[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17842-17844]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer for his 
insight into the legislation we considered. I guess the Presiding 
Officer understands, when you have completed a tough campaign and you 
have talked to voters, you learn some things. Hopefully, our Senate has 
learned some things: That the heart of the American people is good, 
that they are not mean spirited, but they are concerned about a lawful 
system of immigration.
  I was on an Alabama-based radio show ``Rick and Bubba.'' They are 
expanding out around the country and do an excellent job and are very 
fair about immigration. One told me the other morning: Senator, let me 
tell you my philosophy. My philosophy is that if you have a broken pipe 
in your attic, and there is water on your floor, you don't go spend all 
your time mopping up the floor, you fix the leaking pipe.
  So I guess I would say the failure of the legislation today, despite 
the good efforts of my esteemed colleagues who met together and wrote 
this bill--and they did not want anybody to change a jot or tittle of 
it--despite all of that, despite their good efforts, it did not do the 
job. It did not shut off the water. According to the Congressional 
Budget Office, it would only have reduced illegality by 13 percent, and 
in the next 20 years we would have another 8.7 million people here 
illegally.
  I think our Senators--after hearing that and having it pounded in and 
seeing this is not an exaggeration but an objective report by the 
Congressional Budget Office, and then we heard the promises: The only 
way to get a lawful system in America is to vote for this bill--they 
were not persuaded, especially because the American people saw through 
it.
  Rightly, the American people have grown to be cynical about the words 
of Congress on immigration. They have grown to be cynical about that. 
For 40 years, Presidents and Congresses have promised we are going to 
make a lawful system: We are going to do this. Don't worry, I voted for 
that bill last year. It was going to do this and do that, double Border 
Patrol--but nothing ever happens.
  We arrested a million people trying to enter our country illegally 
last year--a million people. Why do we have that many people arrested? 
One reason is because the border is known, worldwide, to be insecure 
and that you have a very good chance of being able to enter the country 
illegally.
  If we can change that and we create a clear message around the world 
that our border is secure and if you come you are going to be 
apprehended and you will be prosecuted if you come across the border 
illegally, we could see a dramatic dropoff in that and a dramatic 
increase of people applying, waiting in line to come legally. That is 
what it is all about, and this bill did not do it.
  Now, somebody was saying to me and asking me recently about President 
Bush and his legacy. I have to tell you, I like President Bush. He is a 
friend of mine. I believe his heart is good. I believe he wanted to do 
something good about immigration. I have the highest regard for him.
  What I would ask President Bush to do with regard to his legacy on 
immigration would be to carry on at a much more effective and 
aggressive rate than he has with a movement toward enforcement. He has 
done things in the last several years to improve immigration 
enforcement more than the previous four or five Presidents, but it has 
not been enough.
  So I would suggest to the President: Make it your legacy to leave a 
secure border for America. Enforce our current laws. Utilize every 
effective and appropriate tool we now have, which would make a huge 
difference. Ask the Congress for what additional tools you need. Let's 
begin to create a lawful system at the border.
  As the American people see that and gain confidence in us as a 
government, then we begin to talk about some of the more difficult 
problems: What do we do about 12 million people who are here illegally?
  One of the things that very much concerned me in this bill--and it 
shows the mindset that seemed to be driving the legislation and was an 
indication there was no real commitment to enforcement--was moving the 
date of the people who would be allowed to go on a path to legality and 
even citizenship to even if you came into our country last year.
  Now, last year's bill, which I vigorously criticized, said you could 
take advantage of the amnesty or legalization process if you came into 
America before January 1, 2004. This bill said you could take advantage 
of the amnesty--you would not be asked to leave--and you could become 
an American citizen if you broke into our country before January 1, 
2007, this year.
  So after the President has called out the National Guard, after we 
have said the border is closed--and it has not been closed; we made 
some improvement, but it has not at all closed the illegality at the 
border--but if you could

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get past the National Guard last December 31 and get into this country, 
this bill would have put you onto a citizenship path.
