[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17682-17685]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         ORDER FOR ADJOURNMENT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand 
adjourned following the remarks, for 28 minutes or thereabouts, or 
however much time the distinguished Senator from Alabama has left under 
the order before this body. When he finishes, we would adjourn.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, what is 
the plan for debate time in the morning prior to the cloture vote? I 
have been involved in the debate and would like to be involved in 
having some opportunity to speak in the morning prior to the vote, if 
that would be appropriate.
  Mr. REID. I would say through the Chair, the time is equally divided 
between Senator Kennedy and Senator Specter. Whatever time the Senator 
would request, I am sure one of those Senators might yield him time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. How does that happen when they both agree on this bill?
  Mr. REID. As I understand it, it is automatic, an hour before 
cloture.
  Mr. SESSIONS. They both agreed. That is the problem. Is there any 
time set aside for the opposition?
  Mr. REID. I think the Senator raises a valid point there. It is for 
the proponents of the resolution.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask for 10 minutes.
  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent out of Senator Specter's time and 
Senator Kennedy's time, you have 10 minutes. How is that?
  Mr. SESSIONS. That will be fine.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, if we wait, we are going to check to see if 
time has been allocated yet.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, what I had requested is that the Senator 
from Alabama would be recognized for 10 minutes; five minutes would 
come from the time of Senator Kennedy, 5 minutes from that of Senator 
Specter, and I would further say the last 20 minutes of the debate 
wouldn't count against any of this time. The first 10 minutes would be 
for Senator McConnell, if he so chooses and, if I so choose, I would 
have the last 10 minutes, right before the vote. That is additional 
time. That doesn't count against the time we have allocated here 
earlier.

[[Page 17683]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, is it now appropriate that I utilize a 
few of the minutes I have remaining--I am not going to use them all--
before we adjourn? Is that what we agreed to?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 28 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized for 28 
minutes.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this has been a very important day, a 
day that was pretty contentious. The procedural mechanism that the 
Majority Leader had invoked to control the debate in the Senate had its 
wheels come off today. The plan by the group, the grand bargainers and 
the leadership, was to push through a controlled series of 27 or so 
amendments today. The plan was to vote on this controlled group of hand 
picked amendments, mostly by motions to table, today. Had they voted on 
all of these amendments today we would have heard claims about the full 
and fair amendment process that had taken place this week--even though 
it was all just a show--no amendment would have gotten a vote unless 
the Majority Leader had approved it. My amendments, Senator Cornyn's 
amendments, and amendments by Senators Dole, Vitter, Coburn, and DeMint 
would not have gotten votes.
  Well, the Baucus amendment was part of their plan but a surprise 
happened, it was not tabled. As a result, that amendment remained alive 
and the majority leader had the plan that had been so carefully 
constructed, almost to the degree of the Normandy invasion, come to a 
halt. So we are now no longer voting and debating tonight. But we will 
be getting ready for a key vote in the morning. So I would say to 
anyone who might be listening, tomorrow morning is a very important 
vote. I believe a number of Senators who voted yesterday to move 
forward on this bill, some of the 64 who did, may not be for the 
legislation tomorrow.
  I firmly believe that as the legislation and debate has gone along 
this week, more people have seen the fatal flaws that are in the 
legislation. I think we are going to see an erosion of the support 
tomorrow. I would say to my colleagues, let's end this tomorrow. Let's 
have this bill come down tomorrow. Let's not invoke cloture. Let's not 
continue to move forward on this bill because the legislation cannot be 
fixed in its present form.
  I have had some people ask me, Jeff, why can't you compromise on this 
legislation? Why can't a compromise be reached? Well, I would just say 
that if you are trying to fix a leaky bucket, you can't compromise to 
fix the bucket by fixing four holes in the bucket and leaving six more 
holes in the bucket. Under that compromise, all of the water is still 
going to leak out.
  The problem with the immigration bill currently before the Senate, 
and I have seen this problem repeatedly in the immigration realm, is 
that when we come up with provisions and concepts that would actually 
work, ones that would restore lawfulness to the immigration system, we 
pull back, we compromise too much. In my own mind, it has been like 
trying to jump across a 10-foot cavern, but only jumping 9 feet. You 
still fall to the bottom. You do not get across, you do not achieve 
your goal.
  Until we complete some of the currently inadequate enforcement 
provisions, until we draft a bill that will create a legal system that 
will actually work, compromising about this or that matter is not going 
to amount to much.
  The bill, I do believe, as I have indicated before, is only going to 
reduce illegal immigration by a net 13 percent over the next 20 years. 
That number comes straight from the Congressional Budget Office Cost 
Estimate on this bill, which they released June 4th, I did not make it 
up. Our own Congressional Budget Office, has told the Senate that we 
can expect to have an additional 8.7 million people illegally in our 
country after this bill becomes law.
