It has been the leaders in the Senate. including people such as former Senator Claiborne Pell from Rhode Island. who stood for the proposition that that educational opportunity should be afforded to all Americans. no matter what your background. no matter your economic condition. that you should be allowed to have an educational opportunity in America. because there was a recognition that with educational opportunity. anything is possible for a child in America. So that piece of legislation Senator REID introduced today is something I hope we can embrace electively as a Senate moving forward in a comprehensive way. Finally. let me make a quick remark on the issue of immigration reform. We spent a lot of time on immigration here in the Senate. A few months ago. we were successful in passing a bipartisan compromise to move forward. I am hopeful that as we look at the months ahead. we will be able to work with President Bush and our Democratic and Republican colleagues to fashion a comprehensive immigration reform package that will deliver an effective immigration law for our country. In my view. that immigration reform package has to have three principles at its center. First. we have to secure our borders. I believe the legislation introduced today will. in fact. help us make sure our borders are secure. We as a sovereign Nation have to make sure we are securing our borders. Secondly. we need to enforce our laws within our country. For far too long we have looked the other way and the laws of immigration in our country simply have not been enforced. The measure we passed last year put together the pieces to allow us to enforce our immigration laws. Finally. from both a human and a moral and economic perspective. we need to find ways of bringing the 12 million people who now live in the shadows of America out into the sunlight of America. Those people are here working today. as they have been for many years. Their reality has in fact been recognized but somehow ignored. We need to find a way to make sure that we bring those people from the shadows into the sunlight. and the only way we will be able to do that is with a comprehensive immigration reform package that we pushed forward last year and. hopefully. we will have another opportunity to push forward in the manner of the bill introduced today by Senator REID. I very much look forward to working with my colleagues. both Democrats and Republicans. in this body as we address the major issues facing our Nation and our world. I yield the floor.
Keywords matched
immigration