is
to me. In fiscal year 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE,
deported nearly 6,000 people with DUI convictions, driving under the
influence. I challenge any Member of this Chamber to come down to the
floor and explain why drunk drivers and people who committed domestic
violence should be eligible for immediate probationary status. I doubt
anyone will take me up on that challenge, because who would want to
defend the indefensible?
As I have said before--and I will conclude my comments with this
because I see other Senators on the floor who want to speak. As I said
before, the American people are generous, they are compassionate, but
they don't want to--it is the old adage: Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me. They don't want to be fooled again when it
comes to unkept promises in fixing our broken immigration system.
I know we are committed to finding a reasonable, responsible, and
humane way to solve the problem of illegal immigration, but we should
never ever grant legal status to people with multiple drunk driving or
domestic violence convictions. I don't know, but I will certainly be
careful to read and learn whether the proposed alternative to the
amendment that was tabled earlier today contains some of these
provisions that were in the tabled amendment. If they don't, we will be
filing--we have filed separate amendments, on which we will urge an up-
or-down vote.
I yield the floor.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. CORNYN. I yield to the Senator.
Mr. SESSIONS. I think the Senator was very wise in raising the
question of the budget score. Our colleagues have been blithely
asserting that this bill is going to pay for itself. The CBO produced a
report. They have cited that report that says it will pay for itself.
That is not exactly what the report says, it seems to me. This is the
line in the report the CBO prepared: Net increases or decreases in the
deficit resulting from changes in direct spending and revenue from the
bill. How will it impact increasing the deficit or not? The on-budget
deficit, even before the 20,000 new agents, adds billions of dollars in
costs. Netted out, it would add $14 billion to the on-budget debt. That
is negative. It makes more debt.
Then there is the other one, the off-budget. What is the off-budget?
The off-budget is Social Security and Medicare. This is the trust fund
money that comes out of your payroll taxes. People pay payroll taxes.
The average age of the legalized group is about 35, so most of them
aren't going to be drawing Social Security right away. They pay into
this and the government gets some extra money. They are counting that
money as the money to show the bill is paid for.
Let me ask the Senator one simple thing. If the individuals who are
now given legal status are immediately given a Social Security number,
immediately eligible to compete for any job in America, isn't the money
they will be paying for Social Security and Medicare going to be used
by them when they start drawing it? Aren't they going to be eligible
now for Social Security and Medicare? Won't this money be available for
them? Isn't it double counting to say it is going to be available for
their Social Security and then available to pay for all the spending in
their bill?
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Alabama
that he reads it the same way I read it. You can't do both. You can't
raise the money to pay for the bill and say you don't have to pay
Social Security benefits. These very same people are going to expect
some day that they will get those benefits. What happens, as I
understand it--and the distinguished ranking member of the Budget
Committee can correct me if I am wrong--when we borrow money, in
essence, from the Social Security trust fund, there is an IOU there
that is going to have to be paid back.
It does appear to me there is double counting here. I would say the
$14.2 billion on-budget deficit, that is before you add in the $30
billion of additional cost for 20,000 Border Patrol agents.
As I read page 48 of the CBO, they estimate that implementing the
underlying bill would result in net discretionary costs of about $22
billion over the 2014-to-2023 period. It sounds to me as if the costs
keep mounting and there is double counting going on. I think we have to
get to the bottom of it. Given our rush, we need to slow down,
understand the numbers, and understand the financial impact, because
that is not going to go away if we get it wrong.
Mr. SESSIONS. I couldn't agree more. The truth is, that is how this
country is going broke. There are two ways the counting is done in our
budget. One is a unified accounting process, and the other one shows
these numbers in the fashion you and I put forward. They assume the
money that comes in for the newly legalized people, Medicare and Social
Security, is going to be available for their Social Security and
Medicare. They can't then assume it is available to spend on something
else. The weakness in our system has been manipulated before. We need
to stop it.
I thank the Senator for raising that.
Of course, I remember well how many good years you spent on the
Budget Committee, and the Senator understands it very well.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). The Senator from
Maine.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the United States has always been a
country of refuge for the persecuted, a protector of life and
individual freedoms. This is evident in the entire purpose of our
Nation's asylum program under which foreign nationals who can show a
credible fear of persecution in their home country may apply for and
receive shelter here. But flaws in the asylum program leave it
vulnerable and open to exploitation by those who mean us harm. I have,
therefore, proposed two amendments to the immigration reform bill,
amendments No. 1391 and 1393, that are designed to lessen those flaws
by giving asylum officers the tools they need to dismiss frivolous
claims and, more important, to ensure that derogatory information about
applicants who may wish to harm us is reviewed during the application
process.

Before I outline those amendments in detail, I would like to discuss
the circumstances under which the suspects in the Boston Marathon
terrorist attack came to be in the United States and how that terrible
attack underscores the need for reform of our asylum process.
According to media reports, the younger of the two Tsarnaev brothers
came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2002 and was granted
asylum on his father's petition shortly thereafter.
As I mentioned before, asylum is supposed to be only available to
those who can show a credible fear of persecution in their home
country.
Curiously, and notwithstanding his supposed fear of persecution back
home, the father came to the United States with only one of his four
children, leaving his wife and three other children behind in the land
he claimed to fear.
I can't help but wonder whether the asylum officer who reviewed Mr.
Tsarnaev's application was aware of that fact and to what extent this
was considered in determining whether he met the burden of proving a
credible fear of persecution by his country, since, after all, he had
left his wife and three of his four children behind.
Whatever the circumstances that caused Mr. Tsarnaev to seek asylum in
2002, after the Boston Marathon bombing, the international media caught
up

[[Page S4767]]

with him back in the land where he came from and now lives.
Even more curious are the questions surrounding the grant of asylum
to another Chechen immigrant, the individual who was shot dead while
being questioned by the FBI agents and local law enforcement regarding
his association with the Tsarnaevs and a 2011 triple homicide. After
his death, reports indicated this individual came to the United States
in 2008 on a J-1 visa, the type of visa intended to promote cultural
understanding that allows foreign students to work and study in our
country, and that individual was granted asylum sometime later that
year in 2008.
The way in this particular case the visa operated is he was supposed
to work for 4 months and then travel for 1 month in our country, but
that is not what happened. Last month, I was contacted by the Council
on International Educational Exchange, or CIEE, a J-1 visa sponsor
organization located in my home State of Maine. CIEE told me they had
learned this individual had come to the United States through their
program, arriving in June of 2008. From the start, it appears he had no
intention of complying with CIEE's J-1 visa rules and, thus, on July 29
of 2008, CIEE withdrew its sponsorship of him because he failed to
provide the required documentation with respect to his employment.
That very day, CIEE, which is a very responsible organization,
instructed him to make immediate plans to leave the country because
they could not verify his employment, a key condition of the J-1 visa
rules. CIEE then recorded this information in the Student and Exchange
Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, the database used by the
Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to keep
track of foreign visitors who travel to the United States on exchange
visas.
As I understand the facts, CIEE did everything right. It followed the
rules. When this individual was clearly out of compliance with the
conditions of his visa, it alerted DHS and the State Department he was
out of compliance. I have spoken to the President of CIEE, who told me
his organization was shocked to learn this individual had been granted
asylum and later given a green card.
I find this very curious. How is it that a young man from Chechnya
comes to the United States to participate in a cultural exchange
program, immediately violates the conditions of that program, is told
to leave our country but then is able to be granted asylum? The fact
that he was out of compliance with his visa was correctly recorded in
the SEVIS database. Did the asylum officer who approved his application
review that information? Did he check the database for derogatory
information? Were any other databases, such as that maintained by the
National Counterterrorism Center, consulted during the review of this
asylum applicant? When and where was his asylum application reviewed
and approved and by whom?

More than 2 weeks ago, I asked these fundamental questions of the
Department of Homeland Security through staff and by letters I
personally sent to the Office of Legislative Affairs and to Secretary
Janet Napolitano. Despite repeated phone calls and e-mails from my
staff, the Department has still not provided me with the answers.
Instead, what I have received are excuses, despite the fact the subject
of my inquiry is dead and my questions are directly relevant to the
asylum provisions in the immigration bill before us.
Think about the failure of the DHS to provide the basic information I
have requested. I have not asked about the individual's relationship to
the terrorist attack in Boston, nor have I asked about his alleged
connection to the triple homicide. The questions I have asked relate
only to when he applied for and received asylum, whether the
information related to his violation of his visa requirements was
available and reviewed by the officer who granted him asylum, and I
have asked who made the decision to grant him asylum.
We know from media reports his asylum application was acted on in
2008, 5 years ago. Is the Department saying, through its silence, that
information related to this individual's asylum application did, in
fact, foreshadow the terrorist attack in Boston in April and his
ultimate death last month? Why was his application approved? Why didn't
the Department deport him from our country when it was clear he was no
longer in compliance with his J-1 visa?
The basic question is: Why wasn't this individual deported from our
country when it was clear he was no longer in compliance with the
requirements of his J-1 visa? Instead, what happens? He is granted
asylum and then later given a green card.
I can only take the Department's refusal to provide answers as a
tacit admission that a flawed asylum process allowed a dangerous man to
get into our country on false pretenses and to stay. That possibility,
that likelihood, underscores the importance of the two amendments I am
offering.
The first of my amendments, No. 1391, would require that before an
individual can be granted asylum, biographic and biometric information
about that individual must be checked against the appropriate records
and databases of the Federal Government, including those maintained by
the National Counterterrorism Center. In addition, this amendment
requires the asylum officer find that the information in those records
and databases supports the applicant's claim of asylum or, if
derogatory information is uncovered, that the applicant is still able
to meet the burden of proof required by law.
The second of my two amendments, No. 1393, would provide asylum
officers with the authority to dismiss what are clearly frivolous
claims, without prejudice to the applicant, and requires asylum
officers and immigration judges to obtain more detailed information
from the State Department on the conditions in the country from which
asylum is sought.
In other words, what we have discovered is this is another example of
one department not talking to another department. It is very difficult
for an asylum officer to make a correct decision if he or she lacks
information about conditions in the originating country.
This amendment also calls for increased staffing for the Fraud
Detection and National Security Directorate at asylum offices funded
through fees in this bill.
We can never know for sure whether the reforms I am calling for in
these two amendments would have kept these dangerous individuals out of
this country and perhaps even prevented the terrorist attack in Boston
and the triple murder in another town in Massachusetts.
But the way in which they use the asylum process clearly demonstrates
that it can be and will be abused. My amendments will give asylum
officers the tools they need to help prevent that kind of fraudulent
use of a very important and worthwhile system, and it will help to
protect the American public from those who would do us harm.
With these modest reforms, America's asylum process will continue to
shelter those who legitimately fear persecution in their home
countries, but it will be less easily taken advantage of by those who
seek to harm us.
I urge my colleagues to support these commonsense amendments.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for
debate only be extended for 1 hour, until 7:30, with the time equally
divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I am happy to report that there has been
a lot of progress made in the last few hours on the package of
amendments that are completely uncontested and there is no objection on
any side.
I wish to thank the Members who have been attentive and supportive of
trying to get back to a more normal way of operating, which is, simply,
we can argue about the big controversial issues. There are always going
to be those on every bill we debate. But there will be some amendments
that absolutely have no opposition because they are very well-thought-
out ideas that do not generate any heartburn on either side, that
people can reason and say it helps the bill; it does something that
improves the bill.

[[Page S4768]]

We used to do that all the time around here. We have gotten away from
it, and it is hurtful. It is not just hurtful to the individual
Members, it is hurtful to our constituents who would like their ideas
brought up for consideration.
As I said earlier in the day--and before the Senator from Maine
leaves the floor, I wish to make this perfectly clear. I am not holding
up the debate on any controversial amendments. I am not objecting to
any controversial amendments. Anybody who wants to debate an amendment,
whether it is 60 votes or 50 votes, that is the leadership's job, and
they are managing this bill very well. I have no complaints or
criticism about it at all.
But as they are managing these very controversial amendments that are
part of any debate, what I am simply saying is that of the hundreds of
amendments that have been filed--and we have been spending a lot of
time on this with Republican and Democratic staff--there are
potentially about 25 to 30 amendments that have absolutely no
objection.
The list has changed a little bit, and I am not going to go over all
the details. I have put it in the Record. There could potentially be 7
Democratic amendments, 5 Republican amendments, and 10 bipartisan
amendments that have no known opposition. All I am asking is sometime
between now and when the leadership managing this bill calls cloture,
we have these votes en bloc, by voice. There would be no reason to have
any more debate on them. No one is objecting to them. So we could take
them en bloc, by voice. It will improve the bill. Then people can vote
on the bill.
Many people already know they are going to vote against the bill.
Some people are going to vote for the bill. That is the process. I
think it would be very healthy for the Senate to get back to this kind
of negotiation. But for these amendments that are noncontroversial,
that simply have been worked on across the aisle in good faith, to be
held hostage until somebody can get a vote on an amendment that causes
one side or the other lots of political difficulties is not right.
There are 350 amendments filed on this bill. I am only talking about
35 or less. All the other amendments have pros and cons; people are for
them, people are against them. I don't know how the leadership is going
to decide on how we vote or dispense of those, but I am not managing
the bill. Senator Leahy is doing a very good job of that with Senator
Grassley, Leader McConnell, and Leader Reid. But there are
approximately 35 amendments, maybe a little more, that have bipartisan
support that people have really worked on--people such as myself--who
are not on the Judiciary Committee. The Senator had his hands full with
the 17 Members he has on the committee. There were 228 amendments filed
on the Judiciary Committee. Senator Grassley himself filed 34, and he
had 13 that passed and 21 that failed. That is a lot of amendments.
Some of us who are not on the Judiciary Committee have been very
fortunate. At least I have had one of my eight, which the Senator from
Vermont helped with adopting.
Mr. LEAHY. Would the Senator yield?
Ms. LANDRIEU. I would love to.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Senator has several excellent
amendments which I support and agreed to.
We have given the other side over and over again a list of amendments
that under normal circumstances would be agreed to in about 5 minutes
by voice vote, including a number of the amendments of the
distinguished Senator from Louisiana. I keep hoping we might do that.
We had more than 200 amendments in the Judiciary Committee that were
voted on. Of those that were adopted, all but three passed with
bipartisan votes. We demonstrated we were willing to do this on a
bipartisan basis.
To assure the Senator from Louisiana--who is a wonderful Senator and
dear friend--that I support these, I keep trying to get them accepted.
I hope, after 2 weeks on this bill--and realizing we did the very
extensive and open markup in the Judiciary Committee--that we can get
to the point where we could start accepting a number of amendments--
both Democratic and Republican--that we all agree on, including those
from the Senator from Louisiana.
I am sorry to interrupt her. But she has worked so hard on this. She
has gotten bipartisan support. She has talked to all of us. At some
point, she should be allowed to have her amendments.
I yield the floor.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Senator from Vermont, and I appreciate his
support.
But actually, having started out wanting to get a vote on my
amendments--and I still do--I am now more focused on this principle of
getting uncontested amendments adopted because I am not the only one in
this vote. I have friends such as Senator Begich, Senator Carper,
Senator Hagan, Senator Heinrich, Senator Coons, Senator Kirk, Senator
Coats--from both sides of the aisle--Senator Hatch, Senator Shaheen--I
could go on and on--who are in the same boat I am.
We fashioned amendments with bipartisan support. We have done our due
diligence with the leaders of the committee of jurisdiction, which is
what you are supposed to do, which is normal. We have gotten their
blessing, if you will. We have published the details of our amendments.
We have circulated the amendments. There is no opposition.
So to the Senator from Vermont, I wish to be very clear. I have four
amendments on this list. I am not here just arguing for the four
Landrieu amendments. I am here arguing for all amendments by anybody,
Republican or Democrat, that are noncontroversial, uncontested, germane
to this bill. They should go on the bill.
We need to get back to legislating in the Senate. This is not a
theater. It is a legislative body, and I came to legislate. It will be
18 years that I have been here at the end of this term, a long time.
There are Members who have been here longer than I have. But it has
been a while now, 2 or 3 years, that we just sort of stopped
legislating. We give speeches. We do headlines. We posture. We
position. That has always been a part of the Senate. I have no problem
with it. What I do have a problem with is doing that and nothing else.
That is where I have a serious problem. Those of us who did not come
here to be on the stage have had to sit on the sidelines and watch this
theater for a long time. The people I represent are tired of it.
We should know that, since the rating for Congress is now at 10
percent, I think the lowest level ever or at least in the last 50
years, ten percent--this could have something to do with it.
Contrary to popular opinion on the floor, many people in America are
very interested in this bill and are actually sending suggestions in
through e-mail, through telephone, through all sorts of communications
saying, look, I read the bill. You all should think about this. This
could be improved. Some of us actually take those suggestions, work
with Members on the other side of the aisle, and fashion them into
amendments. The people we represent deserve respect.
If anyone thinks my amendments are controversial and you cannot vote
for them because they upset the balance of power in the world or upset
Western civilization, then come tell me. I will work with you on it. I
will take the amendments off the list. I will put my amendments on a
list to be debated.
But the days of us coming to the floor and absolutely not accepting
bipartisan amendments so we can spend all of our time talking about
partisan amendments that have no chance of passing are over with
because I have enough power--just as Senators on the other side have
enough power to push us the other way, I have enough power to push back
and I plan to use it. Those days are over.
When we come to the floor, you can have all of your controversial
amendments. We can set aside as many hours of the day to vote on
controversial amendments, an equal number on both sides or none. But
the uncontroversial amendments, the ones Members actually do the work
of the Senate--research, writing, talking, debating privately, and
coming up with good ideas--no longer are those going to be swept under
the rug. It is not respectful to our constituents, it dishonors the
Senate, and it causes the public to

