Speech #1090179753

I remember him working on creating the Alliance for Progress with the notion being that the Western Hemisphere would be a much more successful hemisphere if we were able to work with nations that were all a part of this hemisphere. That Alliance for Progress by President Kennedy is still celebrated throughout the United States and throughout Latin America because of his vision that we would bring communities together. Yet what we are doing today on this national security issue of immigration reform is abandoning principles and allowing politics to triumph. This body tonight. by voting for what I expect will be successful passage of this bill. has allowed politics to triumph over what is in the best longterm interests of this country and over the principles that we worked on together to try to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. I stood with a number of my colleagues on the Republican side pftting together what was a comprehensive immigration reform package. We had leaders on the Democratic side who have inspired me for ages. such as Senator KENNEDY. Senator DURBN. and Senator REID standing with people such as Senator CRAIG and Senator MCCAIN and Senator GRAHAM and others to try to pull together comprehensive immigration reform. At the end of the day. we were able to get that comprehensive immigration reform. The President lauded it because it was a good bill. It was legislation that dealt with creating a system of law and order. that would have taken us out of the lawlessness we currently have in our country with respect to immigration and have created a comprehensive system to deal with this major issue of national security. economic security and moral values. Our legislation dealt with border security. Our legislation dealt with the enforcement of our immigration laws. Our legislation dealt in a realistic way with the penalties and the registration that would apply to the 12 million or so people who are here in this country undocumented today. It was legislation that was comprehensive in nature. Yes. we were proud we had Senators such as GRAHAM.