Speech #530131875

I think as we come to the end of this debate. the issue is the same as it was when we started out: Either this Congress is going to go on record to preserve a body of law that has evolved over a 20year period of history to protect guestworkers. to protect foreign workers who come to our shores to carry economic tasks that Americans say they will not do or somebody suggests that they will not do. and we are going to give these people the dignity and the rights that we would expect for our own constituents and our own citizens. Either we are going to learn from the history of this program. and we are going to reject the direction that the Judiciary Committee has taken. we are going to reject the direction that the PanettaMorrison amendment goes. which starts out by using the same determination to bring those people to this country as the Bracero Program did in the fifties. Now that was a sorry history of this country. and my amendment is workable. it is flexible. it tolerates the changes in the marketplace. it works for those farmers that now use it. it does not work for those who have never used it because they have wanted to use illegal aliens. So the question is simply this: As we provide an H2 program. are we going to provide a program of justice or are we going to rewrite a new chapter in this country and a history of sorrow. a history of shame. and I defy anyone to go out into that community and look at the conditions today. remember the conditions of the past. and ask yourself whether you think the Judiciary Committee bill or the PanettaMorrison bill that is about to be discussed. is equal to the task that need be done. I will tell you that it is not.