[[Page S4769]]

have serious doubts as to whether anybody around here is actually
working in a bipartisan way to improve the bill.
These are minor amendments. None of these amendments undermine the
bargains, the tough negotiations by Republicans and Democrats, on this
bill. I wish to give a lot of respect to the Gang of 8. They have taken
on the tough big issues, very controversial. Those are not these. These
are amendments that would help parents who are trying to adopt
children. Now I have to wait for a bill to come to the floor to help
these parents. They may be waiting 10 years. They are American
citizens. They have a right for Senators to represent their interests
and I intend to do it. There are amendments here that would make sure
children with mental illness or who are mentally disabled--this is not
my amendment but it is a good one--make sure they have a lawyer. Why
can't we do that? Because we are so angry with each other that we will
not help a child? That is cruel and it is not correct.

I am going to end here. There are other Members who want to speak. I
have no idea when the cloture vote will be. I am not sure. But if these
noncontroversial amendments are not adopted by voice vote or by
rollcall vote, en bloc or separately, before cloture, all of them will
fall away, which means we will not be able to consider any of them.
That is because after cloture they are no longer germane because we
cannot get them pending. OK?
So this is the problem. I thank my colleagues for being
understanding. I actually think it might help us move forward.
I yield the floor and I will be back when the cloture motion is
propounded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to make a few points in response
to the Senator from Louisiana who has been pushing to get a number of
so-called noncontroversial amendments adopted. There have been a number
of misrepresentations. A major incorrect point made is that our side
responded with only a list of controversial amendments. The fact is we
sent over, for consideration by the other side, a number of amendments
on our list but we did not hear that we could just get a vote. But in
addition to sending back a list of noncontroversial amendments we did
ask if we could have a vote on a number of our amendments. So talk
about breakdowns, we cannot even get a vote on our amendments.
In regard to some of the amendments the Senator from Louisiana has
suggested, they are not as easy as appears. Some are badly drafted, so
we tried to fix them and send them back. We have not heard yet. The
list we sent over does not say we will not agree to more amendments
later, but we have to work through these and fix those that are messed
up, frankly.
The latest problem is that the Democrats want to pick which
Republican amendments we can vote on. I have, for instance, an anti-
gang amendment the Democrats do not want to vote on. Their bill allows
gang members to become citizens. We should get votes on our amendments
in addition to this whole process of approving a list of
noncontroversial amendments that can be adopted en bloc.
I yield the floor.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, may I respond?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, as I said many times, I have the deepest
respect for the Senator from Iowa. He and I hardly ever disagree so
this is quite unusual. We cosponsor so many amendments together for
foster care, adoption--his work is legendary. But I do want to say
this. I have tried to be extremely constructive here. Again, this is
not about our list or their list. I am not even in charge of our list
or their list. I literally am not a floor manager of this bill. I am
not even a member of the committee. I do not even have access to our
list or their list. I don't want it. I do not want to review the 200
amendments that are pro-gay, anti-gay, pro-fence, anti-fence. I am not
interested--I am interested, but it is not in my lane. I have issues
that I have to focus on as chair of Homeland Security. I am not a Gang
of 8 Member, I am not on the Judiciary Committee, but I am a Senator
and I came here to legislate.
There are amendments. I am not sure this list is perfect but I
promise you, out of 350 amendments filed, just by the nature of
averages, at least 10 percent of them have to be noncontroversial. Not
every amendment that is filed is going to arouse suspicion or concern
or violate any principles we hold. Just by nature you are going to have
10 percent or 15 or 20 percent of all amendments that actually, with a
little bit of work, should be adopted.
What Senator Leahy said is absolutely correct. We used to do that
when we trusted each other, when we respected our constituents.
I intend to push this body back to that place. I may be unsuccessful
because I am only one Senator, but Senators have a lot of power, if you
haven't noticed. We have been held up for weeks over one Senator
because they did not get everything they wanted every day.
Again, I want to say to my colleagues, I am not fighting for Landrieu
amendments. I am fighting for a principle and a process that is vital
to the functioning of this body. I am going to continue to fight and
hope we get a breakthrough.
Please, the other side, do not send me your list or the Democratic
list. I am not interested. I am interested in a list of amendments that
I believe, based on conversations with Senators, are not controversial
and would improve the bill. We were sent here to do that. I intend to
do it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I take the floor today to speak in support
of the Hoeven-Corker amendment that will soon be filed. Let me say the
goal of the so-called Gang of 8 has always been to bring forward from
Congress a solution to our broken immigration system. We introduced our
bill knowing full well it was to be a starting point for this
legislative process.
We had, under Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley's purview, a great
markup in the Judiciary Committee. It went on for days. There were more
than 300 amendments filed, more than 100 adopted. We had a full-
throated debate in this Chamber already on this bill.
Out of this vetting and this debate we have had, we have had several
consistent messages on things that need to be improved in the
legislation. What we are doing right now is going a long way to deal
with these concerns.
We have heard that we have allowed too much discretion to write the
strategy for the border security plan. We have given too much to the
Department of Homeland Security, that they will simply spend the
billions of dollars that will be appropriated eventually. This
amendment includes a detailed list of technologies that will have to be
put in place by the Department. We will set a minimum floor of what
they have to do. Then they can go beyond that.
In the underlying legislation, we require that a strategy is deployed
in the underlying legislation, that an entry-exit system for all
airports and seaports be in place, and that E-Verify be up and running
for all businesses in the United States before anyone is granted legal
permanent residency.
There are persistent concerns that that still will not be sufficient
to ensure a secure border, that we need more incentive there. This
amendment filed by Senators Hoeven and Corker will require 700 miles of
fence be completed and that we have double the number of border agents
that we currently have. These things have to be done before anybody in
provisional status adjusts to get a green card.
This is important. This amendment dramatically increases the trigger
that will have to be met in order for anyone, as I said, who is in
provisional status to adjust to get a green card.
This is a product of the ongoing scrutiny this bill has received,
scrutiny it deserves. We said from the very beginning this bill
deserves debate, due process through committee and on the floor in this
Chamber, and it is receiving that today and it is a better bill for it.
It is going to be considerably improved, particularly after the Hoeven-
Corker amendment is introduced and hopefully adopted.
I hope in the coming days we will also have as much scrutiny on the
positive aspects of this bill. State and local

[[Page S4770]]

governments currently deal with a sizable undocumented population; all
of them, particularly in Arizona. Businesses are looking for a legal
workforce they simply do not have access to right now. Right now the
best and the brightest come here, we educate them in our universities,
and then we send them home to compete against us because we will not
allow them to stay on a visa.
The U.S. economy overall could use the boost that will come if we can
pass meaningful immigration reform.
Again, I support this amendment. I commend my colleagues from
Tennessee and North Dakota and all those who are working in the Gang of
8 and elsewhere. There are some who say many people are trying to kill
this bill and bring poison pill amendments. For the most part what I
have seen is people who want to improve this legislation, to make it
better, to deal with this problem in a way that will solve it for good
so we do not have to return to this a couple of years from now.
Again, I appreciate my colleagues offering the amendments. I look
forward to discussing it either this weekend or next week.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, several Senators have mentioned this
legislation has been pending on the Senate floor since the beginning of
last week. Now we are here at the end of this week. If everybody here
had been in favor of at least getting a vote one way or the other on
the immigration bill, we would have started disposing of amendments
during the first week the bill was on the Senate floor.
Unfortunately, there are some who do not want any bill, no matter
what we write. They will have every objection to every amendment; they
will use every delaying tactic possible. But they are a tiny minority.
What we ought to do is show the majority--Republicans and Democrats--
who is for and who is against the bill. The people who object to it,
they objected to proceeding to comprehensive immigration reform--that
cost us several days. Then when we proceeded, we got 84 Senators who
voted in favor of proceeding. That should tell the American people
something.
This week I have been working closely with the majority leader and
the ranking member, Senator Grassley, and others to make progress. But
every time we try to bring matters up and get them passed we face
objection. So far, there about 350 amendments that have been filed. In
a week and a half we have gotten to 12. That is not progress. That is
not. No wonder the American people wonder what is going on. If we
continue at this rate, we are going to be singing Christmas carols as
we come to the end of this legislation and we will have done nothing
else. Some would like that. They would like to have this take up all
the time. We do not do judges, we do not do the budget. The other side
objects even going to a conference on the budget, which would have more
Republicans on it than Democrats. What is this? If people are that
opposed to government at all, to any form of democratic government, let
them set up an alternative government. But this is ridiculous.
We have a system. The people who claim ``we are for the
Constitution''--let the Constitution work. Let people vote up or down.
This is important. It is long overdue legislation to repair our
immigration system. Let's vote on it.
Senator Landrieu came to the floor last night. She came again today
to talk about the delays we have had. I agree with her. Senators on
both sides of the aisle worked hard on the amendments that were filed
on this legislation. Senators who are not on the Judiciary Committee
have been waiting for their opportunity to contribute to this bill.

Many of the amendments are bipartisan and ought to be heard. Many of
the amendments are noncontroversial and have widespread support. Some
of the amendments are controversial, but the amendments that have been
proposed to me as noncontroversial all are intended to improve and
strengthen this legislation.
In the past we would take them up quickly and vote them all through.
Except we have some who give great speeches about worrying about people
coming into this country, but they are determined not to let anybody
into this country. The Presiding Officer and I--and virtually everybody
in this body--would not be here if these had been the rules when our
parents or our grandparents or our great grandparents came to this
country.
Let's vote. The Judiciary Committee considered a total of 212
amendments over an extensive markup that involved more than 35 hours of
debate, and we made sure it was public. We streamed it live. People all
over the Nation watched it. About half of the amendments considered
were offered by the Republican members of the committee. I went back
and forth, one Democrat, one Republican, one Democrat, one Republican.
We adopted over 135 amendments to this legislation all but three were
bipartisan votes.
We set a gold standard. This body should do the same thing the 18 of
us did.
I filed a managers' amendment that combines a number of the
noncontroversial amendments that have been offered to this legislation.
I hope the Republicans and Senator Grassley, the Judiciary Committee's
ranking member, will join with me in disposing of these
noncontroversial amendments. We did it in the committee. Incidentally,
when the bill finally came out of the committee, it was by a bipartisan
vote.
Look at what the managers' amendments includes. They are
noncontroversial and have widespread support. They have been filed by
Senators on both sides of the aisle over the last 2 weeks. Many have
been discussed at length on the Senate floor. We improve oversight of
certain immigration programs.
There is an amendment from the chair and ranking member of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Senators Carper
and Coburn, to establish an office of statistics within the Department
of Homeland Security. There is an amendment by Senator Cochran and
Senator Landrieu, chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on
Homeland Security, that requires increased reporting on the EB-5
program. There is an amendment by Senator Heller requiring DHS to
report to Congress about an implementation of the biometric exit
program that was added to the bill in committee by Senator Hatch.
There are bipartisan amendments offered by Senators Kirk and Coons to
support the naturalization process for Active-Duty members in the Armed
Forces who receive military awards. Who could possibly disagree with
that? It contains a trio of amendments championed by Senators Coats,
Landrieu, and Klobuchar to ease the process for international
adoptions. There is an amendment by Senator Hagan to reauthorize the
Bulletproof Vest Program.
Incidentally, that program had begun as a bipartisan program. There
is an amendment by Senator Nelson to provide additional research for
maritime security. Chairman Carper has an amendment that requires DHS
to submit a strategy to prevent unauthorized immigration transiting
through Mexico.
These are sensible, noncontroversial amendments. If we had a rollcall
vote of these amendments, they would get 90 or 95 votes, or even 100
votes. Well, let's vote on them. Let's adopt them. Let's show the
American people we actually care about having immigration reform.
The Senator from Louisiana and others are right. We ought to take up
those amendments where we share common ground. We so often get bogged
down by divisive amendments. Why not join together and pass those that
we agree on--Republicans and Democrats? If we do that, we might
actually fix our immigration system.
The one thing everybody agrees on is that the system does not work
today. We are trying to fix it. Let's at least bring up, vote on, and
pass those provisions that both Republicans and Democrats support--more
importantly, the American people support--and get them passed.

