Speech #1090119997

And today. MEL MARTINEZ not only was a Cabinet Secretary in the administration but was elected by the people of Florida to serve as their United States Senator. There are some in the Senate who seem to believe that immigrants are just criminals. In fact. the Frist bill thats before the Senate declares that all undocumented immigrants are criminals. The Frist bill would have declared Senator DOMENICIS mother to be a criminal and the Kyl amendment would disqualify her from earning American citizenship. The facts tell a different story. Immigrantsincluding undocumented immigrantscontinue to strengthen the fabric of America in thousands of different ways. As David Brooks observed in his column last week in the New York Times. Hispanic Americans and Hispanic immigrants in particular are less likely to divorce. Husbands and wives stay together and raise their children. Even though they may have less money than other Americans. they spend almost twice as much on music for their children. they spend more on gifts and family gettogethers. and they are more likely to support their elderly parents. The path of progress that we witnessed with the Martinez and Domenici families is familiar even today. By the second generation. most immigrant families have reached the middle class and they pay more than enough taxes to make up for the costs of their parents generation. By the third generation. 90 percent of the grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants speak English fluently. and 50 percent of them marry nonHispanics. These patterns of assimilation are identical to those that characterized the children and grandchildren of Southern and Eastern European immigrants who came to the United States 100 years ago. and to the assimilation of German and Irish immigrants who came here 50 years before that. In many ways. our economy is more dependent on immigration than ever before. The arrival of new and young immigrant workers helps explain why Americas economy grows faster than most of the aging European nations. According to the Aspen Institute. immigration will be the only source of growth in the prime age labor force in America in the next two decades. So Americas choice really is between immigration and economic stagnation. However. even though immigration brings many benefits. there is no doubt that our current system is broken and fails to protect us and meet our Nations needs. Our borders are out of control at a time of heightened concern about terrorism. Millions cross our borders and remain illegally. creating an underground society that is subject to abuse and that harms American wages and working conditions. Millions more enter through our airports and seaports as visitors but remain long after their visas expire. They come and remain because they wish to work and contribute. and our employers continue to offer them jobs. As a result. more than 11 million undocumented immigrants are living and working in America today. Many in Congress suggest that the answer is simply more enforcement. Just build more fences and hire more patrols and it will solve the problem. But we have tried that before and failed. We have spent more than $20 billion over the past decade to build fences and triple our border patrols. but illegal immigration went up. not down. In the 1980s. the rate of illegal immigration was 40.000 people a year. Today. it is more than half a million. And the probability that a border