[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6883-6884]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. REID. Madam President, briefly, first to comment on immigration 
reform, we have spent a great deal of time on the Senate floor the last 
two Congresses dealing with immigration reform. We worked hard in 
coming up with a solution, and we have a solution. We were working with 
President Bush toward coming up with a solution to immigration reform. 
The problem

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was that even President Bush--even President Bush--could not get his 
Republican colleagues to join with us in doing something about 
immigration reform.
  Our immigration system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. But it is 
so important that the President in El Paso today talks about the need 
for immigration reform because he knows and we all know, as even 
President Bush knew, that immigration reform is necessary. The problem 
is that we can't get Republicans here in the Senate to help us. It is 
quite simple.
  We know we have to do something about border security. We have done a 
lot in that regard. Have we done enough? No. There is more that can be 
done, but we have done a lot in that direction, and rightfully so. Just 
within the last year or so, we provided $650 billion for more border 
security. That was on a bipartisan basis. We passed that. That was 
important.
  We also have to do something about our guest worker program. At any 
one given time, we have thousands and thousands of guest workers here. 
Why? Because it is necessary, and it has been for a long time. Take the 
Chesapeake Bay. We have learned that we have people who come in--
seasonal workers--who can do the work on the clams and the stuff on the 
great Chesapeake Bay. We have about 1.5 million agricultural workers in 
our country, and we have a system that doesn't work even for them. We 
have to do this. Our agricultural industry depends on it.
  We also have in our country today 11 million people who are 
undocumented. There isn't anybody with an ounce of common sense who 
thinks we can deport 11 million people. We can't do it fiscally, and we 
can't do it physically. Therefore, we should do something about the 11 
million people who are here. How should we do that? Put them on a 
pathway to legalization. It doesn't mean amnesty. It means that they 
would pay penalties and fines, that they would go to the back of the 
line, not the front of the line. They would have to learn English. They 
would have to stay out of trouble. They would have to pay taxes. There 
are certain things they would be required to do.
  Finally, we have to do something about the unworkable employer 
sanction provision that was put into the 1986 law. It hasn't worked. 
Prior to that time, the burden was on the government to make sure 
people who came to work throughout America were legal. We shifted that 
responsibility to employers. They can't do that. It is a catch-22 now. 
The way the law is set up now simply doesn't work. We have, since 1986, 
computerization which has taken over much of the world, and through 
that we can work toward having an employer sanction program in our 
country that will work.
  My point is that President Obama should be commended for talking 
about immigration reform. It is necessary.
  My friend the Republican leader should also understand that we have 
tried, and for our Republican people to talk about immigration reform 
and not vote accordingly is something the people of America have 
witnessed now for many years.

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