[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 8225]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, today Senators will have an opportunity to 
debate the bipartisan immigration bill reported by the Chair's 
committee last month. As I have already done once today, I again 
commend the chairman of that committee Senator Leahy for leading a 
thorough and transparent process in the committee.
  I thank Senator Sessions for working with us yesterday to move 
forward on this measure as quickly as possible. As I have said before, 
Senator Sessions and I--once in a while--disagree on substance, but we 
have always had a friendly relationship, which I appreciate.
  I applaud the efforts of the Gang of 8--four Democrats and four 
Republicans--to set aside partisanship to address a critical issue 
facing our Nation. The system is broken and needs to be fixed.
  It is gratifying to see the momentum behind this package of 
commonsense reforms, which will make our country safer and help 11 
million undocumented immigrants get right with the law.
  I had a number of meetings over the last few days with pollsters who 
have taken a look at this legislation, and they all acknowledge that 
the vast majority of American people want us to move forward. 
Democrats, Independents, and Republicans recognize the system is broken 
and needs to be fixed. They all agree on a pathway to citizenship.
  I have been committed to a process that is as open as possible for 
amendments. I don't want to say totally because sometimes with the 
procedures we have here--as with the farm bill--people throw a monkey 
wrench into things, and we are not able to do things as we would wish 
to do them.
  We will wrap up work on this legislation before the July 4 recess. I 
hope Senators will take advantage of today's time for debate. I look 
forward to a thorough and thoughtful discussion of the deliberation in 
the days ahead.

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