[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 35 (Monday, March 27, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2400-S2402]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION REFORM
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are about to begin this week a very
significant discussion, debate, and, hopefully, passage of some
legislation to address what is one of the crucial public policy issues
we have as a country, which is the question of how we handle
immigration.
We are, obviously, a nation which has been built on immigrants. Every
one of us in this country, except for Native Americans, comes from a
family that came from somewhere else and immigrated to this country. It
is a part of our heritage of which we are most proud, the fact we have
been able to assimilate cultures from around the world and bring them
to the United States and create America. We should take pride in
something that sets an example for the rest of the world to show that
people can gather and can live together and can be productive and can
produce a nation founded on democracy, freedom, liberty, individual
rights, and heritage--heritage which has built a matrix of strength for
us as a nation as we bring together peoples from different cultures and
we form an America.
E Pluribus Unum, the line above the Presiding Officer of the Senate,
says it so well: From many, one. We are, therefore, a nation which
needs to have an immigration policy which understands that, which,
first and foremost, appreciates and continues to reward the idea that
there are people from around this world who wish to come to America to
participate in this country and to make us a more productive place in
which to raise their children and to assist us as a nation in being
stronger economically, socially, and from a standpoint of inner
strength we obtain from having so many different people participate in
our country. We always want to be that beacon, that light upon the hill
that draws the world to us. As long as people want to come to America,
we know we are doing something right, and we should take great pride in
it.
We continue to be a place where people want to come and, as a result,
we do have issues of how we deal with immigration. But most
importantly, as we move down this road, we have to recognize it is
critical that we not do anything which tarnishes or chills or in any
way undermines that great tradition of America, which is that we reach
out our arms to people who wish to come here and be productive and
participate in our way of life.
However, unfortunately, over the last few decades, and especially in
an accelerated way as we moved through the nineties and moved into this
first decade of 2000, we have seen that a large number of people are
coming into our Nation illegally. They are not following the course
which is available to become an American citizen legally--to immigrate
here, to take advantage of our system, and to build on the
opportunities that are here but to do it legally. That has become a
problem for us. It is a problem, obviously, from the standpoint that it
violates our laws. It is also a problem for us in the post-9/11 world
where we need to know who is coming into this Nation because of the
threat of terrorist acts against us.
For the most part, these people who come to our country have come
here for purposes which are good and decent. They want to have a better
life. They want to be able to earn a better living. They want to be
able to give their families more than they had in the nation they left.
That is a well-intentioned purpose. But they have still come here
illegally, and we need to address the issue of how we deal with that
situation.
This question has been divided into basically two functions. First is
how we physically control the borders of our Nation and make sure those
borders are reasonably secure so that we have a decent idea of who is
coming across those borders and why they are coming into our Nation.
The second question is how we deal with people who have come here to
work, to perform tasks which are available to them, people who may
already be here illegally, but people who still want to come here and
do it in a way that is within the law. And that, of course, involves
the debate over a guest worker program.
On the first issue, I have had a fair amount of interest and
involvement because I chair the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over
this question, the Subcommittee on Homeland Security. The question of
whether our borders are secure is something which, since I have taken
over as chairman of this subcommittee, has been all consuming over the
last 2 years I have had the good fortune of chairing this subcommittee
of the Appropriations Committee. It is pretty obvious to any American
that our borders are not secure, that we do not know who is coming in.
We certainly don't know who is leaving. We don't know what is coming
in, and we don't know, to a large degree, what is going out.
But on the issue of movement of people, we are attempting to address
that question. We have over the last 2 years significantly increased
the resources going into border security. We have increased the number
of Border Patrol agents by almost 2,000. We have increased the number
of beds which are available--what is known as detention beds--also by a
significant number. We have increased resources flowing in to the
border security area, especially in the area of technology capability,
trying to set up a system called US-VISIT which will allow us to
effectively track who is coming into our country on a real-time basis
through using fingerprints and our databases on fingerprints. We have
made progress, but we are nowhere near solving the problem.
I wanted to talk briefly about that specific issue and then a little
bit about the bigger issue of the guest worker program and how you
become an American citizen.
As the Judiciary Committee wrestles with this problem of border
security, it is important that we do it the right way, that we think
about it in terms of what is going to get the best results versus what
is going to get the best press releases.
To begin with, we do not need a wall across our southern border. We
don't need it from the standpoint of being able to know who is coming
across the border, we don't need it from the standpoint of being good
neighbors, and we do not need it from the standpoint of presenting the
national culture. Doing that would be the exact opposite of what we
should do as a Nation.
