[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 83 (Monday, May 21, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6388-S6389]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order the motion to proceed 
is agreed to.
  The Senate will proceed to the consideration of S. 1348, which the 
clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1348) to provide for comprehensive immigration 
     reform, and for other purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the chair for the effort he has 
taken. I hesitate very much to impose on the time of the Senate. But 
there ought to be a time now and then when one might impose on the time 
of the Senate.
  Let me read from the Standing Orders of the Senate, Standing Order 
105.
  Hear this: ``Resolved, That it is a standing order of the Senate that 
during yea and nay votes in the Senate, each Senator shall vote from 
the assigned desk of the Senator.''
  I always try to do that, Mr. President. That was by S. Res. 480, 90th 
Congress, second session. October 11, 1984. I will tell you who 
authored that resolution. That was my former colleague, my former late 
colleague Jennings Randolph. I have never forgotten it. Once in a 
while, I vote from the well of the Senate, and sometimes I cast my vote 
from here. But that is what this book says: ``Resolved, that it is a 
standing order of the Senate that during yea and nay votes in the 
Senate, each Senator shall vote from the assigned desk of the 
Senator.''

  There was a reason for that. I won't take the time of the Senate this 
evening to talk about this further, but I will have something to say 
one day about that. ``[E]ach Senator shall vote from the assigned desk 
of the Senator. S. Res. 480, 90th Congress, second session, October 11, 
1984.
  May God bless his name, Jennings Randolph.
  I thank the Senate, and I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as always, we thank the Senator from West 
Virginia for insisting that Senate decorum be enforced. All of us 
understand his devotion to this institution and to its ability to 
function in an effective and efficient way. He reminds us, and we need 
to be reminded at times. We thank him. I remember Jennings Randolph 
making those points time and time again about standing at one's desk. 
That was back at another time, but I certainly remember his service to 
the country.
  So we have some idea of the way we are going to proceed, I have been 
notified, although I haven't had an opportunity to talk either to 
Senator Specter or Senator Kyl or others on the other side, that we 
have two amendments at least that are going to deal with the temporary 
worker provision, one which would effectively strike all of the 
temporary worker provisions that will be probably offered by the 
Senator from North Dakota, and another amendment which will be the 
amendment to reduce the number of temporary workers from 400,000 to 
200,000. Those were amendments similar to the ones we had the last time 
we had the immigration bill. We had a good discussion, and we will have 
that debate, but we don't expect, obviously, that we will be voting 
this evening. We are prepared to involve or engage in the debate or 
discussion, if those Members want to, but it will be our hope that 
those amendments would be done in a timely way for tomorrow. It is a 
good way to get the debate started because it is an issue that is broad 
enough in scope that certainly those of us who were here during the 
last debate remember it quite clearly. Others can understand it quite 
well because it is a fairly obvious issue. It is about what is going to 
be the number, whether we are going to have a temporary worker program 
and whether we are going to have temporary workers at this dimension, 
400,000 reduced to 200,000.

[[Page S6389]]

  I hope that will be the beginning of the debate. We will talk to 
those Members to try to give the membership as much notice as possible 
to address those issues in a timely way. They have indicated their 
desire to start with those. We would expect that to be done.

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