[[Page S4771]]

I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time for
debate only be extended until 8:30 and that I be recognized at that
time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. And that we would have the time equally divided between the
majority and the minority for the next hour.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. I would also say this: The amendment we have been waiting
for I think is done. We finally got the last signoff just a few minutes
ago.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, could I inquire as to what UC just got
agreed to?
Mr. REID. To extend the time for debate only until 8:30 with the time
equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Nevada
getting this unanimous consent agreement and that it was agreed to. I
commend the majority leader for the work he is doing. It is a slow
process. It would be an awful lot slower if it wasn't for the very
accomplished hand of our majority leader.
I yield the floor.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate the distinguished chairman of
the committee for saying some nice things about me, but my involvement
in this is minimal compared to many other people.
Mr. President, if we have someone suggest the absence of a quorum
over the next 2 minutes, I ask unanimous consent that the time be
equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Are there any other questions anyone has?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the majority leader. He speaks softly, and
I don't hear as well as I should, so I am not sure what we agreed to or
what he propounded.
Mr. REID. Has the Senator from Alabama heard now? It is that we
extend the time for debate only equally divided between the majority
and minority until 8:30 tonight.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. REID. I note the absence of a quorum.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be
equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, here we are with an intent to have an
amendment that is supposed to solve all the problems of this
legislation, and we had it announced earlier this morning, and we have
not seen it yet. So we are now here.
Earlier today we thought we had an agreement to have as many as half-
a-dozen votes tonight. So we had some today, and we were going to have
some more tonight. We have only had nine votes on this legislation as
of today. This is really odd.
So we have not seen this bill. We do not know what is in it.
Everything has been stopped, waiting on some agreement, as Senator
Schumer said, among the allies. He said they are showing the bill to
allies. Apparently, they have not shown it to Senator Lee, they have
not shown it to me. So the allies of the Gang of 8 are going through
the bill. I do not know if they are going to have Nebraska kickbacks in
it or ``Cornhusker kickbacks'' or whatever else they are going to put
in it to get somebody's vote on it. I hope that is not where we are
going.
But what I am concerned about, having been around here a few years
now, is that we will have a vote on cloture on this amendment--they are
going to file the amendment, immediately file cloture, apparently, and
then have that vote early next week--and then have a couple more votes,
and the next thing you know, we are at final passage and no amendments
of significance have been allowed to occur.
I have a number of amendments. The House has done a really good job
on working on the interior enforcement weaknesses of our current law.
They put together some good language. I have taken a lot of it and put
it into an amendment. I would like to have a vote on that. We ought to
talk about it because there is some feeling around here that the only
thing that matters is the border, but that is not so. Forty percent of
the illegal entries into America today come by visa overstays, and that
is not dealt with at all or in any significant way that I am aware of
in this new amendment which we have not seen.
So I am worried about this whole process. The American people deserve
an open process. It was promised. I do not know how many amendments we
had in committee, I say to Senator Lee. Lots of them. But we have only
had nine now, and we lost a group that we were going to have today. And
we cannot tell from our discussions with Senator Reid and others if
there will be any more amendments next week because, I guess, the
powers that be, the masters of the universe, have all gotten together
and they have decided this: They have decided that everything is fixed
by Hoeven-Corker, and we will just pass that amendment and nobody else
will be heard. But that amendment, from what I read in the papers about
it, in general, does not fix anything like the loopholes and weaknesses
of the legislation.
I say to Senator Lee, I appreciate his elegance on this issue, but I
did want to share that I feel as if something is going awry in the
open, debatable process we thought we were going to have for a day or
two. It seems to have jumped off the tracks completely.
Mr. LEE. It does indeed. I was disappointed by the fact that in the
Judiciary Committee, on which the Senator and I both serve, we had a
lot of amendments. I do not remember exactly how many votes we had in
the committee, but it was in the dozens, if not scores, and we had
extensive discussion. Now, not all the votes turned out the way the
Senator and I wanted them to, but the important thing is we had a lot
of discussion, we had on-the-record debate, we had amendments proposed
and discussed and debated, and that is not how it has happened this
time.
To my understanding--I was not here, unlike my friend from Alabama,
in 2007, the last time we had a comparable discussion of a bill like
this one, but my understanding is that there were 50-something, perhaps
53 amendments that were debated, discussed, and received votes in 2007.
To my understanding, this time around we have had nine votes and maybe
two or three that were taken by voice vote. That is not enough, and it
certainly is not enough when we are talking about a bill that is more
than 1,000 pages long, a bill that is going to affect many millions of
Americans, and it is going to do so for many generations to come.
The American people deserve more. They deserve more than just debate
and discussion, rollcall votes that can be measured in the single
digits. They call this the greatest deliberative legislative body in
the world, and yet we make a mockery of that description when we do
things like this, when we allow a 1,000-page bill to be rammed through
in a matter of days with only a small handful of amendments debated,
discussed, and amended.
So through the Chair I would like to ask my friend and my
distinguished colleague from Alabama whether he has seen anything like
this in his career, whether this is something I should anticipate
moving forward. As I look forward to my years in the Senate, is this
something I should expect on a regular basis with legislation such as
this, of this complexity, of this level of importance? Is this
something that is just par for the course?

[[Page S4772]]

Mr. SESSIONS. I am afraid it is becoming par for the course. I
remember we had a bill, a bankruptcy bill, a fourth of this in size. I
think it was on the floor 3 weeks, and we had maybe nearly 100
amendments. Everybody had their chance to speak, and we ended up
passing the bill with well over 80 votes.

But the point is that in this new mood in the Senate we have a
situation in which the majority leader too often fills the tree and
controls even the amendments that are brought up.
Does the Senator think it odd, as a new Member of the Senate and as a
student of law and Washington governmental processes, that a Senator
cannot come to the floor and offer an amendment without seeking
permission of the majority leader? And he says: No, I will not take
your amendment; I will only take this amendment. Does that strike the
Senator as contrary to what his understanding is historically as to how
the Senate should operate?
Mr. LEE. Yes. In fact, I find it appalling. I find it repugnant to
the system of government under which we are supposed to be operating. I
find it even repugnant to article VI in the Constitution, which makes
clear that there is one kind of constitutional amendment that is never
appropriate. You cannot amend the Constitution to deny any State its
equal representation in the Senate. If at any moment we end up with a
situation in which we have second-class Senators, Senators who may
submit and propose for debate and discussion and a vote an amendment--
if we have to go to the majority leader and say: Mother may I, then
perhaps we have lost something, perhaps we have lost the environment in
which each of the States was supposed to receive equal representation.
It also seems to me to take on a certain character, a certain banana
republic quality that we are asked to vote on legislation in many
circumstances just hours or even minutes after we have received it. We
take on a certain rubberstamp quality when we do that.
I remember a few months ago, in connection with the fiscal cliff
debate--as we approached the fiscal cliff on New Year's Eve, we were
told by our respective leaders: Just wait. Something is coming. Go back
to your offices. Watch your televisions. Play with your toys. Do
whatever it is you do, but, you know, be good Senators, run along and
stay out of trouble. We are taking care of this. We will send you
legislation as soon as we are ready.
Well, at 1:36 a.m. we received an e-mail, and attached to that e-mail
was a 153-page document. That was the bill on which we would be voting.
That bill was one we would be called to vote on exactly 6 minutes
later, at 1:42 a.m. So to my utter astonishment and dismay, Senators
flocked into this room and with very, very little objection ended up
passing that legislation overwhelmingly.
This is just one of many examples I can point to in the 2\1/2\ years
since I have been here when Members have been asked to vote and did, in
fact, vote enthusiastically, willingly, and hardly without a whimper of
objection to legislation that they had never seen, to legislation that
they were familiar with only to the extent it had been summarized for
them.
That brings us back to this legislation. We have had this in front of
us in one form or another for the last couple of months, but for a long
time before we even had it, what we had was a summary of this. We had a
series of bullet points. Those bullet points were very favorable, and
for a long time the bullet points were all we had. The bullet points--I
exaggerate slightly to prove a point, but they read something like
this: Is this bill outstanding? Yes. Will this bill solve all of our
immigration problems? Absolutely. Is there anything wrong with the
bill? Heavens no. That is how the bullet points read.
It was on that basis that groups around the country supported and
some Members even of our own body decided they would vote for S. 744,
even before S. 744 even existed. We had groups across the country, some
even in my home State, that came out strongly in favor of the yet-to-
be-released Gang of 8 bill, saying: We are going to support it, and
anyone who does not vote for it in the U.S. Senate is a backward fool.
Well, they had not read it. They could not have read it because the
bill did not yet exist.
Now, in some respects, what happened with this is very similar to
what we are now facing with the yet-to-be-released Corker amendment. I
have not seen it. But I will tell you what I have seen. I have seen a
set of very brief bullet points about the Corker amendment.
The bullet point reads something like this. Is this amendment
outstanding?
Yes.
Will this amendment solve our border security problems?
Absolutely.
Is there any problem presented by this amendment?
Absolutely not.
So I say to my friend from Alabama, if this is what I can expect in
my career in the Senate, I am a little bit troubled. But I would ask my
friend from Alabama if there is anything we can do about this, if there
is any way we can right this ship, if there is any way we can turn this
around, this disturbing trend? Separate and apart from the policies
underlying this bill, is there anything we can do to make this a real
legislative body and not a rubber stamp, the kind of legislative body
that actually does debate and discuss things?
We do not really have a true deliberative legislative body unless
have we enough time to debate things before we vote on them, to where
the Members can actually read them before they come up?
Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, we can do that if we just follow the traditional
rules of the Senate. The Senator is exactly right. Here we are being
told this legislation, this 1,000 pages, is all decided because
somebody has an amendment somewhere that nobody has seen--at least
nobody who has any skepticism about it has seen. That is going to solve
all of the problems. It is just rather remarkable.
On the fundamental question the Senator raised about the Senate, I do
believe that we need to begin to appeal across party lines and think
more clearly about what has happened. I talked with one of the great
historians of the Senate, someone I have known and has been here,
worked on the floor, and has written a book about it. He said he hated
to say it, but it is kind of getting like the old Russian Soviet Duma
where a group of people met in secret and put out the word, then they
all went in and voted 990 to 10 for whatever it was their little group
decided.
I am worried that has too much relevance to what has been happening
here. I really do. A Senator, as the Senator said, is equal to any
other Senator. The majority leader has the power of first recognition,
but it was never intended that the majority leader should say: You
cannot get your amendment, Senator from Alabama; only the one from
Maine can get their amendment, and actually be able to execute that.
It is rather stunning. That was not the way it was when I came. This
filling-the-tree process started maybe not long after I came. Both
parties have used it. But it has now gone to an extent which we have
never seen before, and it adversely impacts the whole Senate. I think
the Senator is right about that.
I just saw Senator Portman from Ohio. He had worked extremely hard on
a very significant amendment dealing with E-Verify in the workplace. He
is not sure he is going to get a vote on it. He thought he was going to
get a vote on it. It is very frustrating for him that will not be the
case.
What is this? We are not going to be in session tomorrow, apparently.
Nobody gets their amendments. Maybe, virtually, no more amendments get
brought up of significance.
So I am concerned about it. I have a couple of key amendments. I know
Senator Cruz has an amendment too. The Senator may have amendments.
Amendments are valuable in that they point out weaknesses in
legislation. They provide a fix for that weakness. Why would we want to
deny people the right to make a piece of legislation better?
Mr. LEE. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democracy is
that you have choices, you have options. I am not intimately familiar
with the inner workings of the Soviet government. But I have it on good
authority that they had elections in the Soviet Union. But the big
difference was the government decided who was on the ballot. They
decided that very carefully. Only those candidates who had

[[Page S4773]]

been very carefully screened by the Communist Party officials could
appear on the ballot.
So people had choices. It was just the choices were very limited.
They were limited so as to guarantee a certain foreordained outcome.
Now, if you will forgive the analogy, what we have here makes sense.
It makes sense that all of the 50 States are represented but only if,
in fact, we are presented with actual legitimate choices, with actual
legitimate options.
One of the reasons we have seen legislation pushed through at the
very last minute, and our colleagues in this body vote for that
legislation overwhelmingly, is they are told at the moment they have no
other option: You have a binary choice. You can vote yes or you can
vote no, but you do not really have the option of making any changes.
So a lot of times people vote for something, even if it is a bill they
otherwise did not like, or if it had a lot of problems with it, they
will vote for it because they conclude that on balance, voting yes is
better than voting no. The problem is, we are supposed to have more
options than that. In this body, we are supposed to have the
opportunity to propose amendments and in theory to have unlimited
debate and discussion.
Unlimited debate and discussion necessarily entails more or less
unlimited opportunities to amend, to make it better. That is what real
compromise is. Real compromise involves allowing all of the
stakeholders to come together and explain what is important to each
member of the group, to each stakeholder. We do not have that here. We
are supposed to have that in the Senate. Historically, it has existed.
I know that not from my service here, but I know it from reading
books and from talking to colleagues who have been here a little bit
longer than I have. But it is time to restore that. It is time we
restore what once existed but has since been lost so that our
democratic system of government actually functions as it was designed.
Mr. SESSIONS. The Senator led a press conference this afternoon with
a group of tea party patriots. Jenny Beth Martin and a number of other
people were there. They came to Washington and had a number of people
who had immigrated to America. They spoke from their hearts about laws
and rules and proper procedure. Maybe the Senator could share with our
colleagues and those who might be listening the gist of that.
I thought it was very moving to have people who came to America, some
from countries where they had been persecuted and were so proud of the
rule of law, who felt deeply that we need to be careful about what we
do in the Senate to preserve the rule of law here.
I thank the Senator for leading that press conference today and
letting those individuals, those Americans, speak their minds. Just in
general, I would say that whole tea party movement, which many have
tried to demean, came right from the heart of America. It represented a
deep concern that people in Washington were out of touch, were not
connected with the real world, were not following the constitutional
processes, were meeting in secret with special interests and trying to
win elections and not serving the people in effective ways.
I thought it was good to have them speak out today as they did in
opposition to this monstrosity.
Mr. LEE. That is exactly right. The movement described is a
spontaneous grass roots movement that started in 2009 in response to an
observation that swept across the country that the Federal Government
has become too big and too expensive, in part because it is doing too
many things it was never designed to do, in part because it has lost
sight of the fact that it was always created at the outset to be a
limited-purpose government, one in charge of just a few basic things:
national defense, establishing a uniform system of weights and
measures, declaring war; otherwise providing for our national defense,
protecting trademarks, copyrights, and patents granting letters of mark
and reprisal, which are fascinating instruments. Basically, you get a
hall pass issued by Congress in the name of the United States that
entitles the bearer to engage in state-sponsored acts of piracy on the
high seas.
So regardless of how long I might serve in the Senate, I do want to
get a letter of mark and reprisal someday. I am going to be a pirate. I
hope my friend from Alabama and my friend from Colorado will join me.
Among those other powers was a power to establish uniform laws
governing naturalization, what today we would perhaps more broadly call
immigration. That is one of our jobs. So it was appropriate at this
gathering today, where we were joined by a lot of supporters of this
grass roots movement--we had some immigrants to this country, people
who came here legally, people who sacrificed much, put a lot at risk in
order to come to this country.
They explained that one of the things that attracted them to this
country, one of the unifying reasons all of them came to the United
States, despite the sacrifices they had to make to get here and the
risks they undertook in coming here, was the fact that they loved the
rule of law. They see the difference, as all of us do anytime we travel
to a country where the rule of law is absent, that the rule of law
makes all the difference. You can tell almost immediately after you
step off the plane whether you are in a country where the rule of law
is respected, where it is honored. There are relatively few countries
in the world where it is. Fortunately, this is one of them. It is our
job to make sure it continues to be that way.
Many of these immigrants commented on the fact that they find it
distressing that while they expended the time and effort and resources
to make sure they immigrated legally, they are disturbed about the fact
that under this legislation, well-intentioned as it may have been,
under this legislation 11 million people who came here illegally, for
whatever reason, will eventually find themselves in a position of not
only being able to stay here, not only being able to keep their current
jobs, maintain their current circle of friends, they will actually
become citizens.
This reminds me of a letter that I received not too long ago from a
schoolteacher in Utah, a schoolteacher who explained that she had come
here on a visa, a visa that will expire in 2017. She explained to me
that she has every expectation that she will be unable to renew and
extend that visa. So, she said: I expect effectively to be deported in
2017 because I do not intend to break the law of the country whose laws
I promised to uphold if they would grant me this visa. She said: It is
very distressing to me that meanwhile people who broke your laws,
people who did not respect the rule of law, as I did, people who did
not expend a lot of time and money and resources and took a lot of risk
in applying for and obtaining the necessary visa to come here, a lot of
people who broke all of those same laws will get to stay here, they
will get to become citizens. That is not fair.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thought that group reflected those concerns very
well. I think the whole grass roots movement did. As I recall, Senator
Lee was involved in the election in many ways. It was a ramming through
of the massive health care bill that nobody had read. We were told:
Well, you have to pass it to find out what is in it. That generated
that whole movement. Is this not in many ways similar? In the Senator's
view, does it feel the same that we are moving rapidly through a bill,
a massive consequence of over 1,000 pages, and there is a lack of
understanding fully of what is in it?
Mr. LEE. There certainly are some similarities. I will point out at
the outset there are some differences, one of them being we have,
fortunately, actually had the text of this for a little bit longer than
I think Congress had the text of the Affordable Care Act when it
passed. We have had some opportunity to amend it in committee. That has
been nice. But, yes, there are a lot of similarities.
Both bills are very lengthy. Both bills involve excessive--remarkably
excessive--delegation of authority to decisionmakers in another branch
of government, within the executive branch.
There are, by one count, something like 490 instances of delegated
discretionary decisionmaking authority. You know, this is a problem
because for centuries, great thinkers, including our Founding Fathers
but really going

