Speech #1090138995

Mr. President. I rise to speak on behalf of the Senates historic accomplishment. our imminent passage of bipartisan immigration reform legislation. The immigration reform legislation we are about to pass enhances our national security. promotes our economic well being and creates a fair and compassionate path to citizenship for those who came here to work hard. pay taxes. respect the law and learn English. The legislation addresses serious problems that have festered for years. Our immigration system has been broken far too long. Some thought it was broken beyond repair. but it is not. This Senate reform bill stands for the principle that we in government can work together. on a bipartisan basis. to craft detailed and pragmatic solutions. and that we can avoid strident rhetoric that ultimately gets us nowhere. There are difficult realities we must face. Despite huge increases in spending on border security since 1993. the numbers of undocumented immigrants living in the United States has more than doubled. and now stands at an estimated l million. That number increases significantly every year as more people come here looking for work. We must continue to improve border security. That will require more Border Patrol officers. better technologies. more effective border security strategies. and greater expenditures. The bill we are passing ensures that all of those things will happen. But the flow of illegal migration into the country would continue indefinitely. if our only solution was to continue to increase border security spending. Immigration enforcement is also an essential component of a reform package. Unscrupulous employers who continue to hire and exploit undocumented workers must be punished. Once adequate verification systems are in place. employers will have no excuse for hiring undocumented workers. The Senate legislation will implement an effective verification system. and it will result in the hiring of additional immigration enforcement officers and funding for thousands of additional detention beds. But enforcement alone will not solve the major challenges we face. Last December the House of Representatives passed a punitive and unworkable bill. Their legislation would criminalize the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.. pushing deeper into the darkness those who already live in the shadows and turning Samaritans who offer humanitarian aid into outlaws. Such draconian measures would create a class of people within our own borders who would live and work without the protection of law and would be open to exploitation and crime. They would be forced to suffer in silence or risk being imprisoned if they came forward.