  That is not what we had been promised by the grand bargainers that 
brought this bill back to the floor. That is not what they are claiming 
will happen. They have promised us that this bill will secure the 
border. I assume that they mean they believe this bill will end illegal 
immigration. Well, it just simply will not secure the border and end or 
even substantially reduce illegal immigration. The Congressional Budget 
Office has told us it will not. In the beginning, I analyzed the bill 
and my staff worked on it, and we did not believe it would be an 
effective enforcement mechanism. The Congressional Budget Office has 
now also concluded that the bill will not fulfil the enforcement 
promises being made on the floor of this Senate.
  I will note again that the Association of Retired Border Patrol 
Agents roundly criticized the legislation. Two former chiefs of the 
Border Patrol of the United States, one of them under President Bush, 
one under President Reagan, have strongly and totally condemned the 
legislation.
  The current Association of Border Patrol Officers opposes the 
legislation. The former Assistant Attorney General, Kris Kobach, who 
served in the as counsel to Attorney General Ashcroft on issues dealing 
with immigration and national security says this bill will not make us 
safer but will make us less safe. So does Mr. Cutler, a former INS 
agent of many years of experience. He is worried that we will be 
issuing U.S. government identities to people who we have no idea who 
they really are.
  So, bottom line, the bill is not going to do what supporters are 
promising it will do. Those of us who were not in the little group of 
grand bargainers certainly have no responsibility to affirm the deal 
they may have reached, especially if we know that it is not going to 
work.
  If the bill before us was a good piece of legislation and it solved 
the problems it claims to solve, then maybe we would just have to hold 
our noses and live with this sort of secret pressure that our good 
friends, the masters of the universe, have put on us by meeting and 
writing up a bill and telling us we have to take it or leave it. They 
tell us they will only allow a few little amendments, but anything that 
goes to the core of the legislation we will not allow you to change. 
They tell us they are all going to stick together and vote against it 
amendments that offer any real changes to the deal.
  I have had members of the group say to me, and I find this very 
disturbing: Well, Jeff, that is a pretty good amendment you have, but 
it changes what we agreed on. I might agree with your amendment, but I 
cannot support your amendment. That is a rather unusual way to do 
business on the floor of the Senate, it is not a way of doing business 
that should make us proud, not one that is worthy of a matter of this 
importance.
  Constituents all across the country are opposed to this legislation. 
I think I earlier said 20 percent support it. I think more accurately 
it is 22 percent that support this legislation. According to the latest 
Rasmussen poll, there has been a continual drop in support for the last 
3 consecutive weeks in the tracking they have been doing.
  Twice as many said they prefer no legislation at all to the bill that 
is before us today. We have been told by our colleagues promoting this 
legislation, that the only way to get the enforcement we want, is to 
vote for this legislation. Well, I don't think that all enforcement 
items should be held hostage to amnesty, and I have just explained why 
the enforcement they promise is not going to work.
  The bill does have some concepts that are fairly significant. For 
example, the idea that people get legal status in the form of the 
probationary benefits visa a mere 24 hours after filing an amnesty 
application is very significant. These are legal documents we will be 
giving them, a certification that a person is in our country legally. 
It can then be utilized to get a state driver's license, a Social 
Security card, and those kind of things.
  So the only thing that is going to be done before people are given 
this document just 24 hours after filing an application is a cursory 
background check. I submit to my colleagues that a full background 
check can not possibly be performed within 24 hours. The only

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way an amnesty application will not get legal status in 24 hours is if 
they had been arrested and fingerprinted somewhere in the country, and 
their fingerprints have been put into the national fingerprint index. 
That is really the only thing that will disqualify them within that 24 
hour period.
  But I wish my colleagues would think back to 9/11. Several of the 9/
11 hijackers were stopped by state and local police at various times 
prior to 9/11 for speeding or such and each time they were let go by 
local law enforcement. Local law enforcement was now aware that some of 
them were here illegally. In the future, all of these 12 million would 
be given an identification document that would give them legal status, 
so, in fact, their position would be enhanced to an even greater status 
than the 9/11 hijackers. They would have U.S. government issued 
identification and a driver's license. They could travel the whole 
country with freedom under these documents.
  So Mr. Kris Kobach and Mr. Mike Cutler and others have written op-eds 
and editorials that point out that this could be a tremendous advantage 
for terrorists, not a disadvantage.
  These are complex issues. I think it would be better if our wise 
colleagues had invited somebody like Mr. Kobach, who is a professor of 
law now, a former Assistant Attorney General, to speak on these issues. 
Maybe they should have sought his opinion instead of the special 
interests they were listening to when they cobbled together this 
political deal.
  Maybe they would have been better off if they asked some of experts, 
such as the former chairmen of the Border Patrol, what they thought, or 
the present head of the Border Patrol Association.
