Speech #1090132295

I thank my colleague. the Senator from Alabama. for his incredible work on this bordersecurityfirst issue and his work on this particular amendment. It is a pleasure for me to join with him to support securing our borders. Senator SESSIONS has made a very strong argument as to why we need to secure the border first to pursue this whole question of how do we deal with border security and with the immigration issues of those who are already here illegally. The key is to prevent not only illegal pedestrian and vehicular traffic crossing the international border of the United States for people coming here to work. but it also includes a great concern. a growing concern about the number of people who are smuggling drugs into the United States. as well as those who are crossing the border for other illegal purposes. such as gang membership in communities across this country. We have a multisituation with which we have to deal. but it is all handled in the same way in terms of securing the border first. Whether it is to prevent illegal people coming for purposes of work or whether it is for other purposes. most of which would be criminal in nature. we need to secure that border. I never thought I would be proposing a security system that would include a border fence and a surveillance system that would protect our borders to the south or requiring a border study for the northern border as well. But I never expected that we would end up with the problem we have today. If we go back to 1986 when the first amnesty bill was dealt with and President Reagan signed it and promised that the U.S. Government would continue to enforce border security. we had between 1 and 2 million people in the United States illegally. Of course. that was. by comparison to the 11 to 12 million today. a much smaller number. obviously. but a much smaller problem in terms of the numbers to deal with. Today. the problem has continued to worsen. and as a result of the debate in the Senate and without action to secure the borders first from 3 weeks to 4 weeks ago. the number of border crossings is increasing percentagewise. The numbers continue to increase because there is an expectation that when they get here. somehow the U.S. Government.