[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9479-9480]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we obviously are talking about immigration 
this week and last week and next week. I am one of those who, after 
many years working on this subject, hopes we are successful in passing 
what I believe is good, credible immigration reform.
  I have come to the conclusion, like many Americans, that the status 
quo is simply unacceptable. I have talked a little bit about some of 
the bodies in unmarked graves that I witnessed myself in Brooks County, 
TX, where under the current broken system people come across the border 
from faraway lands only to die trying to get into this country and are 
buried in unmarked graves in places like Brooks County.
  I met with a young woman who was prostituted after having been 
brought into the United States from Central America, and she worked in 
a Houston nightclub, where she was basically held as an indentured 
servant or slave because she knew she was vulnerable to deportation. So 
the person who brought here there and put her in that situation knew 
they had the power to keep her quiet and not disclose what was 
happening, while she was living a horrific existence.
  Those are just a couple of examples why I believe our system is 
broken and neither serves our economic interests nor represents our 
American values. So I want a good solution. But it is not just what 
happens here in the Senate. That is not the end game. The end game is 
what happens when this bill goes to the House and once the House and 
the Senate get together in a conference committee and reconcile the 
differences between those two bills to see if we can actually get a 
bill which reflects our values and which represents our economic 
interests, things such as recruiting the best and the brightest minds 
from around the world to stay here in America and to create jobs here.
  Those are some of the positives in the underlying bill that we need 
to preserve, but there are other issues we need to fix. That is what I 
want to talk about right now.
  Last night the Congressional Budget Office released its long-awaited 
report on the underlying bill, the so-called Gang of 8 immigration bill 
people have heard so much about. The report, as usual, is a blizzard of 
numbers and estimates and projections, but here are two I want to talk 
about in particular, which you see reflected on this chart.
  I think this is going to be a shocking revelation to most people who 
thought this bill would actually fix our broken immigration system.
  If you will look behind me, it says: The number of new unauthorized 
immigrations in the United States by 2033 with the passage of the 
underlying bill, 7.5 million; without it, 10 million.
  So what we see reflected in the Congressional Budget Office, which is 
the ``coin of the realm,'' the ``gold standard''--whatever you want to 
call it--around here, love it or hate it, and we all find ourselves on 
different sides depending on the issue, but the gold standard, the 
Congressional Budget Office, says this bill will not fix the underlying 
problem.
  In other words, despite all of the promises and perhaps I might say 
the hopes and the dreams and the good intentions of the authors of this 
underlying bill, this bill will have only a minimal impact on illegal 
immigration. Does that sound like the kind of solution we owe to the 
American people to solve this broken system? Does that sound like a 
solution to solve our long-term problem in this area?
  I want to take a moment to discuss another portion of the bill that 
has gone largely unnoticed by most of the country, but first let me 
respond to some remarks made by my friend from Arizona Senator McCain 
yesterday. I am going to agree, not disagree, with Senator McCain. 
Standing right here on the Senate floor, as he so often does, Senator 
McCain said he was absolutely confident--absolutely confident--that 
U.S. authorities can obtain 100 percent situational awareness and full 
operational control of the southern border. He cited the head of the 
Border Patrol as his authority.
  I was glad to hear him say that because I agree with him exactly. He 
is exactly right. But I was a little confused at the same time. He 
repeated a comment that the majority leader had made about my 
amendment, which will be pending soon before the Senate and which we 
will vote on later today or tomorrow. He called my amendment a poison 
pill, suggesting that it would somehow kill the underlying bill. Well,

[[Page 9480]]

if the standards in my amendment are exactly the same as those in the 
underlying bill of 100 percent situational awareness and 90 percent 
operational control, defined as 90 percent capture of people crossing 
the border illegally--Senator McCain thinks it is attainable, the 
Border Patrol Chief thinks it is attainable, and I think it is 
attainable. So how could that possibly be a poison pill? I do not 
understand it.
  As I have said numerous times over the last week, my amendment uses 
the same standards and many of the same metrics as the Gang of 8 bill. 
Here is the difference: My amendment establishes a real border security 
trigger before immigrants can transition from probationary status--
something called registered provisional immigrant status--before they 
can transition from that probationary status to legalization. Under the 
Gang of 8 bill, that would occur after 10 years of probationary status. 
But the problem is, contrary to initial advertisements back in January 
where Senator Durbin, among others--the distinguished majority whip--
said back in January that the pathway to citizenship is contingent upon 
border security, only to say just a few days ago, quoted in the 
National Journal--he said: Now we have delinked the pathway to 
citizenship from border security. Indeed, they have in the underlying 
bill, and that is what my amendment is designed to fix.
  Here is the real tragedy. In 1986 Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 
3 million people. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is, in return 
the American people said we are going to fix our broken immigration 
system. We are going to enforce the law. Well, we all know what 
happened.
  The amnesty was granted and the enforcement never came.
  Here is the tragedy. The underlying bill, without an amendment such 
as mine that provides a real border security trigger that realigns the 
incentives for the right, the left, Republicans, Independents, 
Democrats, everybody to be focused like a laser on how do we actually 
implement that operational control of the border--which Senator McCain 
believes is attainable, I believe is attainable, the Border Patrol 
Chief believes is attainable--without realigning everybody's incentives 
to focus like a laser on obtaining that objective, this is like 1986 
all over again.
  All we have to do is look at the polling to tell us--and I don't 
think we even need any polls to tell us--that there is enormous 
skepticism across the country about Washington. This bill says: Trust 
us. Trust us.
  There is a trust deficit in Washington, DC, and on immigration. When 
so many promises have been made in the past that have not been kept, I 
think it is unreasonable to ask the American people to just trust us. 
We need an enforcement mechanism such as my amendment, which will 
guarantee that everybody is aligned and it is highly incentived to make 
sure that those Border Patrol measures are upheld. Then we will not 
have what is reflected on the chart behind me, as reported by the 
Congressional Budget Office yesterday.
  The year 1986 was when Congress passed amnesty for illegal immigrants 
without guaranteeing results on border security. Ever since then 
Members of this Chamber have said we will never make that mistake 
again. Yet the underlying bill would effectively be 1986 on steroids 
and the CBO report confirms it. That is why those of us who actually 
would like to see a good, credible immigration bill pass--not only in 
the Senate but also in the House--believe, as I do, that this 
legislation is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives without 
a real border security trigger.
  It is going to be a challenge even if we put that in, but we have a 
much better chance of success if we deal with the problem that the 
Congressional Budget Office has identified, and if we deal with the 
experience we have had from 1986 and other times when we made 
extravagant promises to the American people on how we are going to fix 
the system, only to find that those promises have not been kept. That 
will be the real poison pill to this bill, and it will also be an 
unnecessary and lamentable tragedy if somehow we can't, working 
together, find a solution to our broken immigration system.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.

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