  So, the question is, what do we need to do now? The first thing we 
need to do is take this bill off the agenda tomorrow by defeating the 
cloture motion. Let's just end this agony, please. Let's not continue 
down this path. Let's say: No, it is time to pay a decent respect to 
the opinions of our constituents. They do not like this. Let's respect 
them. Let's acknowledge that independent experts say this bill will not 
work. This is not just the opinions of some radio talk show hosts, as I 
have heard my colleagues talking about this week, but we have 
independent experts saying it will not work. I will just observe that 
the radio talk show hosts know more about the bill than most of the 
Senators do, if you want to know the truth.
  But at any rate, this is where we are. I think we ought to come down 
with it. We should probably follow what the people have suggested in 
the polling data that I saw. The American people would favor 
incremental steps emphasizing enforcement. There are some things that 
we could do to achieve what the American people want. I suggest that if 
we can come up with a credible enforcement mechanism--and we can--then 
we need to enact it. Then we can begin to talk about the future flow in 
immigration levels. I don't think most people know--I am not sure most 
Senators have fully understood--this bill over the next 20 years will 
double the number of people given green cards, legal permanent 
residence in America. It will double the current numbers. It has only a 
13-percent reduction in the 500,000 or so who come illegally every 
year. Remember, it was last year when we arrested 1 million people 
coming into our country illegally. What kind of system is this when our 
Border Patrol agents are out there working their hearts out and risking 
their lives to arrest a million people and we want to give immigration 
benefits for those that snuck past our agents?
  That type of immigration system does not work. The way to make it 
work is for this Nation to state with crystal clarity that our border 
is not open anymore. Don't bother to try to illegally cross our border. 
People are coming from all over the world, not just Mexico, to sneak 
across the Mexican border, because it is wide open in their thoughts 
and it has been easier to get into the United States that way. It is 
not that difficult to create the reality that it is not open, and 
people will not spend their money trying to go through deserts and so 
forth to get into this country if the word gets out that it is no 
longer possible to be successful at it. That is what we need to do, 
reach that tipping point. We could see a big drop in the flow of 
illegal immigrants into our country. Then we could focus on a 
compassionate solution to those who have been here for a long time, who 
have children and families and have jobs and solid ties to our country. 
But the legislation before us today moved the date by which you could 
make claim for legal status from January of 2004 to January of 2007. 
Basically, no illegal alien is left behind; everybody is going to be a 
participant in this deal. I was stunned at that. Senator Webb offered 
an excellent amendment today on that point to say it ought to go back 4 
years. Why would we do that? The reason that is important is because we 
made an announcement that we were going to close the border down. The 
President said so. He looked the American people in the eye and said we 
were going to do this. He called out the National Guard last year, and 
the National Guard has been at the border, I guess, now over a year.
  This bill would say, if you got past the National Guard before last 
December 31, then you are in the pot. And the argument that I have 
heard is that we need to do something about the people who have been 
here for a long time. They have children. They are deeply embedded in 
the communities. We can't ask them to leave. But what about a person 
who ran past the National Guard last December? How can that person be 
deeply embedded in our society after sneaking in after we have said 
that the border is no longer open? What do you tell our Border Patrol 
officers when they are out there trying to enforce the law and somebody 
just got past them last November and now they are free and on the path 
to receiving some type of permanent status? Congress just says: Forget 
it, those who snuck past the border six months ago are going to be 
given a legal status and a path to citizenship.
  These concerns should not be lightly dealt with. Politicians can meet 
and plot and think, but you have to remember what we are doing here. 
This is a great nation. A great nation creates laws. That nation should 
see that those laws are enforced and followed through effectively. If 
the laws are not enforced then that nation loses respect. Its law 
officers lose respect. Instead, people who are inclined to violate laws 
are encouraged. Clearly, the nation will have more violations if that 
nation doesn't enforce the laws it passed. The bottom line is that this 
bill evidences a lack of commitment to make sure that the system that 
is getting established will work any better than the old one. So if we 
are not able to establish with confidence and clarity and conviction a 
new system of immigration that we intend to enforce, what is the point 
of legislating another immigration bill that won't achieve those goals?
  But the American people aren't ready to quit. If any Senator doubts 
that, I suggest they sit at their front desk a while and answer the 
phone. That is the deal. We need as a nation to make a decision, are we 
going to create a lawful system of immigration or not? That is the 
question. This bill answers it in the negative. This bill is not going 
to create a legal system. To pass it is one more indication of our lack 
of will and commitment. It will breed cynicism and unhappiness among 
our constituents.
  I thank the Chair for its patience allowing me to wrap up. I do 
believe the last vote on the Baucus amendment that did not table the 
amendment sent a signal that Senators are frustrated and uneasy about 
this process. I do believe more and more Senators, some of whom voted 
for cloture just yesterday, may not vote for cloture tomorrow.
  I urge my colleagues not to worry. The issue is not going away. We 
have had it going since 1986. Just because this grand compromise by the 
grand compromisers didn't work does not mean we don't have a problem 
that needs to be fixed. But next time let's make sure we do it right 
for our country.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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