There may be sections, clearly, where some sort of fencing or wall
will be necessary, sections where the commingling of the border is so
close that it is very difficult to control that section without some
sort of a definable event which forces people who wish to come across
the border through a controlled point, but to run a wall the length of
the border as has been suggested by some of our colleagues, especially
in the other body, is just anathema to the concept of what America
stands for. We want to continue to be a society which says we are open,
that we are a place where people are encouraged to come, and that we
are a place that reaches out to people who wish to be productive and
come here to be productive
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citizens. Furthermore, it would cost a huge amount of money, and it
would accomplish very little.
So much more could be accomplished through other means, such as the
addition of a fairly significant but not dramatic increase in the
number of border agents, if we went up to, say, 20,000--we are now at
about 13,000--and with the addition of a fairly significant but not a
dramatic amount of new detention beds and some creative approach to
detention capability such as using former military bases and the
facilities that might be available through transient housing. Maybe we
could use some of those trailers we have sitting down there in Arkansas
which are not being used. But through creative detention capability, we
could add the necessary additional beds, and there are not that many
needed compared to the overall numbers, with creative approaches using
technology, of which we have an unlimited source of ingenuity in this
Nation. In fact, every day, it seems as if somebody comes to my office
with a new idea as to how to create a monitoring system or some form of
monitoring system through the use of unmanned vehicles, through the use
of satellite technology, through the use of sensors, which would not
cost that much. With the creative use of just adding physical capital
assistance such as new cars, new helicopters, new planes for Customs,
such as new capacity for the Coast Guard, we could, without a great
deal of incremental increase compared to the expending which we do in
other parts of this government, effectively monitor and manage
certainly the southern border. As a result, we would know who was
coming into this country across that southern border, which is where
most of the illegal immigration occurs.
Would we solve the northern border issues? Probably not. That is a
little different puzzle. The northern border does not have the huge
illegal immigration issue, but it does have an equally severe, maybe
even more severe opportunity for terrorists, people who wish to do us
harm, to cross. There are other approaches which need to be taken
there. But as to the southern border, it is totally possible,
reasonable, and should be done to manage that border effectively with
the addition of some significant resources, but not dramatic increases.
I suggested a year and a half ago that if we increased the capital
resources available to the Border Patrol and the Customs Agencies by
about $1.2 billion, we could essentially buy out almost all the major
capital needs they need in order to manage the border--all the housing,
all the airplanes, all the cars, all the unmanned vehicle monitors, all
the technology for detection capability we would need. That is a lot of
money by New Hampshire standards, but in the context of a $1.8 trillion
budget, it is certainly a manageable sum. So far, that suggestion has
been stiff-armed by the administration and basically limited as a
result of politics here on the floor of the Senate.
In addition to that capital need, which, as I mentioned, is about
$1.2 billion, there is the need to add new agents, and there is the
need to increase our capability on the operational side. But again, the
dollars necessary to do that are not dramatic, not dramatic at all--
probably in the range of $2 billion of additional funding per year.
That is a lot of money, again, by New Hampshire standards, but in the
context of overall national defense where we are spending $440 billion
plus $90 billion on the war on terrorism, for a total of over $500
billion, an additional $2 billion to secure our southern borders in the
context of personnel increases is not dramatic and is doable. The point
is, it would accomplish our goal, which is to secure the southern
borders.
I have asked for that to be done. Unfortunately, that has not been
done--well, that is incorrect. It was proposed by the administration to
increase the commitment of the number of Border Patrol agents. They
gave that commitment in their budget submission, but they took it away
because they tied it to creating a fee, which would increase the
airline user fee, and the practical result of that would be the money
which was supposed to be used to add these additional agents would
never be realized. But it should be done, it can be done, and if a fee
is necessary to do it, it should be done on a fee basis, but a fee that
has no relationship to the actual usage.
An airline fee does not impact southern border protection. The
airline fee impacts the TSA, and it needs support. It has gone through
2 years of freeze and should be increased in our commitment there, and
this fee maybe should be used to do that. But if we are going to have a
fee, it should be border related, if that is the way it is going to be
done. In any event, it should be done. We should spend those dollars to
accomplish this.
The bill that is working its way through the Judiciary Committee has
a commitment to these types of efforts, but it is an authorizing bill.
It doesn't have to find the money. I have to find the money as an
appropriator, and right now the money isn't there. So the ability to
accomplish those good intentions isn't there.
