[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 68 (Friday, May 26, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5333-S5335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PASSAGE OF S. 2611

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, this was a truly historic week for the 
Senate. With passage of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 
2006, S. 2611, we have succeeded in maintaining several key components 
of the bill that passed out of the Judiciary Committee 2 months ago--
components that I believe are crucial to fixing our broken immigration 
system.
  For starters, supporters of comprehensive reform in the Senate banded 
together to defeat efforts to remove or further weaken provisions in 
this bill that will allow the estimated 11 million to 12 million 
undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States to earn 
legal status. As both the

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President and the Secretary of Homeland Security have said, mass 
deportation is not a realistic option. Neither is amnesty. This 
legislation would require those who are here illegally to come forward, 
pay hefty fines, pay taxes, learn English and civics, work, and wait in 
the back of the line--before earning the privilege of permanent 
resident status and ultimately a path to citizenship if they choose to 
pursue it. These core provisions remain in the bill, and that is 
critical.
  However, I am disappointed in the changes to the legalization process 
that were made as part of the Hagel-Martinez compromise when the bill 
was first taken up on the Senate floor in April. The compromise would 
treat differently those people who have been here for more than 5 years 
and those who entered the country illegally in the last 2 to 5 years. 
This approach is overly complicated and difficult to administer, and it 
is unfair to treat these two categories of people differently. During 
floor consideration, I voted to remove these arbitrary distinctions 
from the bill. Unfortunately, that vote failed, and I believe we must 
accept this compromise as the only way to move forward with 
comprehensive immigration reform this year.
  I am pleased that efforts to gut the guest worker program were not 
successful and that the Senate added additional measures to strengthen 
labor protections for U.S. workers. We need a guest worker program that 
allows employers to turn to foreign labor as a last resort when they 
genuinely cannot find American workers to do the job. But it is 
important that any guest worker program contain strong labor 
protections, as the program outlined in the legislation does. These 
protections will help ensure that the program does not adversely affect 
wages and working conditions for U.S. workers, and that we do not 
create a second-class of workers, who are subject to lower wages and 
fewer workplace protections. Furthermore, by permitting these workers 
to enter the country legally, we can try to avoid a future flow of 
undocumented workers who would otherwise create a new underground 
economy.
  New border security measures are, of course, an absolutely critical 
element of any immigration reform bill. This bill contains important 
provisions to increase and improve the personnel, equipment, 
infrastructure, and other resources our country needs to protect the 
border, and I strongly support those measures. But border security 
alone is not enough. According to a recent Cato Institute report, the 
probability of catching an illegal immigrant has fallen over the past 
two decades from 33 percent to 5 percent, despite the fact that we have 
tripled the number of border agents and increased the enforcement 
budget tenfold. We also must create realistic legal channels for 
immigrants to come to the United State and that allow undocumented 
immigrants who pass background checks to earn legal status. This reform 
of our immigration system is important to our national security because 
it will enable our border agents to focus their efforts on terrorists 
and others who pose a serious threat to Nation.
  The bill contains other important proposals, such as the DREAM Act, 
which provides higher education opportunities for children who are 
long-term U.S. residents and came to this country illegally through no 
fault of their own; and the AgJOBS bill to help agricultural workers; 
and family reunification. These provisions may not have been subject to 
as much debate as other elements of the bill, but they are just as 
important.
  The amendment process also brought improvements to title III of the 
bill, which creates a new mandatory, nationwide electronic employment 
verification system. If not implemented correctly, such a system could 
result in countless U.S. citizens and other work-authorized individuals 
being denied work as a result of errors or discrimination, a result 
that none of us want. The new version of title III contains important 
privacy, due process, and labor protections to ensure that 
implementation of this system is as fair and accurate as possible. That 
said, this system is a dramatic expansion of an existing pilot program 
that has faced a variety of serious problems, and I have concerns about 
expanding it to a nationwide mandatory scheme. Its implementation will 
require robust congressional oversight to ensure that citizens and 
work-authorized immigrants are not turned down for jobs because of 
mistaken results.
  Although the border security measures and the core reforms to our 
immigration system that are in this bill are very important, I do have 
concerns about some aspects of this bill, including some changes that 
were made to this bill during the amendment process on the Senate 
floor.
  One successful floor amendment would require the Government to build 
370 miles of fence along the southern border. Every Member of this body 
recognizes that border security is critical to our Nation's security, 
but I opposed the border fencing amendment because I cannot justify 
pouring Federal dollars into efforts that have questionable 
effectiveness. Border fencing costs between $1 million and $3 million 
per mile. And yet we will be committing vast resources to an initiative 
that I have serious doubts will even work. While fencing can be 
effective in urban areas, adding hundreds of miles of fencing in rural 
sections of the border will not stem the flow of people who are willing 
to risk their lives to come to this country.

