Speech #1090138997

During floor consideration. I voted to remove these arbitrary distinctions from the bill. Unfortunately. that vote failed. and I believe we must accept this compromise as the only way to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform this year. I am pleased that efforts to gut the guest worker program were not successful and that the Senate added additional measures to strengthen labor protections for U.S. workers. We need a guest worker program that allows employers to turn to foreign labor as a last resort when they genuinely cannot find American workers to do the job. But it is important that any guest worker program contain strong labor protections. as the program outlined in the legislation does. These protections will help ensure that the program does not adversely affect wages and working conditions for U.S. workers. and that we do not create a secondclass of workers. who are subject to lower wages and fewer workplace protections. Furthermore. by permitting these workers to enter the country legally. we can try to avoid a future flow of undocumented workers who would otherwise create a new underground economy. New border security measures are. of course. an absolutely critical element of any immigration reform bill. This bill contains important provisions to increase and improve the personnel. equipment. infrastructure. and other resources our country needs to protect the border. and I strongly support those measures. But border security alone is not enough. According to a recent Cato Institute report. the probability of catching an illegal immigrant has fallen over the past two decades from 33 percent to 5 percent. despite the fact that we have tripled the number of border agents and increased the enforcement budget tenfold. We also must create realistic legal channels for immigrants to come to the United State and that allow undocumented immigrants who pass background checks to earn legal status. This reform of our immigration system is important to our national security because it will enable our border agents to focus their efforts on terrorists and others who pose a serious threat to Nation. The bill contains other important proposals. such as the DREAM Act. which provides higher education opportunities for children who are longterm U.S. residents and came to this country illegally through no fault of their own. and the AgJOBS bill to help agricultural workers. and family reunification. These provisions may not have been subject to as much debate as other elements of the bill. but they are just as important. The amendment process also brought improvements to title III of the bill. which creates a new mandatory. nationwide electronic employment verification system.