Speech #1090131548

That is my hope. Regardless. I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues and our colleagues from the House once the Senate passes a bill. assuming we are successful in doing so. in trying to reconcile the differences in the approach the Senate intends to take in comprehensive reform and the House approach. which is primarily a border security bill. I am proud to say that this bill. when I talk about comprehensive reform. has a number of components. I mentioned the first is border security. I am proud to say that the bill Senator KYL of Arizona and I filed about a year ago now has been largely incorporated into the bill before us. When it comes to the work we need to perform for security along our border. we need to vastly increase the number of Border Patrol agents. I understand the President tonight may make some announcement with regard to the use of National Guard on a temporary basis to fill in the gaps and provide additional boots on the ground so we can get to that level of security faster. and I believe we should use all of our national assets to provide border security. But I also had the honor this morning of going out to Fort Belvoir. where the Army Materiel Command provided a demonstration to me with some of the unmanned aerial vehicles and ground sensors. the radars. the thermal imagery. and so forth. that the military has developed for force protection. It has obvious applications in providing the Department of Homeland Security additional technology which will allow us to secure our border. Here again. the problem is not a shortage of ideas the problem is the shortage of assets. including human assets and technological assets that will actually allow the Department of Homeland Security to accomplish the goal of border security. We have a long way to go between ideas and concepts and actually building the infrastructure. actually purchasing the technology and training people to operate it. That is one reason I look forward to further debate on Senator ISAKSONs amendment currently pending that provides a trigger. In essence it is saying the rest of the provisions of the bill will not be implemented until such time as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security certifies that the border security provisions have. in fact. been implemented. I think that is a significant proposal. I commend to my colleagues an article that I read this morning called "Can Immigration Reform Work?" This is an article written by Lawrence B. Lindsey. who was the former chief economic adviser for President Bush. Mr. Lindsey writes as an advocate of comprehensive immigration reform. as am I. but he asks some very practical questions which I think have to be answered during the course of this debate. First of all. advocates of the current bill pending on the floor acknowledge that beneficiaries of the provisions of the bill. the 12 million or so who will benefit from the earned legalizationor some might call it amnesty based on its similarity with the amnesty of 1986but the argument is that the beneficiaries of this provision of the bill will have to go to the back of the line. Again. I commend the Lindsey article to my colleagues. The question is: The back of which line? Basically what this bill does is it allows people who are currently here in an unauthorized status. that is. they have come either in violation of the immigration laws or they have come here legally and have overstayed in violation of the immigration laws. it allows them 6 years before they can then receive a green card. A green card confers legal permanent residency. After 5 more years. in other words. a total of 11 years. they can then apply for and receive American citizenship. The problem with the current bill on the floor is that it essentially guarantees the 12 million a green card and all they have to do is stay where they are. In other words. the line does not start in America the line starts at the consulate in Hong Kong or in Mexico City or in Bogota. Colombia. or in some other place around the world where people would apply for a green card. not here in the United States. What they are essentially saying is people under this current bill can break in line in front of those who have been waiting patiently outside the country. but break in line for those awaiting citizenship who otherwise would have to wait outside the country. There is something. it seems to me. fundamentally unfair about linejumping. about breaking in line. and many have expressed concerns. and I am one of those who have the concerns. about rewarding people for linejumping. Another aspect of Mr. Lindseys article. which I again commend to my colleagues because. again. these are practical questions: How are you going to solve this problem? And I stand here as someone who is interested in solving the problem and as a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. But we have to do better than the bill that is currently on the floor. That is why I strongly urge my colleagues to study it and also to listen to the amendments. and hopefully we can improve it. The other question that Mr. Lindsey raises is the sheer immensity of the program proposed in the HagelMartinez compromise. In 2004. the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued almost 1 million green cards and naturalized 537.000 people. Contrast that with what this bill would do. It would give green cards to about 12 million people in one fell swoop and make them eligible for citizenship 6 years later. which is roughly a twelvefold increase in the workload of the agencies and the people who are actually supposed to make this work. I hope all of us will pay close attention to whether this thing that we are creating. this comprehensive immigration reform. can actually work. Part of making it work is going to be making sure there are the people and the processes. the databases. the computers. the cards. all of the things that are going to be necessary to actually make it function as intended. If not. we are going to be swamped by a tsunami of newly legalized people seeking documentation without any real ability to actually respond to that. The third issue he raises is the need for what he calls a certificate of legal residency. We are going to have toand the bill does provide. and there will be some additional debate about thisa work site verification program. which is absolutely critical to the functioning of comprehensive immigration reform. I think it needs to be beefed up and improved because what we need to provide employers is a way to swipe a card through a card reader and then almost immediately the light turns green and that means that person can work here legally. If it is red. they cant.