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back even before them, have warned that legislative power involves the
power to make laws, not the power to make lawmakers.
To a very significant degree, the lawmaking power is not subject to
delegation. It should not be delegated to someone else. Obviously, we
have to delegate a lot of tasks to the executive branch. It is the
executive branch's job to implement, to enforce, to apply the laws that
we pass. But on some level there is a difference that we can tell
between giving someone the task of implementing and enforcing a law and
giving someone else the task of coming up with policy, either policy as
embodied in the Code of Federal Regulations or policy as embodied in
the exercise of pure discretion that will evolve and over time become
its own form of laws.
This law, much like the Affordable Care Act, involves hundreds and
hundreds of instances of delegated policymaking authority.
One of the problems with that is when you delegate the policymaking
authority to the executive branch, to the executive branch regulatory
state, so to speak, you give it to people, however well-intentioned,
however well-educated, however wise, who are not themselves elected by
the people. They themselves don't stand accountable to the people at
regular intervals. They themselves can act in much the same way as
despots might have centuries ago.
Sure, their actions could be subject to challenge in court under the
Administrative Procedures Act, challenge them in court under a standard
that is very deferential and not to the challenger, to the government.
One thing that is certain, we can't go to them and say: Look, if you
don't change this law, I am not going to vote for you again. They will
laugh at us if you tell them that because they don't work for us. They
don't ever have to stand for election. That is one of the problems I
have with it.
One of the problems it shares in common with ObamaCare is this
excessive delegation of authority. It also shares in common with
ObamaCare the fact that it is long. It is not quite as long as
ObamaCare, but it is still long. Very often we find that long bills go
hand in hand with bills that have an excessive delegation of power to
the executive branch of government. This is what we have here.
I find it significant that James Madison warned us in Federalist No.
62, it will be of little benefit to the American people that their laws
may be written by men and women of their own choosing if those laws are
so voluminous and complex that they can't be easily read and understood
by those governed by the same laws.
Madison was right to point that out. It is true it is difficult to
pick up a law like that, or twice its size, in the case of ObamaCare.
It is difficult for the American people to pick that up, read through
it and say: Yes, I get it, I understand what my obligations are. I
understand what the obligations of government officials are. I can
understand it.
It is 10 times worse than that when this is just the tip of the
iceberg, when this will be a tiny fraction of the paperwork that will
be entailed and the laws that actually implement laws such as this one
and laws such as ObamaCare. To put it in Madison's words, it is bad
enough when the laws are so voluminous and complex they can't
reasonably be read and understood and read by those governed by them.
It is that much worse when most of the actual law isn't even made or
chosen by the voters.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator for sharing those insights. It is
important, because we are getting to a situation where we are
delegating extraordinary power to unelected bureaucrats. What we have
seen with regard to the current administration and their enforcement
laws is one of the most dramatic, willful, deliberate failures to
enforce the law I have ever seen.
It has resulted in a most amazing circumstance. The ICE agents, the
Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement agents, who are out there trying
to enforce the law every day, who took an oath to enforce the law, have
been so directed by their unelected supervisors to not enforce the law.
They have reached the point where they have filed a lawsuit in Federal
court against their supervisors. They sued Secretary Napolitano, and
they said she is issuing directives and orders that contradict with our
sworn duty as law officers to enforce the law and follow what Congress
directed. Some of this simply came down to the fact that they are
required to deport certain people if they are apprehended doing certain
things. They just issue guidelines that say don't deport people.
Think about it. Secretary Napolitano and John Morton, her ICE
Director, who has now resigned, were directing these agents to do
things that undermined their ability to do the most basic part of law.
They filed a lawsuit in Federal court. The judge has heard the lawsuit
and heard the complaints. The Department of Justice sought to dismiss
the complaint initially, and it has not been dismissed. The judge has
let it proceed. He, in effect, as I read the news article about it,
basically said the Secretary is not above the law. I thought we learned
that from Richard Nixon. No President is above the law. Nobody is above
the law in America. This lawsuit is still ongoing.
It is one of the most amazing things I have seen, and how little it
has been commented on and how significant that is.
We have the Citizenship and Immigration Services officers. Like the
ICE officers, they have written Congress and told us they cannot do
what the law requires them to do in this bill. They can't do what the
law is requiring them to do now. They are overwhelmed by the
requirements that have been placed upon them. They said the law that is
being considered today, S. 744, makes the situation worse. Both of
those agencies have written to Congress and said it would weaken our
national security and place our safety at risk in America. It wouldn't
make things better, it would make them worse.
I think we need to say how did we get here? I believe we got here
fundamentally because well-meaning Senators decided if you are going to
pass a bill--we had to have La Raza happy, we had to have the unions
happy, we had to have the business groups happy, and we had to have the
chicken processors happy, and they all met with them. They met with
their pollsters, their political consultants, and the politicians.
Chris Crane, the head of the ICE officers association, wrote them
repeatedly, saying: Let me come tell you what it is really like out
there. They refused to hear from him. They refused to hear from him and
his ideas. He tried everything he could. He wrote them and asked if
they would meet with him, and they wouldn't do that.
The legislation was written by people not connected to how the
immigration system actually operates. The people tried their best every
day to make this system lawful, make it effective, and make it
something we can be proud of.
Even under the legislation, it does not require people who want to be
citizens and want to be given legal status in America to have a face-
to-face meeting with a single person.
In fact, the DREAM Act, the DACA cases that are out there, they are
not meeting with them face to face. They just give papers, read those
papers, and process them in a way that they have no capability of
ascertaining whether those claims of legality are legitimate.
It is very clear from experts in the 9/11 Commission that face-to-
face interviews make a huge difference. One of the hijackers who was
supposed to be the terrorist, who was supposed to be on the plane that
may have hit the Capitol of the United States or the White House, the
one that went down in Pennsylvania, one of those was identified in a
face-to-face meeting by an alert officer. He held him up, and he was
not on that plane. Who knows, one more terrorist on that plane might
have enabled them to control that plane and succeed in wreaking
devastation on Washington, DC. Maybe those patriots who brought that
plane down, giving their lives to save this Capitol, may not have been
able to do so had there been one more terrorist on that plane. I have
to say this is important material. I don't know what the language is
about the border and how many agents they have there.

I know this, we have had testimony from witnesses and the 9/11
Commission that we need an entry-exit visa system. We already have most
of it. When you come into the country, they

[[Page S4775]]

take your fingerprints, and you are clocked into the country. We are
not clocking people out of the country.
The 9/11 Commission, in a followup meeting of that commission to
review how America had complied with their original suggestions,
repeated their concern that we need this entry-exit visa system. The
current law that has been passed, about six times, and is current law
today, says we should have a biometric entry-exit visa system at all
air, land, and sea ports.
This legislation guts that requirement. It eliminates the biometric,
which means you don't use something like a fingerprint, which would be
the most common thing to use. It would be some sort of an electronic
system that is recognized to be weaker, and it doesn't require it to be
in place at the land ports. The 9/11 Commission explicitly reviewed
that, and they said the system won't work because people can fly in to
Houston, fly in to Los Angeles, go back across the border, fly in to
New York and exit through New Mexico. They can do these things and,
therefore, the system won't work. We don't know who overstayed and who
didn't overstay.
What we learned was it is not too expensive. They claimed it was
going to be $25 billion. Where did this figure come from? It was raised
in committee, you may remember. Senator Schumer said it will be $25
billion. What we found was they did a pilot project in Atlanta and I
believe Philadelphia. People came through to get on a plane to depart
America. They put their fingerprints on a machine. They go right on by,
and those who are in violation have warrants out for their arrest or
are on a terrorist watch list, are picked up.
Amazingly, amazingly, in Atlanta they did 20,000 people as a pilot
project. They failed 134, I believe, who had warrants for their arrest
and got hits on the watch list. Some of these could be serious
offenders.
I think that is one more example of weaknesses in the legislation
that apparently are not being addressed. This is one more proof that
the bill before us today weakens current law, directly weakening our
entry-exit visa system that the 9/11 Commission has said we must
complete.
There are a lot of things I am concerned about in the legislation.
This is one of them. It has to be fixed. I am afraid we are not on the
path to do that. Special interests have opposed that over the years. It
has been debated, debated, and debated. Finally a decision has been
made. Multiple times Congress has directed this to occur, but it still
has not occurred.
I wanted to share that. Maybe the Senator has other thoughts he
wishes to share.
Mr. LEE. The Senator mentioned a few moments ago that in some
circumstances there has been some indication that perhaps the Secretary
of Homeland Security believes she is above the law. In some respects,
when reading through this bill, we can conclude that if it passes she
will become the law. She will be the law. With hundreds and hundreds of
instances in which she will be given vast discretion to make all kinds
of determinations about who stays and who doesn't, what happens under
what circumstance and what program, she actually sort of becomes the
law. This becomes an active administrative discretion, rather than an
act that helps bolster the rule of law. That certainly is a concern we
have over time.
We do wonder at times also why it is we have legislation that remains
secret for so long. In other words, we have commented on the fact that
we have been waiting for this mysterious amendment. We have wondered
why we haven't seen it. I wonder if the reason why we haven't seen it
is because they are still negotiating in secret trying to sweeten the
pot so they can ram it through. It makes me wonder whether we can
anticipate another ``cornhusker kickback,'' another ``Louisiana
purchase,'' yet another parallel between the Affordable Care Act and
this legislation we have before us today. It is another concern I have.
I am also concerned about the same talking points to which I alluded
earlier, the same talking points we have had since before we even had
this bill--the talking points I alluded to earlier that I described as
being to the effect of saying: Is there anything wrong with this bill?
No. Is this bill excellent? Yes, absolutely it is. Those are the same
talking points that convinced a lot of people to come out and support
the bill before the bill even existed.
Mr. SESSIONS. If the Senator will remember, in committee my able
colleague Senator Schumer said this was the toughest bill ever, as I
recall. And it was tough as nails. But it looks like now we are being
told it wasn't so tough because we have added an amendment that is
going to make it tough.
So is that kind of what the Senator is saying when he refers to the
talking points, that we have to go beyond the bill? If it was so tough
to begin with, why did they have to pass another amendment now to make
it a lot tougher now?
Mr. LEE. I guess it wasn't tough enough and they are trying to make
it even tougher. Yes, that is an interesting point. A lot of people got
caught up in that kind of mindset even before the bill was released.
The Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, an institution in my own home
State, came out overwhelmingly in support of this bill. But the problem
was the bill didn't even exist. They were going off the talking points.
And here is the problem: The talking points were wrong. The talking
points proved to be grossly misleading.
The talking points told us--and the proponents of the bill have
continued to tell us for months, even after the bill text came out and
even after we had reason to know better--quite a few things. They told
us, No. 1, illegal aliens who would be legalized and who would be put
on the path to citizenship under this bill would have to pay back taxes
as a condition of their legalization. Did that turn out to be true?
Absolutely not.
When we read the fine print, one thing is very clear. They have to
pay only those back taxes that have previously been assessed by the
Internal Revenue Service. What does that mean? Well, they have to be
found due and owing. They have to have been assessed by the IRS. An
individual doesn't have taxes assessed by the IRS if, as is often the
case for someone who has been working here illegally, they are working
off the books.
This is what we call an illusory promise. They offered us the sleeves
off their vest. They offered us something that didn't exist in the
first place.
We were also told a number of other things about this bill. We were
told there would be a lot of people who would be excluded. Yet we
discovered there are a lot of people who, even after having committed
crimes in this country, even after having illegally reentered the
country following a previous deportation, which, by the way, is a
felony, many of those people will still be able to get legalized and
not just remain in this country and continue working but also continue
on the path to citizenship and eventually become voting citizens of
this country.
We were told those people who are illegal aliens currently, who would
be eligible for legalization and eventual citizenship, would not be
eligible during their provisional status, during their interim status,
or RPI status, as we call it under the bill, wouldn't be eligible for
means-tested welfare benefits.
Did that turn out to be true? No. They are still eligible, for
example, for the earned-income tax credit, which some have described as
the most generous and largest, in some respects, means-tested program
we have.
So these things turned out not to be true. Yet a lot of people are
still asking their Members of Congress to support this very same
legislation, and not because they have read it, not because any of
those promises are true, but because they are still believing the
promises contained in the original set of talking points, which most
people think are the bill. That is disturbing.
Mr. SESSIONS. It is. I think it is like smelling the sizzling steak
that turns out to be shoe leather. It sounds good when they talk about
it. I said: Wow, that sounds good. And if it accomplished all the
things they promised, I would be intrigued by that legislation. It
would have a chance to get my vote.
Well, we made a list, just as Senator Lee did, of some of the things
we were told repeatedly about this legislation. We were told it was
border security

