Speech #1090125946

I am not in the habit of patting the President on the back. but he deserved creditand I said so publiclyfor calling us together and for hosting a good bipartisan meeting. My hope is that this will continue. I made clear to the President that Senators on this side of the aisle are committed to comprehensive immigration reform. I pledged to work with the President and the majority leader. as I have in the past. in a bipartisan way on this very important issue. Every day we fail to fix the immigration system. it gets worse. I have said many times our current immigration system is broken. and it is. We supposedly fixed it 20 years ago. and in the process we have 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants. We didnt do a good job of fixing it. We must do better. We must have a cohesive. coordinated effort to strengthen border security. create legal mechanisms for American companies to hire essential temporary employees. and encourage the 11 million or 12 million undocumented immigrants in our country to come out of the shadows and be part of America. We need to know who these people are and make sure they are productive. lawabiding. taxpaying members of the community. We must also have proper employer sanction enforcement so that employers do not hire undocumented aliens with impunity. That is so important. But the question remains: How will we move forward in the Senate?