  I was also disappointed that the Senate approved the amendment making 
English the national language of the United States. Instead of 
considering divisive English-only amendments that fan the flames of 
tension over the issue of immigration, we should be providing recent 
immigrants with more opportunities to learn English. I also am 
concerned that this amendment's language could limit the ability of the 
Federal Government to communicate with its citizens, which could have 
potentially devastating consequences in situations like national 
emergencies. That is why I supported an alternative amendment proposed 
by Senator Salazar, which simply recognized English as the ``common and 
unifying'' language of the United States.
  I continue to have serious concerns about some provisions in title II 
of the bill. Despite improvements that were made in the Judiciary 
Committee, title II still contains provisions that are both ill-advised 
and unnecessary. Title II contains measures that require excessive 
deference to executive agency decisionmaking in a variety of 
immigration contexts; that expand the categories of individuals subject 
to the most draconian immigration consequences and apply some of these 
changes retroactively; and that require that civil immigration 
violators be put in the central criminal database used by local, State 
and Federal agencies around the country. Eroding due process rights for 
people in this country will not make us safer, nor is it in keeping 
with our Nation's values of fairness and justice. It will be important 
that we work to improve some of these provisions in the conference 
process.
  I was very pleased, however, that the Senate voted in favor of an 
amendment that I offered on the floor to strike a provision in title II 
that could have had devastating consequences for asylum seekers. The 
provision would have made it harder for asylum seekers, victims of 
trafficking, and other immigrants to get a temporary stay of removal 
while they pursue their appeal than it would be to win on the merits. 
This absurd result has been rejected by seven courts of appeals, and 
the Senate is now on record as well. Although there are many other 
problems with title II of the bill, this was a significant improvement 
and reinstates a critical due process protection.
  An amendment offered by Senator Ensign relating to Social Security 
benefits, which was tabled, has been the subject of a great deal of 
misinformation. Under current law, undocumented immigrants are not 
entitled to Social Security benefits, and there is nothing in the 
underlying bill that would change this. Under the Ensign Social 
Security amendment, immigrants who paid into Social Security and later 
earned legal status would have been prevented from having their 
earnings that they already paid into the system count toward their 
retirement benefits. The amendment, which I opposed, would have limited 
the Social Security benefits only of U.S. citizens and those

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in the country legally. This amendment would have harmed elderly or 
disabled individuals who would be impoverished despite having paid into 
the Social Security system for many years and would deny innocent 
American children who are born to these workers survivor benefits, 
regardless of how long their mother or father worked and paid taxes in 
the United States. In addition, the Ensign amendment would have forced 
taxpayers to pay more for the means-tested welfare programs to which 
these impoverished individuals would have had to turn. For these 
reasons, I opposed the Ensign amendment, and I am pleased that the 
majority of my colleagues did as well.

  Mr. President, the end result of several weeks of hard work is 
bipartisan, compromise legislation that will bring meaningful reforms 
to a system that has long been broken. The bill is far from perfect, 
but on balance, I believe it is a victory for supporters of 
comprehensive reform. But as the saying goes, it ain't over 'til it's 
over. In order for this legislation to become law, we need our 
colleagues in the House to work with the Senate during the conference 
committee process and to adopt a comprehensive approach to this issue. 
And we need the President, who has come out in favor of comprehensive 
reform, to stay invested in this process. He has spoken, but now he 
must act. We will need his help in convincing members of the House to 
abandon ill-conceived notions like criminalizing undocumented people 
and those who provide humanitarian support to them, and chiseling away 
at due process rights. The President's leadership, and the willingness 
of House leaders to work with the Senate, will be crucial in order to 
retain the important reform provisions contained in this bill during 
the conference process.
  This is a defining moment for America, and I am hopeful that the 
Senate, the House, and the President will work together so that we can 
build on this success and enact a comprehensive reform bill by the end 
of this Congress.

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