[[Page S4776]]

first. Now, I don't think anybody denies that amnesty is the one thing
that will happen. Everything else is going to be promised to occur in
the future. So that was not an honest and correct promise.
Then it was said it was going to be the toughest enforcement ever.
Well, I would just say to my colleague, this legislation is not as
tough as the 2007 bill. As an example, it weakened the standard of
enforcement at the border from current law that they are still debating
and can't reach an agreement over. It weakens the current law's
standard.
As I just established earlier, it weakened the entry-exit visa system
absolutely on a key and fundamental point, making the entry-exit visa
system not workable; whereas today, if the administration did it
properly, it would work.
The Senator just mentioned back taxes. That is a flimflam if there
ever was one. We hear that over and over--people are going to pay their
back taxes. The IRS is not going to go out and try to run down 11
million people who have been here illegally and have been working and
try to find out how much they owe and then collect taxes from them. It
is not physically practical. It will never happen. It is a talking
point, just as the Senator said, and not reality.
They are going to learn English. That sounds good. We are for making
people learn English. But if a person is going to get legal status, a
Social Security number, the ability to go to work almost immediately,
and 10 years later, if they haven't learned English, under the language
of the bill all they have to do is to enroll in a course. They do not
have to complete the course or anything. It only occurs when they are
at the point of becoming a legal permanent resident. That is 10 years
later.
Then no welfare benefits. The Senator just mentioned the biggest is
the earned-income tax credit. I offered an amendment to validate the
sponsors' promise in the Judiciary Committee, if the Senator will
recall, and it was voted down. So they said we are not going to have
any welfare, but the Congressional Budget Office--well, it is obvious.
The earned-income tax credit is not a tax deduction, it is a direct
payment from the U.S. Treasury to people who qualify for this subsidy.
So that is one of the biggest ones we have, and it is still protected.
They can still obtain it.
Then they say: We will end illegal immigration. That was a firm
promise--to end illegal immigration. The toughest bill ever. The
Congressional Budget Office report that came out yesterday said it
would only reduce illegal immigration by 25 percent. I think it was a
difference of we would have 7.5 million people enter the country
illegally instead of 10 million people entering the country illegally
over the next 10 years. How pathetic is that?
So we are going to give amnesty, benefits, and all of this, and we
are going to promise the American people we are going to fix the broken
border, but it is not there. The promises aren't there.
We haven't even seen this new amendment. Now we are going to have all
these agents, we are going to fix the border, everything is going to be
taken care of, and we say: Well, we would like to read your bill. The
last time you weren't so accurate, were you? Last time the promises
weren't fulfilled in your bill. Now you are scrambling around, your
bill is in big trouble, people are asking some real tough questions,
you don't have answers for them, and so a group comes together. They
are secretly meeting over here today, and now they have the toughest
amendment ever, I guess. But when do we read it? When do we see it? We
were told we were going to have it at 6 o'clock. It is now 8:30.
So I agree with the Senator from Utah. I don't think talking points
are going to cut it. Doesn't the Senator agree the power is in the
legislation and not in talking points?
Mr. LEE. Yes. Yes.
One of the most galling aspects of this entire debate and what has
occurred today, as this amendment is being crafted behind closed doors
in secret, we have had dozens and dozens of amendments that are
written, that have been filed, that have been prepared, some of which
are now pending before the Senate. Have we had a chance to have a vote
on those? No. We are told we have to wait for the Corker amendment,
which isn't even written.
So those who have been working on this for months and months and
months, who have written our own amendments and have aired them
publicly, allowed our constituents and people throughout the country to
view our amendments, we are shut out. We are shut out and we are shut
down and we are told we don't get a vote on them because we have to
wait for the Corker amendment. That doesn't seem fair or just to me.
Now, let's look around the room. It is not as though this place is
jam-packed with people. It looks like we have kind of been abandoned. A
few hours ago we had all of us here and we were ready to vote on those
amendments. We could have had a lot of votes. We were told to expect
votes. I was hoping to have votes. I had a very important amendment on
which I wanted to get a vote. It was a vote on an amendment to make
sure the 40 percent of the border owned by the Federal Government could
be accessed by our own Border Patrol agents so they can do their jobs.
The Senator referred earlier to a problem we have had with our law
enforcement personnel being told they can't do their jobs. This is one
of those many instances where they can't. Forty percent of our border
is owned by the Federal Government. I am sympathetic to this because
two-thirds of the land in my State is owned by the Federal Government,
and it is terrible because we can't access most of that land. We can't
even walk on that land without saying ``Mother, may I.'' And most of
the time, to walk on it, it is like a sand trap on a golf course. You
have to walk in with a rake behind you. You rake your way in, rake your
way out, and ask permission for everything you do. The border is kind
of the same way. There are federally owned areas of the border. We have
huge stretches of border--40 percent of it--where they can't enforce
the law because it is owned by the Federal Government and there are
environmental laws that prohibit these agents from doing their jobs.
It would be one thing if that actually protected the environment, but
it doesn't because what happens is those same areas--those same
environmentally sensitive, federally owned areas--are the ones illegal
immigrants most prefer when they choose to cross into this country. So
what do we have? We have a long trail of litter and environmental
destruction in the areas where they cross through illegally.
This is just one of many amendments that have been filed, that are
already written, that we could have and should have been voting on and
we haven't been.
I have a dire prediction to make. I suspect when we come back next
week, we might be told, even though the place doesn't seem to be in any
hurry right now, all of a sudden we will be in a hurry next week. So
much so I fear we will be told we have to pass this bill now. It all
has to be passed now. We don't have time for any more of these pesky
amendments from these pesky Senators from all over this great country
of the United States of America. We have to pass this now.
Well, we have had time to vote on other amendments, and we have
squandered that opportunity or we have had it squandered for us. The
Senator from Alabama and I, and a number of others, have been ready to
vote on our amendments--amendments that have been prepared for a long
time, that have been aired for the public to view for a long time--and
we haven't been allowed a vote. I have a problem with that.
Mr. SESSIONS. Well, it is going to be that way, it does look like. We
have been talking about trying to find out what the plan is and what
kind of process we can use to go forward, but the ability to get
amendments does seem to be slipping away. And there are a lot of
excuses and reasons, but all I would say is we are getting ready to
vote on a huge important bill that will change immigration law in
America, and the American people deserve to have their Representatives
fix it and make it better, if they can.
I truly think there will be no excuse if we get into a rush, as the
Senator correctly predicts, I am afraid, next week. That will just
slide by if we have

[[Page S4777]]

to pass the bill essentially as is, after the experts tell us it has
all been fixed now.
So I just would ask the Senator about this border situation. Just as
a normal citizen, I would think if the U.S. Government wanted to have
the ability to work on the border and do things on the border, it would
be easier if the government already owned the land than if it were in
the hands of someone else. At a very minimum we ought to be able to
protect the border of the United States, our national sovereignty, in
that fashion. Not to even be able to use land the government already
owns is pretty baffling to me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
There is an order to recognize the majority leader at 8:30 p.m.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. That is correct.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the previous
order be extended; that is, that there be 1 additional hour for debate
only equally divided between the two parties; and that any quorum calls
during this period of time be charged to both sides.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, the previous order said I would be
recognized when the time ran out. So I ask that it be the case that I
be recognized at 9:30.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, again, I thank the majority leader.
I have heard some talk tonight from some saying they wished there
would be votes.
I finally have given up handing long lists of amendments we are
prepared to vote on to the Republican side, both Republican and
Democratic amendments. Each time, that was rejected. Most of them were
amendments with no controversy, Republican and Democratic alike, and
would have been accepted.
I think back to the debate we had in the Senate Judiciary Committee
where we actually voted on amendments. We brought up 140 or so. All but
two or three passed with bipartisan votes. About 40 Republican
amendments passed on bipartisan votes. Yet when it came onto the floor
of the Senate, my friends on the other side, time and time again,
objected to bringing up amendments that would pass unanimously, both
Republican and Democratic.
I suppose in one case we have some who don't want any immigration
bill, and others are probably waiting for a cloture vote.
I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask the time be equally
divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is the order.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we have another hour waiting now to get
this magic amendment we have been waiting for that is going to cause us
all to be able to sleep well tonight, and everything is going to be
taken care of if the Hoeven-Corker amendment is blessed. Apparently,
they are running people into a secret room trying to get them to sign
up to vote for it and vote for final passage and promising them some
corn, I guess, a Louisiana Purchase or something to try to line them up
and get the system done.
But I would indicate that this side had agreed to about as many as 16
amendments earlier. As this exciting new ``superamendment'' came along,
it does seem what has happened is the train jumped the track. The
amendments we thought we would be voting on even later in the afternoon
got jumped off the track. Now we are all waiting on the favored
amendment, the amendment that everyone seems to think has to get
preference over everybody else; whereas, we could be voting right this
minute on many of the amendments. If we started voting on the ones that
had been agreed to and cleared on this side, I think we would even be
finished long before now.
I would look to Senator Lee.
Mr. LEE. It certainly would have been the case that had we started
voting earlier today, I think we could have gotten through the list.
I was surprised by what our friend from Vermont said a few minutes
ago, suggesting that Republicans have held up all this.
My understanding is that last night we were close to a unanimous
consent on a proposal to bring some 16 amendments to the floor for a
vote. We were getting closer and closer to that.
It was at that point when the senior Senator from Louisiana came to
the floor and demanded that all of this cease, unless or until such
time as 27 amendments that she was pushing for not only would be
brought to the floor for a vote but be passed by unanimous consent.
It was a rather unusual request, from what I can tell. I am still a
new Senator. I have only been here 2\1/2\ years, but it seems to me to
be something that doesn't happen very often. But it certainly was a
different sequence of events than what was described by our friend from
Vermont a few minutes ago.
Look, we wanted amendments. Some of us have been working on this bill
for many months, and we have prepared amendments. We have had those
amendments. We have made them available to members of the public for a
long time so they can be reviewed. We just want to debate them, discuss
them, vote on them, and move on.
I suppose it is important that we proceed, with a matter of
legislation as important as this one--this very significant bill that
will affect many millions of Americans and will do so for many
generations to come. It is important that we proceed with all
deliberate speed, meaning we proceed just quickly enough but not so
quickly as to blow past important opportunities to consider every
option, every possible amendment that needs to be brought forward.
So perhaps it is with that in mind that we have suspended things a
little bit, we have slowed things down a little to wait for this one
amendment. I still don't understand why we couldn't have been voting on
other amendments--amendments that are already written.
But still, just the same, if this is what we need to do--and the
place doesn't appear to be in any hurry--we can do it that way. I hope
I can take that with some encouragement, as an encouraging indication
that this is how we are going to proceed on this bill because it is so
important and that is perhaps some indication that next week we will
still be able to vote on other amendments, amendments that preceded the
Corker amendment in time and in preparation--that we will still get
votes on those. Because if we are willing to wait this long for one
amendment that is just being written now, we ought to have those other
votes on other amendments that are ahead of it in time, that were filed
previously, that were made public much earlier.
Mr. SESSIONS. I think the Senator is making a valuable point. I don't
believe there is any justification for the process stopping today.
I would say it is convenient to say to the press and the American
people: A big development has occurred. Everything is on hold. We are
going to move this amendment. It is going to fix everything that you
are concerned about.
That is part of the drive, the vision, the message being put out
here.
I suspect a number of Senators--maybe in the majority party
particularly--felt like they didn't want to vote on these 16
amendments. Some of them would actually make the bill work better. Some
of them have some tough law enforcement provisions in them, tough in
the sense they are fair and will work and actually tighten this system
that is so out of control, and they didn't want to vote on those
amendments. So I am sure maybe they complained to the distinguished
majority leader and others.
But all I know is that we were moving along. People were saying from
the other side let's get some votes. I said I am ready to vote. Let's
vote. So agreements were being reached, and all of a sudden it
stopped--on one favored amendment. That is what we are all focused on
today.
I agree with Senator Lee that somehow all of us are supposed to be
equal in this spot, that one Senator is not

[[Page S4778]]

supposed to be better than the others, and we all ought to be able to
come to the floor and offer a legitimate amendment, debate it, and get
a vote.
Mr. LEE. I suppose in that respect all Senators are equal, but some
are simply more equal than others. It is disturbing that happens from
time to time, when we discover that the equality that is supposed to
serve as the hallmark of this institution, that is supposed to separate
it from the House just down the hall from us and from other legislative
bodies throughout the country and throughout the world is, perhaps,
faded a little bit in our public consciousness. Perhaps that is faded a
little bit in the way it operates, but it should not be and we ought to
be able to restore it. We ought to be able to focus on the real,
pressing needs of this country.

Immigration reform is something I think every one of us can agree
needs to happen. There is not one Member of this body--at least not one
of whom I am aware--who does not want real, robust immigration reform,
nor do I believe there is one Member of this body who would dispute
that there is a real opportunity for broad-based bipartisan consensus
when it comes to immigration reform. I think the best way we could
achieve that is to start in those areas in which there is the most
broad-based bipartisan consensus.
I have yet to meet a single Senator or single Representative from
either political party who is willing to say, for example, that we
don't need to bolster border security. Maybe such a Senator or maybe
such a Representative exists. If that is the case, I have yet to meet
that Senator or that Representative. I have yet to meet a single
Senator or Representative from either political party, by the same
token, who has said we don't need to update and modernize our legal
immigration system, we don't need to review our visa programs--which,
as I have said before, are sort of stuck in the Buddy Holly era. These
are things we need to do, and I think we could pass bills dealing with
each of those. I think we could pass both of them with overwhelming
bipartisan consensus.
So that begs the question: Why, then, would you want to wrap those up
and tie them up with the single most controversial element of
immigration reform, which deals with the pathway to legalization and
citizenship? Why do you suppose it is so important that we move
directly to that?
Mr. SESSIONS. It does raise a question. It has really not been
properly discussed. I believe my colleague makes a reference to the
citizenship path? Is that what the Senator said?
I have given a lot of thought to it over the years. In 2007 it was
discussed. I reached a serious conclusion. Other people might disagree.
This is what I concluded. I concluded that after 1986, when every
benefit the Nation could give was given to people who came here
illegally and it did not work and we had even more people come and
enforcement never occurred, then really a great nation such as the
United States, which is in a position to allow somebody legal status in
their country, is not required to give every single benefit to somebody
who comes illegally as somebody who comes legally.
In fact, I believe it is very important, as a matter of principle,
that the United States say, based on our experience in 1986: You come
to the United States lawfully, we will allow you to have a path to
citizenship; your children born here, they will be citizens. But if you
do not come lawfully, we might agree out of compassion, out of concern
to allow you to live here the rest of your life and work and give you a
Social Security card and allow you to benefit in America, but you don't
get everything. You don't get every honor this Nation can give if you
did not follow the law when you came here.
I think that is legitimate as a matter of principle, as a matter of
fairness, as a matter of the Constitution and law. That is where I am
on that subject.
Mr. LEE. Perhaps it is for that reason that for many people the
pathway to citizenship component of this bill is perhaps the single
most contentious issue. I don't think there is any issue that even
comes close to the pathway to citizenship in terms of its ability to
divide Americans along partisan lines or along other ideological lines.
It makes me wonder why it is so important for us to pack this all in
one bill. Why do we need a single thousand-page bill? Why can't we pass
this in steps, especially when we come to an understanding of the fact
that if we do it in the proper sequence, much of the problem will be
easier to resolve? Much of the problem will be more amenable to a more
clear solution.
Many of those among us who are undocumented are here in an
undocumented state not necessarily because they want to become
citizens, not necessarily because they want to live here in perpetuity.
In many instances I am told a lot of these people are here year in and
year out because they are afraid that if they leave and go home, they
will not be able to get back in.
But if we had updated and modernized our legal immigration system--if
we could do that, if we could get those laws implemented, I suspect a
lot of those people would choose to be able to go back home to their
home countries, be with families and loved ones, knowing that the next
time they wanted to come back to the United States to work, they would
have a fair shot at doing it, that there would be a clear pathway for
them to apply for some kind of legal status coming into this country to
work for a time. If they had greater certainty that they would actually
be able to get back in, perhaps they would not choose to remain here
year in and year out. At that point, we might have a different
circumstance on our hands. Rather than 11 million people, perhaps the
number would be different than that. I am not sure.
But one thing I do know is that if there is one way to make it more
difficult to enact immigration reform, if there is one way to make it
less likely that we will have broad-based bipartisan consensus for
immigration reform, the one way to do that, the one way to ensure that
it is going to be as contentious, as partisan, as difficult as possible
is to fold it all into one, put it in a thousand-page bill and say: You
have to take all of it. You have to take every bit of it, all of it, or
you get none of it.
We are told in this town all the time that we have to compromise. It
is interesting. I get a lot of phone calls in my office from
constituents. Some of those phone calls say: You need to compromise;
make sure you compromise. Other phone calls say: Never, ever, ever
compromise. Those in the first group are inclined to say: Compromise in
a box with a fox in the rain on a train--all kinds of things. Anytime
you get a chance to compromise, do it. But both sets of callers making
one point or the other are sort of missing the point. Compromise is not
an end destination, it is not a substantive end in itself, it is a
process.
In the case of a legislative body consisting of more than one person,
it is an inevitability. The question is not where to compromise or
whether; the point of compromise is under what circumstance are you
willing to and, more importantly, under what circumstance are you not
willing to compromise.
If the objective is to find those areas where there is the greatest
possibility of compromise, what we ought to be doing is passing a
series of bills in a proper sequence: one bill dealing with border
security; another perhaps dealing with an entry-exit system; another
dealing with an update to our existing visa programs. In time, once
those things are passed and they have been implemented, I think we will
be in a much better position to achieve broad-based bipartisan
consensus.
On the vexing, difficult question of how best to treat the 11 million
undocumented workers in this country in a manner that is both
compassionate and just, I think we can get there. I know we can. And I
am equally certain that this bill--this bill that tries to lump
everything into one, tries to ram the entire issue right through this
body--is not the answer. This is not how we are going to get
immigration reform.
If what you want to do is to stall out true immigration reform, then
by all means put all your eggs in this basket right here. But if you
want real immigration reform, proceed with the step-by-step path. That
is where you are going to get bipartisanship. That is where you are
going to get compromise. In fact, that is where compromise is to be
found because that is where more people will get more of what they want
out of government.
Would the Senator tend to agree with that analysis, that we would be
better off with a step-by-step approach?

