[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4511-4513]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I wish to talk about immigration reform 
and border security. In particular, since this debate will be 
continuing for this week and the next, I want to emphasize the 
importance of border security, and, obviously, enforcement begins at 
the border.
  But before I talk about border security and enhanced enforcement, I 
want to address the issue of the 12 million immigrants who are already 
here who have come to this country in violation of our immigration 
laws.
  We know why people come to America. It is the same reason they have 
always come: because too often they have no hope and no opportunity 
where they live. So we understand at a very human level why it is that 
people want to come to the United States. Yet I think we all 
acknowledge America cannot open its borders to anyone and everyone who 
wants to come here or we would literally be drowned in a wave of 
humanity.
  We have to regain control of our broken immigration system, and that 
means to deal with enforcement at our borders, to deal with enforcement 
in the interior of our country, and to deal with verification of the 
eligibility of prospective employees to actually work legally in the 
United States. We cannot repeat the mistake this Nation made with the 
1986 amnesty bill.
  I remind my colleagues that in 1986, that legislation required 
illegal aliens to pay a fee, to learn English, to improve themselves by 
working in this country for a set time.
  I also remind my colleagues that everyone agrees on two points when 
it comes to the 1986 experience with the amnesty bill.
  No. 1, they agree it was amnesty. And No. 2, they agree it was a 
complete and total failure. I will continue to work with my colleagues 
on both sides of the aisle to find a solution to this great crisis that 
confronts our country, but I won't accept a repetition of the mistake 
of 1986 when this country granted amnesty in the hopes of that being 
the end of it and in the hopes that there would be a reciprocal 
obligation on the part of the Federal Government to actually sanction 
employers who violate our immigration laws. I am afraid the numbers 
speak for themselves, with 3 million illegal immigrants who benefitted 
from the amnesty and now roughly 12 million who are here awaiting the 
next amnesty. Thus we can see what a magnet amnesty becomes and why it 
is so counterproductive.
  I am proud to represent a border State, the great State of Texas, and 
I

[[Page 4512]]

know from personal experience what problems the border States face. I 
know the strains that illegal immigration and our broken borders have 
placed on local taxpayers when it comes to education, when it comes to 
health care, and I know the anger and frustration that many people feel 
at the Federal Government's abject failure when it comes to enforcing 
our immigration laws.
  I also know the nature of immigration across our borders is changing. 
There is more and more violence on the northern border of Mexico in 
cities such as Nuevo Laredo. I have listened to the concerns of my 
fellow Texans, including ranchers and those who are well accustomed to 
the movement of people across the border into the United States who 
want to work here and who then go back home with the savings and skills 
they have established. I have listened to the ranchers and the Good 
Samaritans who live and work along the border who were happy to lend a 
helping hand to the occasional traveling immigrant worker, to those 
seeking a better life. But I have to tell you, these people are now 
scared. They are terrified because drug smugglers and human traffickers 
are wreaking havoc along our Nation's borders.
  Let's not delude ourselves. This debate isn't just about drugs, and 
it isn't just about violence, as horrible as those are. This debate is 
also--and I would say first and foremost--about our Nation's security. 
In a post-9/11 world, border security is national security. I say that 
again: In a post-9/11 world, border security is national security.
  Make no mistake about it. Today we do confront a crisis that 
threatens our security. We all know that our immigration system is 
broken and has been for many years. And it is not getting any better on 
its own. So I applaud the majority leader and those who have worked so 
hard on both sides of the aisle to try to bring this debate to the 
Senate floor. This is the greatest deliberative body on the face of the 
planet, and I would hope that we could have a debate about this urgent 
need to fix our broken immigration system and to restore security to 
our border and do it in a way that is dignified and civil and worthy of 
this great institution and of this great democracy.
  Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and I have teamed up to work on this issue 
from top to bottom. We have worked closely together over several years 
to address this challenge in a comprehensive way. We have held numerous 
hearings, and we have heard testimony from a diverse array of experts 
across the political spectrum. We have also inspected our Nation's 
failed immigration system and its relationship with the terrible events 
of September 11. And we have examined why it is important for America's 
neighbors to raise living standards for their own citizens to help 
relieve some of the pressure on our border.
  Senator Kyl and I have sought to lay a foundation for a comprehensive 
solution to fix our broken borders, a comprehensive solution that would 
avert another crisis 5, 10, or 20 years down the road.
  When we sat down to draft legislation, we were alarmed that many of 
the bills already introduced at that time simply called for more 
studies and more reports. One so-called comprehensive bill failed to 
contain a single provision on interior enforcement. This is not a time 
for more studies or more reports. This is a time for action. We need to 
act, and we need to act prudently and in America's best interests.
  So our goal was to craft an immigration bill that would be 
comprehensive. We understood that any truly comprehensive bill must 
address both border security and enforcing the law in our Nation's 
interior. Over a dozen of the strong and sensible enforcement 
provisions we crafted made their way into the bill that is now before 
the Senate in the form of the Judiciary Committee bill. I want to talk 
about these enforcement measures and why they are a necessary 
precondition to everything else that we do when it comes to reforming 
our broken immigration system.
  I repeat: National security and border security begin at the border. 
Congress can no longer ignore the realities on the ground. We can no 
longer afford to under-fund and under-man our borders. What we see in 
my State of Texas is that the mandates that the Federal Government 
issues when it comes to health care, when it comes to education, when 
it comes to law enforcement are foisted off on State, and most often, 
local taxpayers. It is considered a local problem when self-evidently, 
it should be a national mandate. When it comes to any of those issues, 
we have a national responsibility, and the Congress and the Federal 
Government must step up.
  Let's look at the reason many Texans and others who live and work 
along the border are scared, people who are very much accustomed to 
immigrants moving back and forth across the border. It is because they 
know the face of illegal immigration across our border has changed. We 
have a chart, chart No. 1, that illustrates the changing nature of 
illegal immigration and the rise in the number of people coming from 
countries other than Mexico. You can see on this chart that the aliens 
who have been detained along the border are from special interest 
countries--countries with ties to international terror such as Syria, 
Iraq, Iran. Just 2 weeks ago, I talked to the Secretary of the 
Department of Homeland Security and he told me there were 39,000 
Chinese who had been detained coming across our southern border and, 
unfortunately, once they were detained, China refused to accept any of 
them back.
  So we have to use every diplomatic tool in our toolbox to make sure 
we not only detain people who come across our border illegally, but 
that we then, in an expeditious way, return them back to their country 
of origin.
  Second, in the bill that Senator Kyl and I proposed, we proposed a 
doubling in the number of Border Patrol agents. And while we have heard 
a lot of talk about additional Federal agents at the border, the 
Federal Government really hasn't stepped up yet. There is a lot of good 
and, I think, well-intentioned talk. But on 9/11, we saw that 9,788 
Border Patrol agents were funded by the U.S. Government. Here we are 
today, and we have seen a small increase to a little over 11,000. But 
lest some people think that is a lot of Federal agents on the border, 
let me remind them we have a 2,000-mile border between the United 
States and Mexico--a 2,000-mile border--and now a little over 11,000 
Federal agents, when the city of New York has somewhere on the order of 
39,000 policemen. So if you compare a 2,000-mile border and 11,000 
Border Patrol agents with the fact that the city of New York has 39,000 
police officers, you can see why I suggest to my colleagues that we are 
both underfunded and undermanned when it comes to the sheer volume of 
people coming across the border.
  Last year, about 1.2 million--that's 1.2 million--people were 
apprehended coming across the border. So how can we in good conscience 
say that we are doing everything within our power to enforce our 
borders and enforce our laws when we simply deny the Federal agents, 
who are doing a very good job, the number of people they need in order 
to be successful?
  Then there is the issue of detention beds. Once you detain someone 
coming illegally across the border, they are entitled, ordinarily, to a 
deportation hearing, if they come from a country other than Mexico. 
People who come from Mexico are returned expeditiously--usually the 
same day. Of course, many of them try to come back and, after enough 
tries, they usually make it past the border. But we have had a flawed 
policy of catch and release. In other words, when we have apprehended 
people at the border who come in illegally from countries other than 
Mexico, we said: Please show up in 30 days for your deportation 
hearing. Are we surprised that the vast majority of people don't show 
up but just merely melt into our landscape and become part of that 12 
million people who come to our country in violation of our immigration 
laws? Well, it is because we only have 20,000 detention beds--20,000--
with 1.2 million people coming

