Let me just say that it is not my intent to create difficulty. That is not my wont. It is or has been my intent to present a vehicle for the consideration of immigration reform that you dealt with very patiently here. Three separate times I have taken you through the jump or the hump of immigration reform. I am not going to do that again next year. if I am chairman or ranking minority member. whatever the status might be. And that is not a statement of petulance. It is a statement of reality. The House yesterday. through a procedural effort. really did not allow an up or down vote on immigration reform. Illegal immigration is what we are talking about. not legal immigration. We are talking about the 1.8 million people who cross our borders from 81 different nations and I shall not even go into that. We have been there. I am just going to speak 2 or 3 minutes and tell my colleagues that it was the intent to present the Senate version of the Immigration Reform Act as an amendment to this. Indeed. it was never my proposal that immigration reform be discussed as a jobs bill or a drug bill. Suddenly. it is linked in. That was not my preference.
Keywords matched
Illegal immigration Immigration immigration