[[Page S4779]]

Mr. SESSIONS. I really do. I think the American people would feel
better about it. I remember after the immigration bill last time, and
the ObamaCare, Senator Lamar Alexander, one of our more respected
Members, said: We don't do comprehensive very well in the Senate. I
think that is right because these matters are so complex. For example,
I have offered a very detailed amendment dealing with simply how the
ICE agents will have to identify and deport people they apprehend who
came in violation of the law. That is very difficult. We talked earlier
about the entry-exit visa system. We have been working on it for years.
The law requires it now. We simply need to go the last distance and get
it done. But this bill backs away from it. It would take some time. It
really should be a separate piece of legislation to deal with the
entire visa system.
Then you have how many people come and what skills they should bring
and should they not be more merit-based. The bill claims to make
progress in that regard, but it is very--it is really not because the
nonskilled percentage goes up even though we do have more skilled
workers. But the percentage still is out of whack because most people
will be coming without reference to their skills. That really needs a
lot of time, thought, and effort.
Then the border itself is a complex issue.
Then, how should we best create a seasonal worker, guest worker
program for our agricultural industry, which does need seasonal
workers? And we can create something that will work for them, but, boy,
that takes a lot of care too.
This bill says people come--many of them in these guest worker
programs--for 3 years with their family, and they get to stay another 3
years and maybe another 3 years. Presumably, if they do not have a job,
they are supposed to go home. Do you think we are going to try to round
up people and deport people who have been here for 6, 9 years, deport
them and send them home if they are out of work for a while? It just
doesn't sound like a practical solution. So a real temporary guest
worker program, it seems to me, should be drafted with great care, and
to the extent possible a person would come without family to do a
specific job and then return.
There are lots of other examples in the bill that should have
fundamentally separate pieces of legislation, thoughtfully considered,
with law enforcement officers participating, economists being
considered, and studies being conducted to see the best way to serve
the American interests. That should be our goal--serving the legitimate
national interests of America, including security. That could be the
subject of another bit of it, how to enhance our national security from
terrorists and other dangerous people who would enter the country.
Mr. LEE. It is interesting. When I have individuals and groups come
through my office telling me they would like me to support this bill, I
ask them, of course, why. Inevitably they will point to usually just
one or two of the countless provisions in this thousand-page bill. It
is almost always because of one very discrete component within the bill
that they like. Perhaps they like the high-skilled visa reform. Perhaps
they like the low-skilled visa reform. Perhaps they like some piece
here or there. But it is always one or two very discrete provisions.
That is what caused them to say: I want you to vote for this thousand-
page bill.
Inevitably I will ask them: Have you read the whole bill? If you
haven't read the whole bill, have you at least studied the whole bill?
Have you studied each of the constituent parts? Have you studied the
implications of all the other provisions for which you would be asking
me to vote?
Inevitably the answer is no. It is an unqualified, unapologetic no,
and in many cases it is a no that is uttered in a way that makes me
realize they have not considered the question. I don't fault them for
that. Their job is not to legislate, their job is to advocate. In many
instances, they are advocates. In other instances, they are citizen
groups who are just expressing their opinions, and they have every
right to do so. But my job is to legislate. Before I am asked to vote
for a bill, before I am going to vote yes on something to make it law,
I have to read it. I have to understand it. And I have to like not just
one or two provisions, I have to be convinced that on balance this bill
makes sense for the American people and it will do considerably more
good than harm. At a minimum, it won't do more harm than good. I can't
answer that question that way with this bill. I just cannot get there.
So I invite all of the American people, anyone who might be hearing
my voice, to join me in this dialog, to join in this discussion. If you
want to be part of the immigration solution, read the bill. If you
don't want to read the whole bill, just study the whole bill. At least
read a robust summary--not the cheerleading talking points put out by
the bill's principal advocates, but read a really robust synopsis that
tells you how all the pieces connect together, and then tell me whether
you think I should vote for it.
Most of the time, if people do it that way, they are going to come at
this with a very different conclusion.
Mr. SESSIONS. I had the pleasure to talk a little with Congressman
Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and have
followed some of the work they are doing over there. I think they are
doing exactly what the Senator has referred to.

The first piece of legislation they are working on--and they have a
large number of experienced House Members who signed on to it: former
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas, Jim
Sensenbrenner, and others such as Trey Gowdy, who was a Federal
prosecutor for many years, so he understands the law. They have written
a bill that deals with the internal interior enforcement.
They heard from ICE officers, they heard from Border Patrol officers,
and they studied the reality of the situation. They carefully worked
through it, and they produced a piece of legislation that I believe
would be a tremendous asset to the effective enforcement of law in
America on the internal side--one of the aspects of reform that ought
to be done right if we do reform at all. If we do a comprehensive
reform, every part has to be done right.
They can't have a bucket, fix two holes, and leave three more or the
water will run out. I think that is where we go off base. If you bite
off more than you can chew, it becomes a political thing.
So I am selling a vision. My vision is that my bill is going to end
illegality, make everybody happy, make money for America, reduce our
deficit, and everybody should thank me. But the bill, as the Senator
and I have studied it, doesn't do that. There are too many flaws in it
because it is too big.
The Members who worked on this bill are busy Senators. They are
involved in tax reform, they are involved in Libya and Syria, they have
defense issues, and all kinds of issues. They don't have time to
rewrite the entire immigration law of America in a detailed, effective
way all at one time. So that is what we have. We have a document that
seeks to justify talking points, visions, images, and feel-good
approaches.
The Senator from Utah is a good lawyer and the Senator knows that
what is in the bill is what counts. Will the words actually and
effectively accomplish what has been promised for it?
I was a Federal prosecutor for almost 15 years. My judgment tells me
it will not work. It is not what has been promised, and we ought not to
have the American people saddled with a bill that promises good, but in
reality is not good. So that is my fundamental concern about this.
Mr. LEE. That is one of the reasons why I think if we were to break
it up into its constituent parts and debate and vote on each one as a
separate bill, I think the American people would be better served. I
think more of the American people would get more of what they want out
of immigration reform if we were to do it that way.
So in many ways the people who come into my office and tell me: I
want you to support this bill, and I want you to support it because I
like section 345, or whatever section they are talking about, in a lot
of ways they are making my point for me. We ought to address this one
piece at a time, just as they are addressing it with me.
They are not really saying: I want you to vote for S. 744. I mean,
technically, they are saying that; but in reality what they are saying
is, I want you to vote for the section I like. That

[[Page S4780]]

is exactly what we ought to be doing. We ought to vote for the section
they like, and we ought to vote for it one section at a time, one piece
at a time. We will be in a much better position if we do it that way.
I want to commend our chairman who is with us in the Chamber right
now. I commend him for the manner in which he conducted the markup
within the Judiciary Committee.
After being in the Senate now for just 2\1/2\ years, I have been
disappointed at the number of instances in which we have debated,
discussed, and ultimately voted on the bills on the floor without a lot
of opportunities for amendments. Our chairman did a good job in the way
he ran the markup. We had countless opportunities to introduce
amendments, which our chairman allowed, and I appreciated that. I think
he did the right thing by opening that up and saying: Look, if you have
an amendment, I, as the chairman of this committee, want to be sure you
have the chance to air your amendment. I think that is the way we ought
to work here.
It is not the way things have been working here. Perhaps we can take
some hope in the fact that since things have slowed down for about 12
hours now with this one single amendment--perhaps that is an indication
that our friends in the majority are willing to slow down and give this
the time it needs to make sure we all have adequate time for our
amendments. Perhaps not to give this much time to all other amendments
someone wants to write on the fly, but at a minimum it ought to mean we
get enough time to vote on all of those amendments that were prepared
before the Corker amendment came to be an issue.
Yet I fear and I worry a little bit that it might not mean that. I
worry a little bit, based on what I have seen over the last 2\1/2\
years, that come next week, we might all of a sudden transform from a
very sleepy Chamber, which we are now--practically vacant and moving
very slowly, if at all--to a Chamber that is being told we have to run
as fast as we possibly can, that we have to pass this 1,000-page bill
in haste, that there simply is not time to consider amendments that
have been prepared and aired publicly for weeks because we have to pass
it right now.
We will not be given specific reasons as to why we have to pass it
right now, but I fear we could be told we have to pass it this week,
and it cannot wait a single additional week, it cannot wait a single
additional day. At that moment I hope we will remind our friends in the
majority--particularly our friend the majority leader--that on days
like today, the Senate was moving really slowly, and most of the time
the Senate was moving not at all.
I hope he will give us time to air the amendments that the American
people deserve to have considered fully.
Mr. SESSIONS. Well, it is now 10 minutes after 9. We were told that
this special amendment that is going to fix everything in the bill
would be produced at 6 p.m. Apparently, Senators have been going out of
the secret room somewhere and being hot-boxed or had their arms twisted
or given promises to get them to sign on to this new train that will
move rapidly forward. At least that is what it looks like to me.
What we are hearing is--and I don't doubt it--as soon as that
amendment is brought forth and filed tonight, some may ask: Why do you
want to file it tonight? Well, they want to file it tonight so they can
file cloture immediately. They want to file cloture so they can shut
off debate immediately so they would be able to move the bill forward
early next week. So that is the process, and it is favoring one
amendment above everything else.
I am willing to look at it, and I look forward to receiving it, but
it is almost past my bedtime. I normally would like to think I was
heading to slumberland at this time, if not in the bed, and try to
start earlier around here in the mornings.
So here we are, waiting for the bill to be filed. Senators have gone
home for the most part. They have already gone home for the weekend.
There is no real business or votes going to occur, but they could have
if we had started earlier today like the plans were, as I understood
it.
I am uneasy, as is my colleague, that this place is not going to be
relaxed next week. I think the speed is going to pick up, and we are
going to be told: We have to move, move, move, so there is not enough
time for your amendment. Sorry.
That is the pattern too often here, and we end up with just a piddly
few amendments that are not worthy of the great subject of this debate,
and I am just sad about it. I thought for a while there we were going
to really get into some amendments this week, and I thought it would be
the right thing. We will see what happens.
Mr. LEE. We will see, indeed. There have been just a couple of
occasions when I have seen the Senate work as I think it should work
and casting a lot of votes. That is how it is supposed to function.
That is the kind of body we all thought we were joining when we were
elected to the Senate--a body that debates, discusses, and most
importantly, votes.
The legislative process doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot if all
that happens is we wait for just a few people to emerge from a back
room with a document that no one has read, and people are told to vote
up or down on this, and this is the only vote we are going to get on
this issue, or this is one of only a small handful of votes we are
going to get on this issue. It doesn't mean a whole lot.
When it means a whole lot is when we have an opportunity to cast a
lot of votes and every Senator is given an opportunity to have an input
on a piece of legislation, every Senator is given an opportunity to
express his or her mind, and to express the views, the concerns, the
needs, of his or her respective constituents from around the country.
Remember a few weeks ago when we were discussing the budget
resolution, we stayed here all night. We stayed here until about 5:30
in the morning, as I recall, casting vote after vote after vote. It was
exhilarating. It was refreshing. It was necessary. I thought: This is
how a republic is supposed to operate.
Mr. SESSIONS. Constituents have a right to hold us accountable. It
has become the mood of the leadership--really of both parties--to
protect Members from tough votes. Members say: Of those 16 amendments,
there are 2 that I don't want to vote on because I will make somebody
mad back home. But we are paid to vote. We are paid to be
representatives. We are paid to be accountable.
The American people ought to be able to hold us accountable, and if
we don't vote, they have a difficult time knowing what we are actually
doing up here. They have a difficult time of holding us accountable--as
they have a right to do in a democratic republic where elections
count--and they need to be able to judge us before they reelect us or
vote us out of office. I think this is a big part of this trend to
avoid voting to protect Members.
Now Senator McConnell--a very experienced Senator who loves the
Senate--used to always say that the burden of the majority was they
have to move legislation. They have to actually move bills, and that
means they have to subject the bill to amendments on the floor and
Members have to vote. They have to be held accountable. There is no
avoiding it. That is what they have to do.
The majority has the responsibility--if they are going to be a leader
and actually change the country and advance their agenda--they have to
bring legislation to the floor, and traditionally then the Senator
would be subject to debate, criticism, and amendment. We have curtailed
that in a way that I don't think is healthy for the Republic, as well
as making the legislation better, which can occur with votes and
amendments.
So I think the Senator has raised some valid points there.
Mr. LEE. I think that is an important observation my friend has made.
In so many ways, this practice that the Senator has described--a
practice that results in minimizing rather than maximizing the number
of votes we cast--has as its ultimate objective, not the enhancement of
the finished legislative product, but instead the perpetual protection
of incumbency.
We were not chosen by our constituents just to come here and stay
here for as long as we possibly could. We were chosen by our
constituents to come here and to make law, and to make the law as good
as we could possibly make it. We were brought here to

[[Page S4781]]

improve it to the greatest extent of our ability regardless of the
consequences to us personally.
It is interesting what the Senator said just a few minutes ago. We
are paid to vote. In a very real sense I think that is right. Wouldn't
it be interesting if we were literally paid according to how many votes
we cast?
As a lawyer, the Senator is probably familiar with what may well be
anecdotal, but some have suggested that one of the reasons why certain
types of contracts in olden times were so long is that sometimes
lawyers were paid not by the hour but by the word in a
contract. Sometimes, as a result, the vestigial remains persist to this
very day. They were so long because lawyers were trying to maximize
their fee for the contract they were writing up. I am sure that wasn't
helpful to clients back then and it wasn't necessarily good for the
practice of law, but it did result in a lot of words. I am sure if we
were paid according to each vote, if we got paid more for each vote we
cast, we would be casting thousands and thousands of votes every single
year.