[[Page 4513]]

across our borders just last year. That is the fundamental, root 
problem with the catch-and-release policy that the Department of 
Homeland Security has had for far too long.
  Senator Kyl and I would not only raise the number of detention beds 
to 50,000, but we would end the catch-and-release policy by improving 
and increasing and mandating the use of expedited removal across our 
borders.
  This chart reflects that Border Patrol apprehensions of people from 
countries other than Mexico were 165,000 last year. Yet 114,000 of them 
were released under the catch-and-release program. As I say, most, if 
not all, of them melted into the landscape and became part of this 
shadow culture living in America today of people who have come to this 
country in violation of our immigration laws. We may assume we know why 
they have come here. We may assume that they are people in search of a 
better life and, indeed, many of them are. But the fact is, we can't 
assume in a post-9/11 world; we have to know who is coming into our 
country and why they are here because we know there are those who have 
evil intent toward America. We know there are common criminals. We know 
there are drug dealers and drug smugglers. We know there are arms 
dealers. We know there are international criminal syndicates who will 
do anything for a buck, whether it is smuggling drugs, guns, weapons of 
mass destruction, or smuggling terrorists across our borders.
  In addition to the 10,000 more Border Patrol agents, I believe the 
solution to securing our borders is in the technology we have, our 
technological advantage. But we are not using technology along the 
border the way we should. We know the Department of Defense, our 
military, is the finest, most professional military the world has ever 
known, and in large part it is because of the technology they are able 
to use. We need to use ground sensors. We need to use unmanned aerial 
vehicles. We need to use technology to provide a secure border.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 30 seconds 
to conclude my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as I pointed out, border security is 
national security. I see the chairman of the Subcommittee for Homeland 
Security of the Appropriations Committee on the floor, and he has been 
a great champion of getting more money allocated for this important 
effort. But we are a far cry from where we need to be. We can do this 
if we have the national will and commitment. But our national security 
depends on border security, and we have to make a credible effort--
indeed, more than an effort--we need to be successful in providing 
security to our borders in order to keep the American people safe.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________