Also, the bill that is coming through the authorizing committee
creates a number of mandates. It says: This shall be done by Border
Patrol, this shall be done by Customs, this shall be done by the Coast
Guard. I am not sure it addresses the Coast Guard, but it has a number
of mandates for Border Patrol and Immigration, and the practical effect
of that is that it is artificially directing and redirecting flows of
revenues and resources, and it may actually, as a result of those
mandates, end up undermining our ability to effectively address the
border. As the bill comes to the floor, which I hope will be this week,
we can discuss that, and I am sure we can deal with those kinds of
issues.
But the bottom line is simply this: We can accomplish security on the
southern border. We can know to a large extent who is coming in and out
of this country. We can limit dramatically--I mean dramatically; down
to a trickle for all intents and purposes--the number of people who get
into this country illegally across our southern border by the
application of resources which, in the relative context of national
defense, are quite small and in the relative context of the overall
national budget are extraordinarily small. If we have to pay for them,
we should pay for them through some sort of a border security fee. It
can be done.
Why hasn't it been done? Because border security has been a stepchild
around here to national defense for a long time. I find that
unacceptable myself. If we are going to have a defense budget which
spends $440 billion, up from $289 billion just 5 years ago, on top of
which we are spending $90 billion a year to fight a war, one has to
ask: What is the core defense budget for? It is not to fight the war,
obviously, because we have to spend the next exceptional amount of
money on top of it to fight the war, so it is obviously for strategic
defense, for personnel, for operations, and it is needed, I guess, for
the most part. But if that is the need of critical priority, clearly
protecting our southern border is an equal need of national defense.
Maybe we should roll the border security effort into the Defense
Department and then we would get the resources for it, although I think
that would be a bad policy decision, but at least we would get
resources.
In any event, in the context of what is important from the standpoint
of national security, I can't think of anything--well, there are a lot
of things. I think it has to rank right up there at the top, knowing
who is coming in and out of this country, when it is our country that
is at risk. We know these people want to attack us on our soil, so it
is absolutely critical that we have the necessary resources to protect
our borders, to know who is coming in and out of our country so we can
protect ourselves from people who might cause us harm.
It is also critical that, as a culture, we control this. We cannot
survive as a culture if we have a massive amount of people coming into
this country illegally. It just doesn't work. People who want to come
to this country--and we do want to maintain a very open approach to
encourage people to come into this country--have to know that if they
follow the rules and if they come here legally, they are going to be
able to get in line under the rules and legally and get a shot at
American citizenship and participating in the American dream.
So it is critical that we get our southern border under control, and
it is
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critical that we get our northern border under control. It is critical,
we can do it, and we should do it. We should have done it long ago, and
we can do it now, and we should make that commitment to those types of
resources. As this bill moves forward, I intend to make those points
and try to get people to look at this in the context of a doable event
rather than in the context of simply a press release event.
Secondly, on the issue of immigration itself, it is also obvious that
we have to have a workable guest worker program. We have to have
something that says to people: If you want to come here and work and
better your family, there is a way we can work that out. We can make
that happen. That takes the pressure off of illegal immigration.
As we secure the border, it is clear that some sort of effective
guest worker program is necessary. As part of that overall immigration
effort, there is one little slice, though, which I believe we need to
address. It is a small slice.
Today there is a lottery program where you can essentially send in
your name and you are put into a lottery, and you have to be from a
country which is deemed underprivileged, I believe; there is some sort
of categorization. But if your name is pulled out of a hat, you can get
on the path to American citizenship. Fifty thousand names are pulled
out of the hat every year, just as a lottery.
At one time, this may have made sense, but it doesn't make sense
today. It is very obvious today that just pulling people's names out of
hats to put them on the path to citizenship in America is not fair to
those people who are waiting in line and who have a reason and who have
followed the process and have a purpose, and it is not fair to our
Nation. How do we know we want somebody whose name is drawn out of a
hat to be an American citizen? What benefit is that to us, other than
that the person happened to be lucky?
Thus, if we are going to keep this lottery program, I believe we
should change it over to a lottery program which essentially says: If
you want to participate in this lottery, you have to have some unique
talents or skills which America needs, such as a master's degree or a
doctorate in some sort of science or mathematical capability or maybe
some foreign language capability, something that America has a use for.
So I think we should convert this lottery to that type of an approach.
I note that my time is about to expire and that we have both
assistant leaders on the Senate floor, so something big must be
happening. Therefore, I will continue this discussion as we move
forward on the debate of immigration. But I do believe it is critical
to understand that resolving the border issue is a very doable event.
There is no complication to this, it is not subtle. It is simply a
question of resources, and we can accomplish it with the right amount
of resources placed in the right place. We don't need new laws to do
it.
I yield the floor.
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