Don't get me wrong, I am not necessarily suggesting that is how it
ought to work. I am not necessarily suggesting that is a good way to
run things here. But at least in that circumstance, we would have an
incentive to do what we were sent here to do, which is to vote. At
least in that respect, there would be something to offset what has
apparently become an instinct that is inherent in serving in this
place, an instinct which at least perhaps the majority shares or the
majority leader believes in, which is we should in some cases cast as
few votes as possible.
Look, we have known this was a problem for a long time. We have known
we have needed to fix our immigration system for a long time. We could
have been casting votes this entire week. We haven't. We could have
been casting votes throughout much or all of last week and we didn't.
So I hope in the coming week we will cast a lot of votes and we will
more closely resemble the productive markup we had in the Judiciary
Committee thanks to our chairman who has now joined us on the floor.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time for debate goes until 9:30. The
Senator from Vermont has 13 minutes.
Mr. LEAHY. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer and my
neighbor.
I thank the Senator from Utah for his kind words about the markup in
the Senate Judiciary Committee. As he knows, we had some 300 amendments
before the committee and I brought them up and had them all filed
online a week and a half prior to our committee meeting. I called them
all up one by one, Republicans and Democrats. We debated them and voted
on them. But the difference between what we were able to do in the
committee--incidentally, we voted on something like 140 or so
amendments. About 40 of them were Republican amendments that were
accepted. Of the 140 amendments accepted, all but 2 or 3 were accepted
with both Democratic and Republican votes. Then we passed the
immigration bill by a bipartisan majority. The difference is people
cooperated when we would bring them up.
I have given the Republicans a list of 20 or 30 amendments, both
Republican and Democratic amendments, most of which could be accepted
by voice vote, if they would allow us to bring them up. There are
actually 29 of them. They won't let us bring them up. Talk about
regular order in voting.
We have Begich amendment No. 1285 regarding the Social Security
Administration. We have Cardin-Kirk No. 1286, providing social service
agencies the resources to help holocaust survivors. We have Carper-
Hoeven-Pryor No. 1408, preventing unauthorized immigration transiting
through Mexico. We have Carper-Coburn No. 1344, establishing a DHS
office of statistics; amendment No. 1255, as modified; a Coats
amendment No. 1288, changing alternatives to detention programs. We
have Feinstein-Kirk No. 1250, authorization for the use of the CIR
trust fund; Hagan No. 1386, reauthorizing the bulletproof vest
program--something that began as a bipartisan bill, Ben Nighthorse
Campbell, a Republican from Colorado and myself. We have Heinrich No.
1342, extending hours of operation at port of entry in Santa Teresa,
NM; another requiring DHS to submit a report to Congress on how the 10
airport biometric exit pilots impact wait times. We have Kirk-Coons No.
1239, allows certain naturalization requirements be waived for U.S. Air
Force active-duty members to receive military awards; Klobuchar-Coats,
adoption amendment; a Landrieu No. 1338 about E-Verify; Landrieu-
Murkowski No. 1302, public-private partnerships expanding land ports of
entry; Landrieu-Cochran No. 1383, requires reports on EB-5 programs. We
have Landrieu No. 1341, requiring DHS to attempt to reduce detention
daily bed rate; Leahy-Hatch No. 1183, and I mention that one only
because it is cosponsored by the senior Democrat and the senior
Republican. Leahy No. 1454, a technical amendment; Leahy No. 1455, EB-5
clarification; Murray-Crapo No. 1368, prohibiting the shackling of
pregnant women absent extraordinary circumstance in all DHS detention
facilities. Gosh, there is one we can pass unanimously. We have Nelson
No. 1253, providing additional resources for maritime security; Reed
1223, increasing the role of public libraries in the integration of
immigrants; Schatz-Kirk No. 1416, GAO report on visa processing;
Shaheen-Ayotte No. 1272, expands the INVEST visa program; Stabenow-
Collins No. 1405, requiring a number of administrative changes; Tom
Udall No. 1241, expanding the Border Enforcement Security Task Force;
Tom Udall No. 1242, $5 million available to strengthen border
infectious disease surveillance.

We have a few others. These are all totally noncontroversial, both
Republican and Democrat. Normally--and I hate to sound like here is the
way we did it in the old days, but normally on a bill of this
complexity, we take all the noncontroversial Republican and Democratic
amendments, lump them together, voice vote them, and then start voting
on the controversial ones.
There is the list we gave the other side. We said they are all
noncontroversial, can't we accept them? It takes 10 minutes, 20
minutes, to do a unanimous consent request and accept them all. They
said no. They said, We have to have controversial amendments. Well, why
not do the noncontroversial ones and then set up a time for boom, boom,
boom, controversial ones. We did it in the committee and it worked.
I see my colleague from Utah. I will yield to him without losing my
right to the floor.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, if I may ask my friend from Vermont, we would
love to see us move forward. Why don't we both propose three of our
respective side's top amendments, come up with a unanimous consent
agreement right now, and there would be six amendments we could take up
for a vote.
Mr. LEAHY. I would say to the distinguished Senator from Utah, I made
such suggestions to the Republican side. They were unable to accept it,
or unwilling. That was not objected to by the distinguished Senator
from Utah but by some on his side who have said they won't accept any
agreement, and that is why we are here.
It makes me think when the distinguished Republican came to the floor
and asked the majority leader: What is holding up the judge from my
State?
The leader said: Every single Democrat is prepared to vote for your
judge.
And we said, Let's have a unanimous consent and let's bring up the
judge that the Republican Senator asked for and we will have a vote on
it right now. Now, to his credit, that Republican Senator was perfectly
willing to, but he was told no by his leadership. And weeks and months
and a long time later we finally voted on that judge. I think it was a
unanimous vote.
But we have cleared every one of the amendments I have talked about,
Republicans and Democrats. There are 28 or 29 amendments. If we are
really serious, let's pass them all and then take whatever is left that
is controversial and take them up one by one. I am happy to vote all
night long, all day tomorrow, an hour equally divided on each vote. But
the fact is, with the distinguished majority leader's concurrence, we
proposed 29 or more amendments that could be done in 2 minutes and we
were told by the other side they

[[Page S4782]]

don't want to bring up any of these amendments.
We have to understand, a majority of Senators in both parties--we had
84 who voted for cloture--want to finish this bill. The fact is there
are a small number on the other side who want no immigration law and
they will try to stall it forever.
I talked about us all being here in December singing Christmas
carols. I hope we can avoid that for two reasons. One, it would be a
terrible way to legislate. Secondly, now that we have TV coverage in
the Senate--something that wasn't here when I came here--for the
American people to be subjected to my singing voice, it would be cruel
and unusual punishment. I believe it is something that is prohibited by
the Constitution. And as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I
would hate to be the one to violate the Constitution by inflicting such
cruel and unusual punishment.
So I would suggest as an alternative we listen to the distinguished
majority leader, the senior Senator from Nevada: Get an agreement, go
forward, vote on all of these things, avoid my friend from Utah and
others having to hear me sing Christmas carols as we wrap this thing
up, and do as we did in the Judiciary Committee.
I think it was about this time, the Senator from Utah may remember,
or maybe it was a little bit earlier than this, the last evening we
were voting and we finished. I had provided so-so pizza in the back
room. I think some liked it, some didn't, but it encouraged everybody
to finish and we finished. We passed out a bill to the floor.
I see the distinguished majority leader has arrived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. The hour of 9:30 being momentarily here, I ask unanimous
consent that the prior agreement that was in effect the last hour be
continued for another hour until 10:30. It means I will be recognized
at 10:30, that we will--this will be for debate only, the time will be
divided between the two sides, and that any quorums called during the
hour will be equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, before we wrap up, we were told that
this special amendment--the one with the highest priority that the
leadership all seems to think is so valuable--would be filed at 6
o'clock. Now it is 9:40 p.m. and we still have not seen it. Perhaps
they are adding special clauses in to get special Senators' votes
before they file it. But I suspect it will be done tonight because the
plan, obviously, is to file cloture on it immediately and try to move
it to a vote as soon as possible.
I want to conclude my remarks tonight on one subject. The American
people are good and decent people. They believe in immigration. They
have always supported immigration in this country. But they have been
demanding, pleading, praying for this government to develop a good and
decent system of immigration that serves our national interests and
makes them proud. And for 30, 40 years we have had a situation in which
people have been coming in massive numbers illegally, and it is not
right. The American people are not happy about it. They are angry with
their politicians.
I remember saying in 2007 that the people were not mad at immigrants.
They were mad at those of us in Congress and in the White House and in
the departments and agencies of government for not doing our jobs.
That is what they are angry about. I saw a poll not long ago that
said 88 percent of the people said they were angry at Congress and only
12 percent said they were angry at people who entered the country
illegally. I think that is where the American people are. So we
promised and promised and promised that we would pass legislation that
would end the illegality and that we would make the American people
proud of the system we have. It has not happened.
So this amendment claims it has 700 miles of fencing in it, according
to the newspapers, although we have not seen the amendment that is
about to be here. It was not in the original bill. But now, after it
ran into tough sledding--people started reading it, and it began to
sink in popularity with the people and with Members of the Senate--they
came up with, they say, a bill that adds fencing in it. Not long ago
they were saying it was stupid to have a fence. Now we have an
amendment that says 700 miles of fencing. Well, let share a thought or
two about that.
In 2007, 2008, we passed bills to build fences--700 miles. I was one
of the main sponsors. I think I was the sponsor of 700 miles of double-
wide fencing. Eventually, it came out of the House, I believe. We did
not have money in our appropriations bill to pay for it. We had voted
for having a fence, but they did not put up the money. We complained
about that and complained about that, so they got embarrassed, and I
remember saying: Boy, isn't this clever? You go home and say you voted
to authorize a fence, and when it came time to put money up, you did
not vote for it. So we put up the money, actually agreed to fund it.
Oh, then they decided: Well, we did not really want to build a fence.
We would have a virtual fence. I believe Senator McCain said the other
night that we spent $800-and-something million on a virtual fence that
never worked. Every bit of it had to be abandoned--some high-tech
scheme--and the fence never got built. This was in 2008.
Now, the first bill comes forward, they claim they had fencing in it.
But when you read the bill, do you know what it said? Secretary
Napolitano was supposed to send forward a plan for fencing--a plan for
fencing. But the truth is that Secretary Napolitano is on record
publicly--more than once--saying she did not think we needed any
fencing. So what kind of plan was she going to submit under this bill?
So we mocked that, made fun of it. But that was their goal. The goal
was to pass an immigration bill that pretended to say we are going to
build barriers and fencing at the border and not have it in there. That
is what the plan was when they offered the bill. But after it hit tough
sledding, now we have 700 miles. But it is single fencing, not double,
and that is not nearly as good because a person can penetrate a single
fence and get by pretty quickly, but if they have to do double-fencing,
they have a real problem, and you can run a government vehicle on a
roadway between them, and it is very effective.
That was done fundamentally in San Diego a number of years ago. San
Diego's area at the border was lawless--drugs, crime, degradation of
real estate values, and it was just awful.
They built a good, solid double fence. All of a sudden property
values went up, crime dropped, and the area is doing so much better
today. So the fences in these kinds of areas are not damaging. Fences
can make things better. As they say sometimes, good fences make good
neighbors.
I am not impressed with that so much. I do think it is important for
us to ask ourselves will it actually get built this time if we pass it.
I have my doubts because they do not have the trigger on it, as I
understand from the reports; the trigger being you do not get the
amnesty until you get the fence built. Then you might get some fencing.
Senator Thune offered a good amendment. Senator Thune's amendment
said, before we give the first bit of amnesty, we should build at least
350 miles of the double fencing. Then the other 300 has to be built
after that. That was voted down. But after the bill got in trouble, now
they have 700 miles in there of at least a single fence.
So that is the why this process has worked. I believe the American
people are absolutely right to be unhappy with their government because
we have not served them well. They have asked us and pleaded with us to
produce a legal system of immigration to end the illegality, and we
have failed time and time again to do that which they have asked us to
do. That is the truth. I have been here. I have seen the amendments.
What happens time and again is amendments that do not make much

[[Page S4783]]

difference but sound good, do not work. They pass. But you put up an
amendment that would actually have a substantial impact, such as
actually building substantial fencing, and it goes down. It gets voted
down. It is almost unbelievable. But I have seen it. My first
experience of that was when I learned that people who come for visa
overstays--it is not same kind of crime that crossing a border is. It
is a civil penalty of some kind.
Some people have contended--I do not think correctly because I did a
law review article on it--they have concluded, I don't think correctly,
that the local police who apprehend somebody for drunk driving or
speeding, they find they are here illegally as a result of a visa
overstay, and they cannot hold them. They have to let them go, and they
cannot turn them over to Federal law enforcement officers.
So I offered an amendment to make it a misdemeanor to overstay your
visa. It does not have to be long. But we need to clarify any confusion
that arises from that subject. I thought everybody was going to pass
it, until, lo, they figured it out. Someone who was watching the
legislation said: Wait a minute. If you pass that, it will help them
apprehend and deport people. You cannot pass that. All of a sudden the
opposition arose and it went down. That would have worked. It would not
have cost us any money. It would have given greater power to do the
right thing to the law enforcement community. Boom, it went down.
So under President Bush, he reluctantly came along and got more
favorable to a lawful system of immigration. After his bill failed, he
agreed to establish a 287(g) program. Governor King may be familiar
with that. It was a situation in which local law enforcement officers,
people who work in prisons, people at the State trooper headquarters
and other officers could go to a Federal training for up to 2 weeks, or
maybe more than that, and they would then be trained to properly help
the Federal officers do their duty with regard to people who entered
the country illegally.
President Bush signed off on it. The program was growing. It was very
popular. Alabama was one of the States that sent people to be trained
because we did not want to violate anyone's rights. President Obama has
basically killed it. They basically ended the program. I will just say
to my colleagues, if we do--and at some point I think we will provide
legal status for millions of people who are in our country illegally in
a compassionate way and try to do what we can--be generous to them,
even though they violated the law. If we do that, are we not going to
have the ability to enforce the law for somebody in the future who
comes illegally?
Is that where we are heading? Because if we do not fix interior
enforcement, we are not ever going to be able to do that. We have a
larger and larger number each year coming legally by visa and
overstaying. Some 40 percent now of the immigrants illegally in our
country are here by virtue of overstaying their visa after coming
legally. So what do you do about that?
We have to have a system in which we welcome the assistance of State
and local law officers. They are not entitled to prosecute people. They
are not entitled to deport people. That can only be done by Federal
judges and Federal officers. But they have always been able to take
somebody who came in across the border illegally, detain them, and then
turn them over to the Federal officers for deportation. They do not
want that to happen.
This has been blocked systematically. Groups such as La Raza have
made this a high priority. Members of the Senate have responded every
time they have asked for help and blocked all legislation that would in
any way advance the ability of good State law officers to assist the
Federal Government in enforcing the law. A State law officer can arrest
a bank robber and turn him over so they can be prosecuted in Federal
court for bank robbery. They can arrest them on any misdemeanor and
turn them over to the Federal Government. They can arrest them on
illegal immigration charges and turn them over to the Federal
Government. There is no doubt about that.
But the government will not take them, will not come and get them.
Ask your local officers what happens if they arrest somebody they know
is in the country illegally. They will tell you nothing happens. ICE
officers are undermanned. They have policies and rules that do not even
allow them to come out and participate. Nobody is participating in the
joint Federal-State 287(g) training program anymore. This is over.
In fact, what we have is the Attorney General of the United States
suing States that want to be helpful to the Federal Government and try
to enforce Federal law. So this is the area to which we have sunk. This
is how far we have gotten away from having integrity in the legal
process of immigration. The American people are not happy. I hope they
are watching this debate because I have spent a lot of time looking at
this, this legislation, 1,000 pages.
Who knows what this amendment will be tonight, how many more pages
will be added. It will not accomplish what the American people have
pleaded with Congress to do. It is focused overwhelmingly, totally has
been focused on getting the amnesty first, even though they told us it
would be enforcement first. They have to admit it is amnesty first.
That is what it is and then a promise of enforcement in the future.
So that is where we are. I wish we could do better. I know we can do
better. We can make the border lawful. We can make the entry-exit visa
system lawful. We can make the workplace E-Verify system serve the
national interests and make it much harder for illegal workers to get
jobs.
Remember, under the bill, we will legalize the people who are here
illegally. We are talking about people coming here in the future. Are
we going to allow them to get jobs? Are we not going to allow ICE to do
their job in the future? Are we not going to empower them? Oddly, all
of the resources are going to the border but none to deal effectively
with the visa overstays.
The Congressional Budget Office that analyzed the bill and gave us a
report 2 days ago, the CBO report says this legislation that we have
heard is so marvelous will only reduce the number of people entering
the country illegally by 25 percent. Can you believe that? Just 25
percent. That is unthinkable, especially after we have been hearing the
great promises of how effective it is.
I wonder about that. One of the concerns CBO expresses, the experts
whom they have who do the best they can, one of the concerns they
express is one I have been talking about since this legislation has hit
the floor: We are going to see a great increase in visa overstays if,
for no other reason, there are going to be twice as many people coming
to America on visas to work under this bill for temporary periods of
time than there are today.
Many of them are not going home when they are supposed to go home.
That is what the numbers show. Many of them in these programs will come
with their families, be able to stay several years, and then they are
asked to go home. Fewer of them are going home. They may have children
in junior high school. They are not going to go home when the law says,
unfortunately. That is the experience we have been seeing. They could
go home. They should have every moral obligation to go home, every
legal obligation to go home.
A very fine lawyer here wrote a piece I was pleased to read recently.
It was the editor of the Yale Law Review, a marine. He said: We tell
our soldiers to go and they go. We tell them, go to Iraq in harm's way,
1 year, 15 months, 18 months, and they go. What do you mean, someone
comes to America for 1 year should not be made to follow the commitment
and the contract we signed? We make our soldiers do it. We are in some
sort of deal here. We cannot expect anybody to follow the law. But my
experience, and the experience I have seen over the years with
immigration is a large number of people are not complying with the law.
We can expect that to happen.
So we are going to see a large increase in visa overstays. It is
going to be more than the border--over illegal entries at the border.
That is going to be a larger and larger part of the problem. CBO
basically found that in their recent report. I think that is truly
accurate.
This legislation comes nowhere close to fixing it. The key to it is
an entry-