  But that is not what our colleagues told us who supported the 
legislation. They said it was going to help those people who have deep 
roots in America who have children here and ones we cannot ask to 
leave. I am sympathetic to that. I am prepared to work on something 
like that. But the idea that some single person who broke across the 
border last December, past the National Guard, is being given all the 
benefits of citizenship, all the benefits we would give to somebody who 
waits in line to come legally makes no sense to me and indicates the 
mindset we have here.
  The mindset is confused is all I am saying. The President, the 
executive branch, and the Congress have not yet gotten the message. The 
message is: We don't want talk. We don't want promises. We want you to 
get busy and create a lawful system of immigration, and then we can 
begin to talk about how to deal with people who are here illegally and 
what our future flow of immigration would be. They had some good ideas 
in the bill about how to improve the future process by which we select 
for admission immigrants who desire to come. We know we can't accept 
everybody. Eleven million people applied for the 50,000 lottery slots 
we had in the year 2000. It just indicates that the number of people 
who would like to come here vastly exceeds our ability to admit them 
all, so we must select some way for those who come. I believe that a 
touch, a bit, in this bill that tended toward a Canadian-type system 
was a great first step and should give us a model for future flow.
  So to my colleagues and particularly to my friend, the President of 
the United States, whom I respect so much, I would say let's make it a 
legacy of this Congress and this President to do everything possible, 
beginning today, to have a secure border in our country. I believe it 
would be widely approved by the American people. I believe it would be 
good for our country. It would be a true contribution to American 
society and put us on the road toward a step to adopting new and better 
policies for immigration.
  It is great to see my colleague, Senator Hutchison from Texas. I 
thank her for her insight and commitment to creating a good system. 
Being from Texas and having lived with this issue for years and years, 
she is sympathetic and compassionate to those who want to come to 
America, but she also understands the need to create a system of laws 
we can be proud of.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas is 
recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama for 
his remarks.
  This is a hard time. This has been a very difficult issue. There is 
no question that so many people put hours and hours in to try to 
produce a piece of legislation that could get a majority or 60 votes to 
proceed. I think it is important for us to take a moment and say, yes, 
it was a disappointment, but we must go forward. This should not be the 
end of efforts to deal with one of the most important, if not the most 
important, domestic problem in our country today; that is, we are a 
sovereign nation which must have secure borders.
  We know there are terrorists who are trying to enter our country to 
harm Americans. We would be naive to look the other way. We know there 
are drug cartels trying to enter our country with illegal drugs. We 
know there are human traffickers who are bringing people into our 
country illegally and robbing these people of huge amounts of extorted 
money. We know we must stop that.
  We also know there is a need in this country for work and jobs that 
are not being filled by Americans, and we must provide a legal way for 
people to fill those jobs. We must not equate the people who have come 
here for jobs, trying to feed their families--because they have little 
hope from their country of origin of being able to do that--with 
terrorists and drug dealers. They are two separate kinds of problems 
and separate kinds of people. We need to provide an avenue for those 
who are trying to do better for themselves and their families to work 
in our country and to be in our country and, within the laws we have, 
to go into permanent residency and citizenship.
  We do have a crisis, and it is our responsibility to meet it. Just 
because this effort failed does not mean we didn't make progress. I 
think we did make progress. It was not enough to get the majority even 
of this Senate to agree that this not only took care of the problems of 
today but would provide a standard for tomorrow and 10 years from now 
so that everyone would know what the laws are and that the laws would 
be enforced. So we have made progress.
  I look at so many of our colleagues who worked so hard on this, along 
with members of the President's Cabinet and the President himself, and 
I know how deeply disappointed they are that this was not successful. 
Nevertheless, I believe we were in a much better place this year than 
we were last year, and I believe, if we start fresh, we can come up 
with a better approach to this problem.
  What would a better approach be?
  First, I think it is clear the American people do not believe there 
is a commitment to border security. I believe there is much more 
progress in this area than is known. We know the catch-and-release 
program is virtually shut down. It used to be that an alien coming into 
our country illegally who was not from Mexico but was from farther down 
in Central or South America would not be able to be apprehended and 
deported because there were no detention facilities that could hold 
them, so they were caught and released. Today, that program has been 
virtually shut off.
