[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7216-7217]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I would simply mention to the distinguished 
leader before he leaves that a week ago, I came to the floor and talked 
about immigration and indicated that we would be willing to go 
forward--10 amendments on each side--and with the direction where I 
think we should go on conference. I hope the leader will understand 
that time is running out. We need to be able to do this.
  We are terribly concerned, even more concerned based on the 
statements from the House last week. Chairman Sensenbrenner gave a 
speech last week talking about why he had, in his bill, his 
legislation, at the request of the White House--I am sure the White 
House has backed off on this; I certainly hope so--but making people 
who are here who are undocumented, felons. He gave some illustrations 
that were not very good. He talked about, Japan doesn't have many 
immigrants that come illegally. That is right, that is because it is an 
island. They would have to swim there or come in on an airplane or 
boat. They don't have the mass migration problems we have.
  I hope the leader, with the many things he has to do, would 
understand that we have, after this week, only 2 weeks left in this 
legislative session. The leader stated we are going to try to finish 
this before Memorial Day. To do that, we are going to have to get on 
that bill. If we have all these amendments, it is going to take a lot 
of time.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, briefly, because I know the Democratic 
leader has another statement to make, I am absolutely committed to 
completing and giving adequate time to complete what is a complex bill. 
As the Democratic leader implied, there are a lot of issues we need to 
talk about in this bill. I appreciate the spirit in which he and I are 
approaching the bill, in terms of allowing debate and amendment and 
also addressing issues about conference, to make sure--I know what his

[[Page 7217]]

intent is--that the will of the Senate is expressed strongly in that 
conference.
  I do encourage all of our colleagues to recognize that step one is 
debating the bill here on the floor of the Senate, getting it off the 
floor with a majority vote, and I would argue for a good comprehensive 
bill stressing the border and border security. What I would like to do, 
as I discussed scheduling with the Democratic leader, is to be on the 
immigration bill next week and the following week. That should give 
adequate time.
  There was one last thing, at least on our side of the aisle. In terms 
of numbers of amendments, we are doing our very best to focus each and 
every day on the amendments which would be substantive amendments, to 
try not to have unnecessary amendments or amendments just for political 
reasons but substantive amendments coming to the floor. Hopefully, 
coming to the floor, people will continue work. People don't see that 
on the floor, but literally every day we are meeting looking at those 
amendments. So once we get on the bill, we can have a fair process, not 
a lot of unnecessary time spent figuring out what the amendments would 
be. I am confident that we can, working together, be on a bill that 
will be a comprehensive bill, that will be a bill reflecting the will 
of the Senate, by early next week.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.

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