[[Page S4784]]

exit visa. Current law requires that there be an entry-exit biometric
visa that covers air, sea, and land ports. This bill eliminates the
biometric fingerprint requirement--eliminates that and says it only has
to be effective at air and seaports and not land ports.
This bill is dramatically weaker than current law. We passed six
pieces of legislation calling for entry-exit visa systems over the last
decade. Never been done. So why should we have enforcement first? That
is the reason. We pass a law to build a fence, it does not get built.
We pass a law repeatedly that says, let's have an entry-exit visa
system. It does not get built. It does not occur.
So we need to put the heat on the people who run this government,
including us, to make sure that if we pass something it is going to
actually occur. That is why there has been a broad consensus. There
needs to be a requirement that enforcement occur before legality
occurs. That is why the sponsors were originally saying their bill was
enforcement first. There is every reason for the American people to
doubt that this Nation will follow through on those commitments.
I am concerned about where we are. I am pleased with the way the
House is proceeding. They are moving step by step taking individual
parts of our immigration problem and fixing them.
The first one they are dealing with is interior enforcement. I have
taken a good bit from their bill, and I have an amendment pending. It
will be hugely beneficial to the ability of our ICE officers to enforce
law in the United States and help bring this whole system under
control. It is a very large part of what we do. I am not sure we will
ever get a vote on it. I think I was in the 16 amendments that were
going to be approved for a vote.
What is happening? Everything was put on hold today waiting for the
favorite amendment. It was supposed to be here at 6 o'clock. Now it is
10 p.m. We still haven't seen it. When are we going to get it? Well,
how long will it be? What all will they have in it? We don't know, but
it is not going to be a pristine document, I can tell you that.
My staff and I intend to look at it. We are going to evaluate it, and
we are going to see if it solves all the immigration problems. We are
going to find out if it is great, and we can go home and go to bed at
night and know this problem has been fixed. That is what we are being
told, but I don't think it is going to show that. Why? Because this
bill doesn't, and they said it did. They said it fixed all the
problems, but it does not.
They said they didn't believe in a fence. They said the Senator said
it was stupid to have a fence. Now all of a sudden we have 700 miles of
fence.
They said Senator Cornyn was overreaching. He wanted 5,000 new border
agents. Now the bill gets in trouble and they come in with 20,000
border agents and say it is paid for. There is plenty of money to pay
for all of this, $30 billion, this article says it is going to go for
that. If it was actually needed and it would work out, I would help
deal with that.
I have my doubts that this is the best way to spend our money. I
think this is a political response to a failing piece of legislation, a
dramatic, desperate attempt to pass a dramatic piece of amendment so
they can say it does everything you want and more.
We will see. Hopefully it does improve the border. Again, the border
is just one part of the overall failure of our immigration system.
The right thing for America to do is to continue to welcome
immigrants, to have a legal system that is based on the national
interests of America, very much like Canada, where they give points. If
you are younger, you get points. If you have more education, you get
points. If you speak the language, you get points. If you have special
skills, you get points. You get points for that.
I think a majority, maybe 60 percent of Canadian immigration, is
based on a merit-based competitive system. People apply, and the ones
who are most qualified, the ones who are going to be likely to be the
most successful in Canada, are the ones who get admitted--not the ones
that aren't able to speak the language, who don't have skills that
Canada needs, and who are going to struggle in Canada.
Why shouldn't you choose the ones who have the best opportunity to be
successful? This is so basic. We were told this is a move to merit-
based immigration.
We have done an analysis of that. I did a speech on it. They said
they were moving away from brothers and family connections, and they
were going to have a merit-based system. We have looked at it. About 10
to 15 percent of the total flow is based on this merit-based system.
Then we looked at the details of it in this long 1,000 pages. Clever
people had written it. If you are two children, two young people in
Honduras or Argentina who wish to come to America, one of them has a
brother in America, one of them has dropped out of high school, does
not speak English, has not held a job before, and has no real skills,
the other one was valedictorian of his high school class, he has 2
years of college, speaks English well, studied hard, and is preparing
himself to come to America. Let's say he has 4 years, a college degree.
Under this merit-based point system, the brother gets 10 points and the
young man with the college degree gets 5. It is chain migration by
another name. It takes a master's degree to get as many points as
having a brother in the United States. We were told we were going to
move away from that and more to an honest and competitive system. Even
that small part of the bill that focuses on a merit-based, point-based
system has huge advantages for people with family connections, and very
large advantages for people who come from countries that do not have
many people come to America. They get points and things of that nature
that don't make much sense, frankly.
I am hopeful the legislation that we are going to have filed tonight,
at least we have been promised it will be filed tonight, will enhance
enforcement at our border. I am going to read it carefully to make sure
it does. Then I am going to be looking very carefully to see if it
improves all the other flaws in this system. If it doesn't, I am not
impressed. If it doesn't make this system one that is likely to work, I
am not impressed. That is not enough, to fix one part of the system.
Finally, let me close by saying what the Congressional Budget Office,
our own best advisers on economic matters, told us 2 days ago in their
report. This is what they said. They said this legislation that is
before us today will reduce the amount of illegal immigration by only
25 percent, not what we were promised, only 25 percent.
They said this legislation that is before us today will reduce the
average wage of Americans in this country, reduce wages at a time when
wages have been declining regularly. They have said if passed, this
bill before us today, and unlikely to be changed by the Corker-Hoeven
amendment, would increase unemployment. It would make more people out
of work, make more people go on unemployment compensation, go on food
stamps, go on SSI, and maybe go on disability if they can get it,
because they can't find a job. We will have this very large flow of
workers into our country, beyond I think what the country can absorb at
a time of high unemployment. Wages will go down. Unemployment will go
up. Illegality in this system is only marginally reduced.
I don't think that is a bargain. I don't see how we can go to our
constituents and say that is what we are going to pass. I really don't
think so.
Let's don't do this, colleagues. Let's stop and push back here. Let's
let the House proceed, as they seem to be doing. Let's send our bill
back to committee and consider some of these issues such as will it
help people get jobs or will it hurt people's ability to get jobs. Will
it help their wages go up or will their wages go down. If it is pulling
wages down, why are we doing it? This is where I think we are. I
believe it ought to be reviewed, reviewed carefully. The American
people need to know what is happening here. They are going to have to
watch what happens because there is a politically correct movement in
this body to move this bill out for all kinds of reasons unrelated to
the substance of the legislation.
We are here to pass legislative substance, not some political vision,
not some scheme to get votes. That is what we need to be doing. We are
not doing that effectively, in my opinion.

[[Page S4785]]

This legislation is defective. It should not be passed, and I am
confident tonight, if we get an amendment that deals with the border,
it still will leave huge parts of this legislation defective and
unworthy of support.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I urge all Senators who say that deficit
reduction is important to them to join us and support the Border
Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act as
reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Our bill will help us
achieve nearly $1 trillion in deficit reduction according to the
estimation of the Congressional Budget Office, CBO.
To those Senators who are interested in growing our economy, I say
join us and support this bill that CBO expects will lead to hundreds of
billions of dollars of economic activity, and help increase our gross
domestic product by 5.4 percent when its full impact is reached over
the next 20 years. If we are able to pass and implement a fair program
reflective of American values, the beneficial economic impact should be
even better. I think passing comprehensive immigration reform is the
right thing to do and will be good for the economy and the country.
One of the themes of the Senator from Alabama throughout committee
consideration of the bill and now before the Senate is his contention
that bringing undocumented people out of the shadows and into the
economy as full participants will hurt the wages of American workers at
the lowest end of the pay scale. I disagree because I believe that
wages are already being depressed by the reality that undocumented
workers are often forced to work for subminimum pay and that already
depresses wages and job opportunities for other American workers.
The recent CBO report uses conservative assumptions to estimate that
once immigration reform is implemented, average wages would actually
increase and be one-half of 1 percent higher than they would be if we
did not pass it. That is their estimate of the longer term impact of
the legislation.
It is also notable, if not surprising, that opponents of
comprehensive immigration reform focus on isolated numbers without
acknowledging the overall impact of the bill. Senators need to remember
that CBO has estimated that the bill will decrease Federal deficits by
nearly $1 trillion when implemented.
Moreover, the CBO report explains that the limited period in which
average wages are estimated to be slightly lower is ``primarily because
the amount of capital available to workers would not increase as
rapidly as the number of workers.'' It concludes, however, that ``the
rate of return on capital would be higher under the legislation . . .
throughout the next two decades.''
Further, CBO expressly notes that it does not mean to imply what
opponents contend; namely, that current U.S. residents would be worse
off, on average, under the legislation. Finally, CBO concludes that the
legislation would result in raising the productivity of both labor and
capital and boost the amount of capital investment in this country.
That is not what the Senator from Alabama said on Wednesday
afternoon. Instead, he incorrectly asserted a number of points. In
particular, he said that the CBO report indicates that the
comprehensive immigration reform legislation ``will reduce the wages of
American citizens.'' That is not true. The CBO report does not say
that. I wish the Senator from Alabama were more precise in his analysis
and his statements.
The CBO cost estimate and report go out of their way to note that the
initial estimate is on ``average wages'' and ``do[es] not imply that
current U.S. residents would be worse off, on average, under the
legislation.'' The estimate is a ``difference between the averages of
all U.S. residents under the legislation.''
The report continues to clarify that ``the additional people who
would become residents under the legislation would earn lower wages, on
average, than other residents, which would pull down the average
wage.'' That does not mean that current U.S. citizens will be paid any
less than they are currently making or be worse off, which is what the
Senator from Alabama was implying.
Here is what I think this all means. Those coming out of the shadows,
who had been exploited and working for less than even minimum wage,
would as registered provisional immigrants be expected to make more
than they had been making.
Adding them to the work force would nonetheless mean that ``average
wages'' for the working population would be slightly lower at the
outset of the implementation period. Average wages do not mean that any
American citizen's wages will be ``reduce[d],'' which is what the
Senator from Alabama said. He made it sound like passing the bill will
mean a pay cut for citizens. That is not true.
Moreover, the Senator from Alabama either stopped reading or stopped
caring when the report went on to say that average wages would increase
thereafter. The report goes on to say that ``over time, as capital
investment increased,'' ``average wages would be higher than under
current law.'' Opponents of the bill should stop trying to use scare
tactics and misleading statements to stir up emotional reactions
against the bill and against the undocumented immigrants we should be
encouraging to come out of the shadows and fully join American life.
America protects the most vulnerable among us, which include
survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, as well as
pregnant women, and children. I am proud to report that there are
strong protections in this bill for the treatment of kids caught in the
broken immigration enforcement system.
I know that some may want to punish the 11 million undocumented
people currently living here in the shadows, and the bill specifically
contains a steep financial penalty for that purpose. The undocumented
also need to go to the back of the line and take classes to learn
English, but those tough steps are not enough for those who oppose the
bipartisan bill.
While some may want to look like they are being even tougher on the
undocumented population, we all need to consider how further punitive
measures may deter people from coming out of the shadows. When kids and
pregnant women are put at risk by an urge to punish millions of people
who are trying to make a better life for their families, we do not live
up to our American values and we do not make this a safer country.
I oppose amendments to deny or delay protections for the millions of
people who will apply for Registered Provisional Immigrant status. If
we are talking about programs that literally feed the hungry or provide
vaccinations to children, we hear lectures about how we cannot afford
those programs in the current fiscal environment. It is a cruel irony
that when some on the other side of the aisle consider programs that
help kids who live near the poverty line, they raise fiscal concerns,
but they have no problems with massive Government expenditures on
fencing and expensive visa exit technology and programs.
The bill we are considering prohibits immigrants in Registered
Provisional Immigrant status from access to any Federal means-tested
public benefit programs throughout their time in provisional status.
In addition, as a result of the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act, even qualified Legal Permanent Resident
immigrants must wait an additional 5 years after they are legalized to
receive any safety net protections. Most immigrants who are working
their way through the path to legalization will have to wait anywhere
from 13 to 15 years before having any access to safety net programs.
Given the penalties and fines they have to pay, it is wrong to further
deny these low-income families protections that some may desperately
need.
I have seen similarly harmful amendments on the issues of the Earned
Income Tax Credit, EITC, and the Child Tax Credit, CTC, which were
designed to help hardworking families who pay taxes. The Earned Income
Tax Credit is available only to families that are working and paying
payroll taxes. The EITC is a core part of the tax code--like any other
tax credit that adjusts Federal tax liability based on families'
circumstances. It is not, and has never been considered a ``public
benefit.''

[[Page S4786]]

Yet, amendments have been filed seeking to deny the EITC for all
registered immigrants for eternity, even after the individual has
obtained legal status. One of these amendments was offered during the
committee process, and was rightly rejected. I will strongly oppose any
amendment to deny hard working families from participating in these tax
credits when they are paying payroll taxes.
While CBO estimates refundable tax credits may total $127 million
during the first 10 years after passage of comprehensive immigration
reform, those tax credits are more than fully offset by the payment of
taxes. Remember that revenues increase and the deficit decreases under
our legislation. So when those tax credits are seen in the context of
the increased taxes being paid, they are offset by increased revenues
every year.
Some who oppose comprehensive immigration reform had raised the false
alarm that this immigration bill would drain our Social Security Trust
Fund and bankrupt our Medicare system. Nothing could be further from
the truth. In an editorial dated June 2, 2013, entitled ``A 4.6
Trillion Dollar Opportunity,'' The Wall Street Journal stated
unequivocally that ``Immigration reform will improve Social Security's
finances.'' That has now been substantiated by the CBO report, which
estimates decreases in the off-budget deficit every year beginning in
2014 following enactment this year.
The goal of this bill is to encourage undocumented immigrants to come
out of the shadows so we can bring them into our legal system and so
everyone will play by the same rules. If we create a reason for people
not to come out and register, then it will defeat the purpose of this
bill. Amendments that seek to further penalize the undocumented will
encourage them to stay in the shadows. These steps will not make us
safer and will not spur our economy.
One of the many reasons we need immigration reform is to ensure that
there is not a permanent underclass in this great Nation. As part of
this effort, we need to continue the vital safety net programs that
protect children, pregnant women, and other vulnerable populations. Too
often, immigrants have been unfairly blamed and demonized as a drain on
our resources. The facts are--as substantiated by the CBO report--just
the opposite. Immigrants reinvigorate and grow our economy.
The bottom line is that enacting our judiciary committee reported
bill will significantly reduce our budget deficit and grow the economy.
It is the smart thing to do and the right thing to do.

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