  So we have made progress. Is it enough? Absolutely not. But we must 
have a renewed commitment to border security, and I think it is clear 
the American people believe we must show there is a commitment as a 
prerequisite to addressing the other problems.
  Today, I suggest we might look at a fresh approach which has the 
commitment that was made by the President 2 weeks ago to border 
security, the money commitment for the barriers, and the commitment to 
following through on those border security measures. That would be one 
step we could take that I believe would have universal agreement. There 
is no one who has called me about this bill who has not said the 
absolute first requirement is border security.
  The second thing I think we should do as we are continuing this 
commitment to border security is a guest worker program--a guest worker 
program going forward that is a workable way for people to come into 
this country and have the ability to work out in the open, legally, to 
be able to go back and forth from their home country without being 
afraid they could not get back in, and a tamperproof identification for 
employers to easily be able to see that a person is legally in this 
country.
  I met with my good friend Massey Villarreal yesterday, and he said: 
Where is the help for the small businesses that may not even be 
computerized?
  I said: I know the Department of Homeland Security, when the 
regulations are made, will have a provision for a business that has one 
employee or two to be able to have a clear, easy way to verify with 
this tamperproof ID. There would be a picture on it and a biometric 
indication.
  So I think we need to work on the guest worker program immediately, 
along with the border security program, so that the economy of this 
country and the people who are seeking to work in our country to 
provide for their families wherever they may live would be able to be 
matched. I think we should do those two things first. That would be my 
suggestion of a new approach.
  The problem we ran into with this bill and the bill we tried to pass 
last year was that tough issue of, what you

[[Page 17844]]

do with the people who are already here illegally, because the 
enforcement was not done. A blind eye was turned. Through many years, 
since 1986, there has not been that workable guest worker program which 
would accommodate the economic needs of our country and the economic 
needs of workers who cannot find jobs in their own home countries. 
Dealing with that was the hangup on this bill, make no mistake about 
it. It was the perception that people would be able to come here, stay 
in our country illegally, and never have to go home in order to become 
legally processed in our country. The American people rose up and said 
no. My amendment which tried to fix that came very close--53 to 45.
  I think that is a concept we should revisit but not until we have 
addressed border security and made a commitment and significant 
improvements and a guest worker program established for people coming 
in legally. In my opinion, that would probably also cause some of the 
people who are here illegally to see a clear path, a workable path, a 
dependable path to come into our country and begin to work legally if 
we act now to set up that guest worker program. Then start the long and 
arduous process of trying to handle responsibly the people who are here 
illegally, some of whom have homes, have American-born children, which 
we must realistically address but maybe not all at once. That would be 
my suggestion for those who are willing to say: Let's take a week, and 
let's determine what the next course should be.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Let me end by saying I do believe we need to take 
some time. We need to look at the consequences of doing nothing, which 
I do not think people focus on enough, and try to have a fresh 
approach, perhaps a more graduated approach, that would secure our 
borders and would have a guest worker program going forward and then 
follow up by dealing with the illegals who are in our country now. 
Perhaps there would even be a safe harbor--no commitments about what 
would happen but not to cause people to lose jobs that are not being 
filled.
  Perhaps, there could be something along that line as we decide how to 
deal with those people who are here. I do believe there will be more 
acceptance of a responsible, legalization process of people who are 
here illegally if the American people see border security and a guest 
worker program that puts the people in the front of the line who have 
come legally into our country to work.
  Mr. President, it is so important that we not give up. It is so 
important that we not turn another blind eye to the problem facing this 
country of more and more illegal aliens coming in. We must secure our 
borders from terrorists, drug dealers, and human traffickers. But it is 
not the same as people who are coming to our country for economic help 
for themselves and their families. We must provide a way to attract 
those people to jobs that are not being filled by Americans. So, yes, 
it is disappointing today.
  I applaud the people who have worked so hard. I want to say that they 
did make progress, and it is something from which we can all learn and 
do better as we move forward. But, mostly, we cannot shirk the 
responsibility of our United States Senate and our United States 
Congress, working with the President, to do the right thing for our 
country.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts is 
recognized.

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